"Views of Four Presidencies (1938-1975)" - exhibition of the records of the Office of the Secretary to the President

Guidelines for using the online finding aid database of the records of the Office of the Secretary to the President

The finding aid database of the records of the Office of the Secretary to the President consists of descriptions of records in the collection which can be searched online by entering keywords in the search box. The records themselves are available for public inspection in the Reading Room of the National Archives. The dates covered by the files in this collection span from the years 1920 until 1989.

· Barring those documents which already feature in the online gallery, the records themselves are not available to view online, but may be examined in person in the Reading Room of the National Archives.

· The database results page comprises a brief description of individual items or files generated by the words entered in the search facility, together with their unique reference number, which may be quoted when ordering the document in the Reading Room of the National Archives.

· The search system used is a free text rather than a keyword system ie. whatever text is entered in the search box will be matched in the list of records - the search word does not have to be an entire word or phrase and it is not case specific.

· More than one word can be entered. The search will return all entries which contain both or all the words anywhere in the entry. A dot (.) matches any character, therefore all records within the finding aid database can be searched by entering a single dot in the search box.

Example:
Entering the name 'Douglas Hyde' in the 'Enter the text to search for': box and selecting 'All Office of the Secretary to the President' from the 'Select the index to search': drop-down menu, will yield a search results page identifying those files from the entire collection which relate to the first President, Douglas Hyde.

To search the Office of the Secretary to the President finding aid database, please click here