Orange County Arts Commission

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Help on Searching
Keyword Searching | Detailed Searching | Other Notes

Keyword Searching

The
Artists & Organizations page allows you to do a simple keyword search on our database of local artists and organizations. With keyword searching, you can enter any words you think might be associated with an artist or organization you seek. This can be an artist's name, an organization name, a word from an organization's mission statement, a specialization within an art area, or an association to which an artist or organization might belong. Specifically, keywords are checked against:
  • Organization Name (Carrboro ArtsCenter, Hillsborough Historical Society)
  • Organization Description/Mission (agency, promote, build, children, musicals)
  • Organization Type (non profit)
  • Artist's or Contact's First Name (Jane, Jan, Dav, David)
  • Artist's or Contact's Last Name (Thomas, Smith, Wein)
  • Associations (Raleigh Symphony, Durham Art Guild)
  • City (Durham, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough)
  • Web Site URL (undersky, braine)
  • Art Area (visual art 2D, 3D, mixed media, dance, music, theatre, photography, ceramics, crafts, ...)
  • Art Area Descriptions (gouache, pastel, jazz, portraits, modern)
This means that if you enter, for example, "improvisation", you'll find all records that have that word anywhere in any of those fields.

Note that you can also select whether to search only "artist" records, only "organization" records, or both. The "Both" setting is usually recommended, since some artists choose to be listed only with their organizations, and some organizations are small enough that they are only listed within an artist's record.

Some examples of keyword searches:

To find all of the artists who work with metal:
      enter the keyword metal.

To find all of the artists named "Miriam" who work with glass:
      enter the keywords Miriam glass
      or glass Miriam.

Please note that this method may also give you artists who play heavy metal music, or someone named Miriam Glass (searching does not differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters).

You can also enter only part of a word. For example, if you entered "Mir", you could get artists named Miriam and artists named Mirabelle.

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Detailed Searching

Detailed searching, available through the
Detailed Search page, allows you to be a little more precise than keyword searching by allowing you to look for words in specific fields. For example, you might want to look for the last name "Potter" rather than a list of all the people that make ceramic pots.

If you leave a field blank, the search will ignore that field, and any value might be returned for that field in the results you get.

The fields you can enter (followed by examples) are:

  • Artist's or Contact's First Name (Jane, Jan, Dav, David)
  • Artist's or Contact's Last Name (Thomas, Smith, Wein)
  • Organization Name (Carrboro ArtsCenter, Hillsborough Historical Society)
  • Organization Description/Mission (theatre, promote, build, children, musicals, represent, perform)
  • Founded Before (1995)
  • Founded After (1995)
  • Art Area (select from list)
  • Art Area Descriptions (gouache, pastel, jazz, portraits, modern)
  • Associations
  • City (Durham, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough)
  • Keywords (same as the keyword field on the main search page, described above)

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Other Notes

Searching is not case-sensitive.

Searching will find only those records that contain all of the keywords specified.

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