For example, if you fill in the three boxes on the search engine so that they read:  "Civil War," "and," "Letter," "or," "Correspondence" you will obtain all the Civil War letter collections in the database. You should look at the suggestions below for words and phrases that will help your search. 
 

Time Periods 
You cannot search the collection by year, but you can use basic time periods.  These can be used alone or in combination with another query.  The database is currently coded for the following: 

Discovery and Early Exploration (to 1564) 
French in Florida 
First Spanish Period (from the founding of St. Augustine in 1565 to 1763) 
British Period (from 1763 to 1783) 
Second Spanish Period (1784 to 1821) 
Cession (1821) 
Territorial Period (from 1821 to 1845) 

Patriot War (1812-1816) 
Seminole War (will bring up First, Second, and Third) 
Civil War 
Reconstruction (1866-1877) 

Types of Media 
The major types of media are: 
 

Clippings (or Newspapers) 
Diaries and journals (use "diaries" [plural], not "diary") 
Family Papers&npsp;
Ledger(s) 
Letter(s) 
Correspondence 
Map(s) 
Papers 
Pictures 
Title(s) 
Will(s) 

Subjects 
You should try your own keywords, including place names and personal names, but here are some major headings. 
 

African Americans 
Banks and banking 
Church(es) 
Citrus 
Description (e.g. travel accounts) 
Education 
Forts 
Government (also Governor) 
Health 
History 
Indians (also Seminole Indians) 
Land grants (also Land titles) 
Lumber (also Naval Stores) 
Medicine 
Mission(s) 
Politics 
Religion 
Railroad(s) 
Ship(s) 
Slavery (also Slave) 
Tourism 
War 
Women  (also try family papers, sister, mother, wife, etc.)
Yellow Fever 
 

The default field for searching is the "Description" category.  If you want to scan the collection box by box, put a box number (1 through 90) in the first field and choose "Box Number" as your heading.  This is useful if you don't know what you are looking for (and you have a lot of time). 

The "and/or" commands can be used to narrow or widen your search. 

The "and" command means that you want maps that fit BOTH of your queries. 

Example: 

    "Civil War" 
    "and" 
    "Pensacola" 

Results:  You will get all the entries for the Civil War that contain the word "Pensacola." 

The "or" command means that you want the description to find ALL cases of your first query and ALL cases of your second query. 

Example: 

    "Civil War" 
    "or" 
    "Reconstruction" 

Results:  You will get every item in the collection that is coded for these time periods. 
 

If you have questions or problems, contact the curator, Dr. James Cusick, at (352) 392-0369 or jamcusi@uflib.ufl.edu.