Free search in the text
Search terms
Goetgevonden’s search engine searches for the literal search term(s) that you entered in the free search field. The results that you get back are always (occurrences of the search term(s) in) resolutions of the States General.
Example: ‘water’ -> You get the results (found resolutions) with ‘water’.
If you enter two or more search terms, the search engine searches for the occurrence of one of these two search terms in the text.
Example: ‘polder dijk’ -> At least one of the two search terms appears somewhere in the results.
Search operators
Search operators are words or characters that control the search engine.
OR
Searching with OR gives the same results as searching with multiple search terms (see above). Results contain one or more of the search terms. Adding search terms expands the number of results.
Example: ‘polder OR dijk’ -> In the results, one of the two search terms appears somewhere.
Explanation: since each search term expands the number of results, a large number of search terms can lead to confusing results lists. It may be better to split searches and search for the terms separately.
AND
All search terms must be present in the results. Adding search terms limits the number of results.
Example: ‘polder AND inundatie’ -> All results contain both ‘polder’ and ‘inundatie, in random order and not necessarily next to each other.
NOT
This leaves out the results that contain the term that follows NOT in the search.
Example: water NOT zee -> The results will show resolutions that contain ‘water’, but resolutions that also contain ‘zee’ will not be shown.
*
With this wildcard, you can search for a search term supplemented with any number of characters (including spaces).
Example: ‘copye*’ -> You get the results with ‘copye’, but also with ‘copyelijck’.
Example: ‘minister *’ -> You get the results with ‘minister plenipotentiaris’, but not with ‘ministers’.
?
With this wildcard you can leave any letter in a search term blank.
Example: ‘cop?e’ -> You get the results with ‘copie’, but also with ‘copye’.
Explanation: you can combine different question marks, for example ‘noodsa??kel?ckheyt’ to find ‘noodsaackelyckheyt’ and ‘noodsaackelijckheyt’ and ‘noodsaackelijckheyt’.
However, keep in mind that these three words can also be found with ‘noodsa*’ or, if the number of results is too large, with ‘noodsa*kel*’. As a rule, ?? is better replaced by *.
“ ”
By placing multiple search terms between double quotation marks, you will find the places in the text where these exact word combinations occur, without other words in between.
Example: ‘“militaire saecken”’ -> you will find ‘militaire saecken’ but not ‘militaire en andere saecken’.
~
With this wildcard, followed by the number 1 or 2, you can search for words that differ by one or two characters from the specified search term.
Example: ‘voorschreven~1’ -> You will find ‘voorschreven’, ‘voorschreve’, ‘voorschteven’, ‘veorschreven’ and so on, but not ‘veorschreve’ (because this differs by two characters from ‘voorschreven’)
Combining search operators
You can combine the same or different search queries with operators in the search field. Use round brackets to separate search queries; the logical order of search terms influences the results.
Example: ‘water OR polder OR dijk OR molen’ -> You will get results in which one of these words appears at least once.
Example: ‘(commissie OR gecommitteert) NOT gecommitteerden’ -> You will get results in which the word ‘commissie’ or the word ‘gecommitteert’ appears at least once, but the word ‘gecommitteerden’ does not.
Example: ‘commissie NOT “seeckere commissie”’ -> You will get results in which the word ‘commissie’ appears, but not if it is part of the word combination ‘seeckere commissie’.
Example: ‘(commis* OR gecommit*) NOT gecommitteerden’ -> You will get results in which words appear that start with ‘commis’ or ‘gecommit*’, but do not include the word ‘gecommitteerden’. N.B.: this search can be simplified to ‘*commi* NOT gecommitteerden’).
Capitalization and punctuation
Search queries are not case-sensitive.
Example: ‘Gedeputeerde’, ‘gedeputeerde’ -> both search terms give the same results.
Hyphens are treated the same way as spaces by search engines.
Example: ‘coffy-boonen’ -> You get results with ‘coffy-boonen’, but also results with ‘coffy’ and ‘boonen’.
Example: ‘“coffy-boonen’” (with double quotation marks) -> You get results with ‘coffy-boonen’, but no results with ‘coffy’ or ‘boonen’ on their own.
Please note
During the time of the Dutch Republic, there was no standard spelling. Although there was an increasing tendency to spell words in the same way during the existence of the States General, almost all words occur in multiple spelling variations. The automatic text recognition that was applied within this project is of very high quality with an error margin of 1 to 2%, but recognition errors do occur.
Keep this in mind when searching the material. If you want to find as many occurrences of a word as possible, it is best to try out different spelling variations and use the wildcards * and ~. Do not assume too easily that all occurrences of a word have been found.
If you want to search for words that are also recognised as entities (personal names, locations, organisations, etc.) it would be a good idea to (also) use the entity filters. For instance, if you filter on the location ‘Amsterdam’, you will find all resolutions with occurrences of the word ‘Amsterdam’ in different spellings: the search engine will also include ‘Amsterdamme’ and ‘Amstelredamme’. Here, the work of trying out different spellings has already been done behind the scenes. It is important to remember that this has largely happened automatically, and that occurrences of ‘Amsterdam’ may have been missed.