Finding Multimedia with the AP PHOTO ARCHIVE

The Clearwater Public Library and the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative offer the AP Photo Archive to registered library patrons as a way to search for photos, video, audio, and graphics such as maps) "from the 1840s to a few minutes ago."

ACCESSING THE AP PHOTO ARCHIVE

Click here to access the AP Photo Archive Inside the Library or from anywhere with a library card

At the next screen, enter your 14-digit library card number (if outside the library) and click Verify.

The main page of the AP Photo Archive will appear. You will see a number of options and information on the left, such as the number of hits a search produces and display options. You will also see a button for the Lightbox, where you can store photos for downloading and/or printing after you are done searching.

THE WHAT FIELD

You can search using any combination of the three fields. The main thing to remember about this field is that if you enter more than one term, you will often get some irrelevant and also a multitude of results. For example, entering "Florida" and "Panthers" will bring up every photo that contains one of those words. You will get some results that are probably what you wanted but a great number of others you probably didn’t.

If you are searching for words adjacent to each other, use single quotations around them.

e.g. ‘Florida Panthers’

Boolean Operators

You can also search the What field using Boolean operators:

AND returns search results containing both words:

e.g. Reagan AND Bush

‘Prince Henry’ AND ‘Prince William’ AND Diana

OR is the default operator, which is the reason you will get too many results if you type in two words you are treating as a phrase, which is why you enclose in single quotes.

e.g. alligator attacks

will return any photograph that contains either term, so you will get pages back about shark, snake, bear, etc. attacks as well!

NOT searches for words preceding NOT without containing the following word.

e.g. Tampa Bay NOT Bucaneers

NEAR searches for terms on either side of the operator within the given number of words, if a number is given.

e.g. Apple NEAR Computer

Apple NEAR Records

* is the wildcard operator for finding results for strings matches

e.g. micro*

would return hits for microscope, microcomputer, microphone, Microsoft, etc.

Natural Language Searches

You can also use this method to search for topics, but will often get numerous results. However, if you are interested in just exploring a topic, this can be the best way to start. just to get an idea of what the archives may hold.

e.g. New York City subway stations

THE WHEN FIELD

Specific dates require the full month/day/year in numerical form

e.g. 6/6/1944

You can search for a range of dates as well.

e.g. 1999

From 1939 to 1945

From 01/01/1970 to 12/31/1970

Other options include:

Today

Yesterday

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

(any day of the week or as above)

THE WHERE FIELD

In this field you can search by city, state, and country. Abbreviations cannot be used. For words that must be next to each other, use single quotation marks.

e.g. Florida

‘Great Britain’

Charleston, ‘South Carolina’

There are many other ways to search, but these are a good place to begin You can also search the Euro/Asia Photos (which may have captions in languages other than English), and the Graphics PDF archives using these methods.

VIEWING THE PHOTOS

There are three ways to view the results of a search. You can display 12, 4, or an index of the result of your search. The 12 photo view is mostly visual, the 4 photo view provides a smaller thumbnail and the photo’s caption, and the index gives the most detailed information, but does not display a thumbnail.

Double clicking on a photo you will open it up in a new window at a larger size, and display the caption and a link for downloading it as a .jpg. You can do this from any of the display modes.

This is the way the photo will open up when you double-click on it from any of the views above.

DOWNLOADING AND PRINTING PHOTOS

When you have opened a photo it in its own window, there are two options available. You can store it in the Lightbox, from which you can retrieve it later, and then print it. This is useful if you are searching for a number of photos or conducting more than one search. There is a Download button as well.

You can download from any view. You will be given the option of downloading with the caption as embedded text or as an attached .txt file.

To print a photo that has been opened in its own window, simply hit the print button on the browser toolbar or select File -> Print.

CONCEPT SEARCHING

You can also search the archive by concept. There are 71 defined concepts. The concept corresponds to the idea that the photograph is portraying. To search by concept, type in the concept you want followed by:concept in the WHAT field.

e.g. hot:concept

cold:concept

The User Guide found on the Home Page of the AP Archive has a list of concepts you can use.

Click here to access the AP Photo Archive Inside the Library or from anywhere with a library card

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Page last updated Friday, March 19, 2004

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