How to search Europeana

We provide access to millions of digitised cultural heritage items. There is a lot to explore, so here are some tips on improving your search experience.

The search flow

We offer three main ways to search on the website: the search bar, search filters, and advanced search. Each has its own benefits and they can be combined to refine your search. Here’s an example:

Enter the search term in the search bar. The search bar is on the website's homepage and can be activated by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of any page.
Once results are displayed on the search results page, you can refine them using the filters.
You can narrow your search further by using the advanced search.

You can find more information about using the search bar, search filters and advanced search in the following sections.

How to use the search bar

When using the search bar, it is useful to know that:

It performs a keyword search, meaning searching in different languages will give different results.
It searches all the information that describes the item, known as its metadata. For example, the item’s title and description.
It does not perform a full-text search of the items, e.g. it does not look at the text inside a book or a newspaper. To do this, see How to search within full-text.

Tips to use the main search bar

Quotation marks

Using quotation marks (double quotes " ") will only return items that match the specific phrase you used. Searching for "Art Nouveau" returns items with that specific phrase in their metadata, while searching without quotation marks will return items with the words ‘art’ and ‘nouveau’ in their metadata, but not necessarily together or in that order.

Wildcards

Wildcards are special characters that can stand in for unknown characters in your search term. They are useful for searching multiple terms that are similar but not identical.

Use * to find words with any number of letters in the place of the asterisk. For example, ca* will find ‘cat’, ‘cap’, ‘cane’, ‘cable’, and ‘canary.’
Use ? for a single letter wildcard; for example, ca?e will find ‘cane’, ‘care’, ‘case’, etc.
Use ~ to find results with a similar spelling. For example, searching text~ will include words like ‘test’ ‘text’, or ‘texts’.

Boolean operators

Use the boolean operators ‘AND’, ‘OR’ and ‘NOT’ to combine search terms differently. Here are some examples:

salt AND pepper gives you results with the words ‘salt’ and ‘pepper’ in their metadata.
salt OR pepper gives you results with either the word ‘salt’ or ‘pepper’ in their metadata.
salt NOT pepper gives you results that have the word ‘salt’ but not the word ‘pepper’ in their metadata.

You can combine the operators to build more complex queries. Some examples:

(Pieter AND Brueghel) NOT Younger gives you results for Pieter Brueghel, excluding the word Younger.
cooking AND (salt OR pepper) gives you results that have the word ‘cooking’ as well as either the word ‘salt’ or the word ‘pepper’.

Note the use of parentheses ( ) to group searches together logically. Note that the operators need to be capitalised, so NOT will be seen as an operator but not will search for the word ‘not’.

For more information on how to write detailed search queries in the search bar, you can read the Europeana Search API documentation on 'Query Syntax'.

Typing a search term into the search bar will bring you to the search results page, where you can refine your search further. For example, searching for Cats in the search bar gives many results, after which you can use the filters to narrow down the results to images of cats in art from Sweden.

The filters to the right of the search results page allow you to filter by specific themes, media types, countries, and more. On a mobile device the filters can be activated by clicking on the filter menu icon filter in the top right corner of the search results page.

How to use the advanced search

To narrow your search further, you can build additional search queries with the fields provided by the advanced search. To use the advanced search:

Click ‘SHOW ADVANCED SEARCH’ at the top of the filter panel, in the top right corner of the page where the search results are displayed. On a mobile device the filter panel can be activated by clicking on the filter icon in the top right corner.
Select an option from the ‘FIELD’ drop-down list to search within.
Select the modifier ‘contains’ or ‘does not contain’. Selecting ‘contains’ will search for items which contain your search term(s), whereas selecting ‘does not contain’ will search for items that do not.
Enter the search term(s) in the search box.

For example, selecting the field ‘Full-text’ in step 2 will search within the items’ written contents, whereas selecting ‘Title’ will search within the items’ title field.

Tips to use the advanced search

The advanced search currently does not support quotation marks and wildcards.
By clicking ‘+ ADD’, you can add another search on a different field, modifier and search term.

How to search by date

We are working to improve the functionality of searching by date. Currently, the search may only return part of the relevant results. The search-by-date filter is planned to be released in autumn 2024.

Searching by date can be performed by combining the search bar and the advanced search, depending on your needs.

Search by a specific year

If you are looking for an item connected to a specific year:

Enter your keyword in the search bar.
Activate the advanced search. On desktop devices click ‘SHOW ADVANCED SEARCH’ in the top right corner of the page where the results are displayed. On mobile devices, click the filter icon , on the right hand-side, to find the 'SHOW ADVANCED SEARCH' option.
Select ‘When’ in the ‘FIELD’ box.
Select ‘contains’ in the ‘MODIFIER’ box.
Enter the year you are interested in the ‘SEARCH TERM(S)’ box. For example, enter 1978.

Search by date range

If you are looking for an item(s) connected to a date range, we advise you to restrict the search to the relevant century:

Select the century you want by clicking the relevant century in our List of centuries.
Click the magnifying glass in the top right corner to enter a keyword in the search bar.
Consider refining the results using the filters and/or the advanced search.

How to search within full-text

To search within the full-text or written contents of newspapers, transcriptions, closed captions and subtitles:

Click this link to access the search page.
Activate the advanced search. On desktop devices click ‘SHOW ADVANCED SEARCH’ in the top right corner of the page where the results are displayed. On mobile devices, click the filter icon , on the right hand-side, to find the 'SHOW ADVANCED SEARCH' option.
Select the field ‘Full-text’ from the ‘FIELD’ drop-down list.
Select the modifier ‘contains’ or ‘does not contain’ in the ‘MODIFIER’ box.
Enter the search term(s) in the ‘SEARCH TERM(S)’ box.
If you are only interested in full-text from newspapers, select ‘Newspapers’ in the theme filter on the right-hand side of the search page. Consider using the ‘DATE ISSUED’ filter to narrow the selection further.

How to search items by rights statement

Each item we publish is labelled with a standardised rights statement, so you can quickly check if or how you can use the item. To learn more about what each statement means, hover over the statement and a short summary will appear. You can also click on the statement and the full text will appear on a separate page.

Use the ’Can I use This?’ filter to see how the items in your results can be used:

'Yes’ for items that you can reuse for any purpose without seeking permission.
‘Yes, with conditions’ for items you can reuse without seeking further permission, but which have some limitations or restrictions that you will need to respect.
‘Maybe, seek permission’ for items you can access but cannot use unless you obtain permission from the copyright rightsholder or unless an exception to copyright exists.

You can go into more detail using the ‘Rights Statement’ filter:

Click ‘+ SHOW ADDITIONAL FILTERS’ under the main search filters.
Select the ‘RIGHTS STATEMENT’ filter.
Choose the rights statement you are interested in.

Find out more about the rights statements used on Europeana.eu.

The results given by the rights statements filters may sometimes contain items from other categories - this is because there can be multiple items with different rights statements within one record. Please always check the rights statement under the displayed resource to be sure.