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Search tips:
As you are probably aware, every search engine works in a slightly
different way. To get the most out of your search on the APL website,
please follow these search tips:
Searching by theme
Searching by keyword
Searching by photographer
Advanced searches
Searching the in-house collection
Contact us for assistance
Searching by theme
Images on the APL site are grouped into various themes, such as “art
and fashion”, “babies and children” and “food”.
To get into these themes, click the images
icon on the homepage. Then click on the theme you would most like to
look through. Searching by theme will give you a good idea of the types
of images APL has within a particular subject area. It may also help
to bring new ideas or inspiration to your search! [back
to top]
Searching by keyword
To search by keyword, just type in your keyword or a few keywords in
the box provided, press the “go” icon, and a page of images
will come up to match your request.
Here are a few guidelines to follow in order to maximise your search
results when searching by keyword:
1. Please ensure that you have the correct spelling
for the keyword that you are using. The APL search engine will not recognise
words if they are misspelled! If there is more than one spelling for
the word you are using then it is worth trying all varieties. E.g: “Humor”
and “Humour”. If you notice that any words are misspelled
on the site then please do let us know!
2. You can search by using a number of keywords or just one keyword.
It is worth trying out a few varieties.
3. When searching omit noise words such as
“and” or “or”. If
you do enter such “noise” words into your search you may
find that no results are displayed.
4. It is worth searching for both the singular and the plural
of any keyword that you are typing in. The keywording on the site is
currently being revised. Some images do not yet have both the singular
and the plurals entered.
5. Where possible, use abbreviations of words, as this
will maximise the number of results displayed.
E.g: if you are looking for an evening shot and type in the word “evenings”,
only the images which contain the keyword “evenings” will
be displayed. If you type in the word “eve” instead, all
of the images containing the words “eve”, “evening”
and “evenings” will be displayed, because all three of these
words contain the word “eve”.
6. Try to refine your search by using the “in
areas” drop down menu. See the section “advanced searches”
for more information about this.[back to top]
Searching by photographer
If you have come across a photographer’s work that you particularly
like on the APL site, you can do a search specifically for his or her
work. Each photographer has his or her own code. And each image has
it’s own unique code, which is displayed below it on the site.
For example, with image EWF-2964d, “EWF” is the photographer’s
code, and “2964d” is the image number. To search for more
images by EWF (Eric Farrelly) simply type EWF into the box marked “photographer’s
code”. If there is a specific image you would like to search for
and you know the code of that image, then type the photographer’s
code in the first box and the image number in the following box.[back
to top]
Advanced searches
It is possible to refine your search by using more than one of the search
options at any one time. You can search by keyword and theme, or by
photographer and theme. Or you can even do all three at once!
E.g: if you know that you would like an image of a baby boy by photographer
Malcolm Fairman, you could type the words “baby” and “boy”
in the keywords box, you could use the dropdown menu below this, and
select the theme “ babies and children”. You could then
type in the photographer’s code “MF”. If you do all
of this and then click on the “go” icon, the search results
will be displayed.[back to top]
Searching the in-house collection
At present, only 10,000 of APL’s images are on the website. APL
also has 490,000 transparencies in its offices. If you would like to
do a more extensive search then please contact
a member of the APL search team, who will be more than willing to search
the in-house collection for you, for free! [back to top]
Contact us for assistance
If you are having trouble finding your desired images on-line then please
feel free to contact us for guidance
on searching the website, or for a free search of our in-house collection
of transparencies.[back to top]
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