USAF Engineering Division Finding Aid
Instructions
for Searching the Correspondence Files
(also known as the Sarah Clark Files)
The Correspondence Finding Aid consists of a Search Form and a Results Form.
Below is a portion of an example Search Form:
Clicking the "Search" button with no search criteria specified produces a Results Form, an example portion of which appears below:
The Results Form
In order to specify useful search criteria, one must understand the items on the Results Form, so we will cover it first and then return to the Search Form.
First, remember that the object of this finding aid is to tell one where the records are located at the National Archives II (hereafter Archives). One must still travel to the Archives in order to view the records. The finding aid makes a visit to the Archives much more productive.
RD #
Every record that is in this collection is part of Record Group 342. The
Record Group, in conjunction with the RD # displayed in
the Results Form, is required to actually get the physical document box
containing the desired record when one visits the Archives. Members of the
Archives staff can help to correctly fill out the paper forms required to
retrieve records for viewing. Note that multiple records may exist in the same
box. The File # and Subject and Year fields contain the
information that can be searched, and require further explanation.
File #
All Engineering Division records were once organized according to an arcane
scheme called the War Department Decimal Filing System (DFS). Most
of the Correspondence Records are still organized according to this DFS. The
table at the bottom of the Search Form lists some of the more common DFS
Classifications.
Subject and Year
A searchable Subject and Year field is the whole point of this
Finding Aid. By searching for keywords in the Subject and Year field one can rapidly locate the records that are
applicable to a specific subject.
Subject: This is the title on the file folder containing the record or interest, and presumably the subject of the report or other documents contained therein. The Subject is terminated on its extreme right by the "~" (tilde) character.
Year: The string of digits to the right of the "~" (tilde) character represent the years to which the record pertains. Note that in all cases the first two digits (always "19") have been omitted from the year (no Y2K problem here), and that the years are in ascending order. This allows one to easily request a search that pertains to a specific year or range of years.
Search Again
Clicking on Search Again returns to a CLEARED Search Form.
If you desire to return to the search form and preserve the search criteria, use
the Browser's "BACK" button.
The Search Form
The Search Form allows one to specify criteria that govern the number of "hits" returned by the search. Note that one does not have to specify anything in any of the fields. The purpose of any search specification is to simply reduce the number of search hits to those meeting the specified criteria. When search criteria are specified, the search will return results matching ALL of the search criteria that are specified. Clicking the Search button with all of the fields blank returns as many "hits" as is specified by the "Max Records" pull-down menu located under "DISPLAY OPTIONS"
Find Results where File # contains:
This field allows one to enter a portion of the Decimal Filing System File #.
For example, if one only wanted to see results related to engines, one would
enter "452.8" (without the quote marks).
The _ wild card character may be used within the File # specification to match any single character.
and where Subject and Year Contains:
all of the words: results containing ALL of the words in this field
(separated by spaces), in any order, are returned.
and the exact phrase: results containing the exact phrase specified in
this field are returned.
and none of the words: results that contain any of the words in this
field (separated by spaces), in any order, are returned.
The _ wild card character may be used within the Subject and Year
specification to match any single character.
DISPLAY OPTIONS
Sort by allows one to select which column on the Results Form will be used
to sort the results The
Sort by pull-down menu allows selection of either RD #, File #, or
Subject. Results will be sorted in ascending order within the selected
column. Note that if no sort criteria is entered, results are returned in the
order that the data was entered into the database, which may not be particularly
interesting.
Max Records allows one to limit the maximum number of results that will be returned. The default is 25.
Use the USAF Engineering Division the Finding Aid
