Navigating the Collections | Canadian Research Knowledge Network

Browse, search, and explore material from the Canadiana collections by following these guidelines.

Searching

Use the Canadiana search form to search for descriptive information and material metadata, such as titles, author/creator names, subject keywords, or the text content of books and other documents, where available. Search terms are not case- or accent-sensitive.

The following features can be used within the search box to refine the results:

Wildcards: ? and *

Use ? in the middle or at the end of a word to match any one character. Use * to match any number of characters (including zero).

For example, to find either defence or defense: defen?e
To find either labour or labor: labo*r

Phrases: " "

To search for an exact phrase, enclose all of the words in double quotes. You cannot use wildcards within a phrase.

For example, to find documents that contain the phrase quebec city and not just the individual terms quebec and city: "quebec city"

Excluded terms: -

Use - in front of a word or phrase to indicate that the term must not appear in the record.

For example, to find documents that contain paris but not france: paris -france

Alternate terms: |

To match any one of a number of alternative terms, put a | between them.

For example, to find "ontario" and either "york" or "toronto": ontario york | toronto

Field search: ti:, au:, su:

Use ti: in front of a word or phrase to search only document titles. Use au: and su: to do the same for author/creator names and subject headings/keywords.

For example: to find documents that contain vancouver in the title: ti:vancouver

Tips for Navigating the Héritage Collection

Clicking on the About tab of an individual collection and reading the notes in the Description field can provide hints on how the collection is arranged and whether or not a finding aid or index has been created for it.

Finding aids: The collections in Héritage are digital versions of microfilm collections held at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). LAC has created finding aids for many of these collections which can be found either on the digitized reels at Héritage or on the LAC website.

Finding aids available on Héritage: If a finding aid is available within the digitized reels on Héritage, the collection’s description will list the reel in which the finding aid is located. For example, for the William Lyon Mackenzie King Collection, the description section notes that a subject index is located on film reels C-4591 to C-4593.

Finding aids available on Library and Archives Canada’s website: LAC assigns an identifier to all of its collections, called a MIKAN number. This number can be found in the Identifier field in a collection’s About tab at Héritage. For example, for the [Governor General] Numbered Files collection, the MIKAN number is 133507. Using LAC’s Enhanced Archives Search, you can search for this number by typing it in the search box and selecting “MIKAN number” from the drop-down menu. Once you have retrieved the collection’s record from LAC’s search results, scroll down to the section entitled Finding Aid. In many cases, LAC has made available a Finding Aid (presented as a PDF) for the collection.

Reference guides: In 2013, Library and Archives Canada created reference guides to assist researchers with navigating the following series: