How to use Archie, the Archivist

Archie is a Google Custom Search Engine meant specifically to find historical documents accessible online.

Version française/french version

Tips for a better search
* search by title, by reference/call sign if there is one, or possibly by author.
* do a cross-referenced search, with several elements. For instance, to find The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, it is best to type ["peloponnesian war" thucydides] to avoid being directed to web pages dealing with the Peloponnesian war, but not containing Thucydides' work.
* use quotation marks, and every other tool available in the Google search engine, where necessary.
* documents online can exist in a wide array of diverse file types. There are two main kinds of files : text files and image files. If your document consists of (scanned) pictures, then probably the link you will get in the search engine will not take you directly to the document (i.e. the image files) but to a collection's browsing page in which the link to your document is, possibly along other links to other documents. Thus, the document you searched for will not always appear immediatly on your screen, but that does not mean the search has failed. Use the "edit > search" function (CTRL + F in Firefox) and type what you are searching for once again ; you will then know where your document is in the page displayed on your screen.

Use
Archie is meant specifically to find historical documents accessible online. To that effect, it browses through a list of websites on which such documents can be found : text documents, but also maps, pictures...
However, these websites do not always host only such documents. They may contain texts dealing with history, but not being in themselves historical sources, even if they quote those sources by name.
Thus, for generic searches such as [rome] or [scandinavia], the efficiency of this search engine is limited. Such searches might allow you to find the main page of some repositories dealing specifically with some more or less generic category (such as "American Civil War"), but that will depend on each site's internal organisation. Moreover, to do such a "search by title/category of repository", you may use Google Directory, category Reference > Archives (even though all sites listed in Archie are not in Directory, and conversely).

Languages
Current state of online repositories tends to favour the english language. However, this is not always the case, for some languages that are not very common may however be represented by an important number of online documents (see here for instance). Such sites may, as in the case above, translate part of their User Interface in another language, usually english, but the documents' titles and references are not always translated in the same manner, and may remain in the original language. Moreover, there are some important online repositories that are not english, but in german, french, italian... Thus, beginning a search with the english version (such as ["peloponnesian war" thucydides]) can be a good idea, but do not forget to try in other languages if necessary.
The language you should use in your search also depends on the language you want your document to be in : are you searching for the original version, or for a translation ? However, some problems might occur, due to the practices of each single repository : the document's title might by translated in their lists, yet the text can be in another language, not to mention transcription problems for non-latin characters.
Consequently, try numerous possibilities, and if necessary, try to resort to search words whose spelling will not change much across diverse languages (such as the author's name or other proper noun, even if those are also subject to variations).