If you are searching for a single term, such as the word Book or the number 1990, you can enter this directly in the search box to retrieve your results.

If you are searching for a phrase (i.e. multiple words) such as Receipt Book, you must surround the words with double quotation marks to retrieve records that have that exact phrase, e.g. “Receipt Book”

Searching for Receipt Book without the quotation marks would retrieve records that feature either the word Book or the word Receipt, or both words anywhere in the record.

Similarly, if you’re searching for words or numbers separated by punctuation, for example mass-produced or 06/097/100, then you will need to surround these terms in quotes, otherwise your results will include records which contain any part of the term.

Note: It is particularly important to use quotation marks when searching on multi-part accession numbers to improve the accuracy of your searches.

Boolean Operators

If you are searching for multiple words, but not for an exact phrase, you can use boolean operators to combine your search terms in different ways.

Wildcard searches

By default, searching for a term or value in eHive will only retrieve exact matches e.g. a search for the word bead will only return records that feature the exact word bead. If you want to expand your results to include records that feature plurals or similar words, such as beads or beading, then you will need to use a wildcard.

The * symbol is a multiple character wildcard. This means it can be used to search for records featuring a root word (such as bead), plus any number of additional characters. This is particularly useful if you would like your results to include records with both the singular and plural form of a word, e.g. Bead and beads.

You can also use a multiple character wildcard in the middle of a word:

A single character wildcard ? can be used to search for terms that would match with that single character replaced:

You can also use a single character wildcard in the middle of a word:

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy searches

You can use fuzzy searches to find records with words similar in spelling to your search term:

Fuzzy searches

You can use fuzzy searches to find records with words similar in spelling to your search term:

Range searches

You can perform searches on a specific field for numeric and alphabetic ranges by placing two terms inside brackets, separated by the word TO in capital letters. Typical fields to perform range searches on are date_made and latest_insurance_valuation.

Inclusive range queries are denoted by square brackets:

Exclusive range queries are denoted by curly brackets:

Field Searches

You can search in eHive by simply typing in keywords or numbers into the search box. The results of this type of search will include all records that feature this keyword or number anywhere on the record. For example, entering a term like Russia will return all records with the word Russia anywhere in the record.

Alternatively, you can choose to refine your search by specifying what field you would like to find the term in. To do this, enter the eHive field name (or search alias) followed by a colon before your term, e.g place_made:Russia.

Field Search Tips: 

If you’re unsure of the eHive field name, you can find these in the Field Help section. Note that field names are all in lower case.

Remember to put quotation marks around phrases. If you don’t use quotation marks, only the first word will be treated as field specific. For example:

name:”Pounamu Valley” will find Pounamu Valley in the name field,
name:Pounamu Valley will find Pounamu in the name field and Valley anywhere in the record.

Search Aliases

We have shortened some of eHive’s Field Names into search aliases to make them simpler to use. See below for a full list.

*Note that these are not publicly visible fields. These search aliases can only be used when you are logged into your account and searching your own records.

Searching by eHive catalogue type

Object records in eHive must be one of the following seven catalogue types: Photography and Multimedia, History, Archives, Art, Library, Archaeology or Natural Science. You can search for records by catalogue type using the following queries:

cat_type:photography
cat_type:history
cat_type:archives
cat_type:art
cat_type:library
cat_type:archaeology
cat_type:natural_science