Approximately 25% of the oral history collection have records in the University of Washington online catalog. These are not full text documents, although they include short descriptions of the individual histories.

Tips: This link accesses a section of the primary catalog of the UW libraries. The search shown will retrieve the cataloging records for many of the oral histories. Moreover, this link also can be used to locate a significant amount of material other than the oral histories. The search can be expanded to these items by entering a family's or organization's name in the second box.

For example, entering "Temple De Hirsch" as a Keyword retrieves about 60 entries including the book, The Fiftieth Anniversary of Congregation Temple De Hirsch, located in the library's collection; the Temple De Hirsch Sinai records from 1883-2001, which are part of the archival holdings in Special Collections; a thesis that refers to Temple De Hirsch; and individual community member's papers and oral histories that contain references to Temple De Hirsch and that are part of the archives collection. The best results will be found if you use multiple search terms along with your imagination when searching this catalog.

A portion of the finding aids can be accessed through the UW Special Collections finding aid database.

Tips: "Simple Search" option: just enter the name of the person or group you are looking for in the; or use the "Advanced Search" option to construct a multi-element search. When your search results are returned, you may narrow your search further by using the "Refine Search" feature at the top of the page of results. Or you might prefer this Google-type ond-box option which has browsing and advanced search. Also, please see the example in the Oral Histories section (above) for tips on searching the combined catalog of all UW libraries.

This is a searchable database of the holdings, but not the photographs themselves.

Tips: Search tips appear on the web page; however, the "Names List" button to the right of the NAME search box may not always be available. If you are not able to access the list of names, follow the instructions for entering a name in the "NAME" search box.

A portion of the photographs in the collection can be accessed online.

Tips: This collection can be either searched or browsed. Searching take you directly to a specific photograph. Note that if you enter a two-word phrase such as a first and last name, you will retrieve photographs of that individual and also photographs that include people with either the first name or last name that you entered.

For example: "morris cooper" retrieves a photograph of the Kosokoff and Cooper families in which Morris Cooper is included, but also an AZA group photograph in which one individual has the first name "Morris" and another individual has the last name "Cooper". The photographs in the "Browse" section are arranged according to the order in which they appear in the catalog. The two "Browse Subjects" listings differ in the cataloging schemes by which they are described; both should be used. NOTE: In searching all of the archives, please allow for variant spellings and typos, such as "Copper" for "Cooper".