• Title

This is a basic 'free text' search - simply type in what you are looking for.

• Accession Number

This is an item's unique 'museum' number. This field will mainly be of use to museum staff.

• Photo Number

This is the unique number assigned to each image - there may be multiple images of a single artefact.

• Description

This is a basic 'free text' search - simply type in what you are looking for. If you are not sure about searching, this is probably the best field to try searching on since it contains the most written information about the image.

• Collection

This may be either Archaeology, Social History, Museum Photography or '[not our collections]' - images which have been loaned to us for reproduction by members of the public). The options will appear as a drop-down list when you click on the field.

• Subcollection

If you have a more specific idea of what you are looking for, or with to get a better idea of the sort of areas our collections are divided into, you may wish to search by Sub Collection. As with the Collection field, the options will appear as a drop-down list.

• Type of object

This means the type of image. A digital photograph of a pot would be classified as 'digital photograph'. To search for an object type depicted in an image, you can either search the Description field or do a subject search going to Object Types.

• Artist or Photographer

This field will also appear as a drop down list enabling you to browse the list of artists and photographers whose work we hold.

• Period of Original Object

This is a useful field to search since we may not know the exact date of all our images, but can often identify the period they come from.

• Date of Original Object

If you are looking for objects relating to a specific year, for example the St Albans Pageant of 1907, you may wish to search on a particular year. Please bear in mind that the exact year of production may not be known for every object and you are more likely to return a greater number of results if you search on the Period field.

• Location Depicted in Image

This is another 'free-text' search where you simply type in the name of the place, street or town you are interested in.