Searching the Catalogue

Our online catalogue lists most of the material we have – documents, photographs, audio-visual material and books. It is updated regularly, so items will appear almost as soon as they have been catalogued. Paper catalogues for most of our collections are also available at both the Staffordshire History Centre and Stoke-on-Trent City Archives.

Simple Search

The search box is displayed on all pages of the website. To search, type in a word or phrase and click Search.

This could be, for example, a surname, place name, street, house name, occupation, or it could be a keyword or phrase such as hospital or air raids.

You can specify a search of ‘everything’ (web pages and archive catalogue) or the archive catalogue only.

The search results will be displayed in order, with the most relevant first.

Viewing the Results

If the results page includes something of interest to you, click on the title to open up the record and find out more.

You can click on the ‘Browse by Hierarchy’ tab to view a record’s place in the hierarchy of a collection. This may help you to find related items which are of interest to you. You can click on other items listed in the hierarchy to find out more about them. You can also click on + and – to expand or minimise a level in the catalogue.