Search the archive

(Video in preparation)

In the search function, you will find individual interviews from various archives.
The filter facets such as collection, gender, or year of birth can be combined with each other. Within a filter facet, you can use the magnifying glass to search for a suitable term.
You can only use the full-text search if you are registered with Oral-History.Digital. It only covers the archives for which you have access and in which transcripts are available.

The grid view displays the interviews found with preview images (if available).
The list view shows further information about the interviews found in an overview.
Under “Sorting”, you can sort the interviews found by name, interview ID, duration, collection, language, media type, or random.
By default, interviews are sorted by relevance after a full-text search. This relevance refers to the frequency of the searched term in relation to the total length of the transcript.

The filter facets, such as collection, gender, or year of birth can be combined with each other.
If you click on several entries in different filters, e.g., media type: audio and gender: female, the filter is restricted, meaning fewer results are displayed.
If you click on several entries within a filter, e.g., language: German and language: English, the filter is expanded, meaning more results are displayed.

You can only use the full-text search if you are registered in the relevant archive.

If you want to start a new search, first click on the “Reset” button directly below the search field.

With “Save search” in the upper left corner, you can save your search entries in your personal workbook.

The full-text search searches the transcripts, translations, tables of contents, names of interviewees and contributors, short biographies, photo captions, keywords or index entries, and annotations.

By default, interviews are sorted by relevance after a full-text search. This relevance refers to the frequency of the search term in relation to the total length of the transcript.

You do not need to enter capital letters or special characters. Searching for “cafe” will also find “café,” and searching for ‘Russia’ will also find “Russland” (and vice versa).
You can use wildcardsto search for words with different spellings. These can be placed at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word.
- The asterisk * replaces any number of characters. Example: use* finds user, used, use- value
- The question mark ? replaces a single character: Example: use? finds used, but not userfriendly
The phrase search with quotation marks only finds words in exactly this order.
The following Boolean operators must always be written in capital letters.
- AND (also &):The search for Max AND Mustermann finds hits in which both search terms occur within a segment, a person, a photo caption, etc.
- OR (also ||)):When searching for Max OR Mustermann, one or both terms may occur. This is suitable for searching with synonyms or in different languages.
- NOT (also !): When searching for Max NOT Mustermann, the second term is excluded.
- If no operators are used, the terms are automatically combined with AND.
Please note: Stem reduction allows different declensions of a word to be found. This process currently works best for the German language and is still under development.

The number of search results within a single interview is displayed at the top right of the preview image (grid view) or on the right in the list view.
In grid view, clicking on this number allows you to display the transcript passages found, which you can scroll through using the arrows.
Clicking on one of these text passages takes you directly to that sentence in the interview.
Clicking on the photo or name of the interviewee, on the other hand, takes you to the beginning of the interview.