The Portal of Texas History

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Facets

Faceted searching allows you to progressively narrow Search or Explore results by choosing limits or facets from a list of categories related to your query. The categories vary according to the contents of your results list, but may include Collection, County, Decade/Year, Language, Partner, Resource Type, and Serial/Series Title.

  • Within each category, up to fifty facets relevant to your query will be displayed in ranked order: the facet with the highest number of hits is at the beginning and the facet with the lowest number of hits is at the end.
  • Facets in the Decade category are ordered chronologically rather than by occurrence or frequency. If you select a decade, you will then be able to select an individual Year within that decade.
  • The Serial Title category includes both serial titles and series titles.

facets

How to Use Facets to Filter a Search Results or Explore List:

  1. Conduct a Basic or Advanced Search, or use Explore to select an area of interest.
  2. When your results list appears, you will see a list of categories on the left-hand side of the page.
  3. Click on a facet within a category. Your revised results list will appear.
  4. To narrow your results further, click on another facet. Your further revised results list will appear.
  5. Continue selecting facets until you are satisfied with your results.
  6. Each facet you select appears in a box located below the basic search box and labeled “You limited your search to:” From this box, you can deselect any facet by clicking “Remove.”
  7. Any additional searches you conduct using the basic search box on your results page will be based on the facets shown in the “You limited your search to:” box. So, to start a completely new search, you will need to deselect all the facets on your results page. Alternately, you can start a new search by navigating to the Basic Search screen or the Advanced Search screen using the red navigation bar.

Tips for Working with the List of Categories/Facets:

  • If you wish, you can click a category heading to hide the facets in that category from view. To re-display the facets, click the category heading again.
  • Some categories contain too many facets to display in the facet list on the left-hand side of the screen. Click “More…” at the end of the category to open the full list, and then select the desired facet. If you do not want to select a facet from the expanded list, click “Less…” at the end of the expanded list to contract it.