NROCAT provides web access to descriptions of the catalogued collections held by the Norfolk Record Office, the King's Lynn Borough Archives and the Norfolk Sound Archive. This page deals with the search facilities available - Quick Search, Advanced Search, Set Searches and Authority Files - and what to do if you are not getting the 'right' results.
General
NROCAT is not case sensitive; you can type your text in upper or lower case and it will not affect the outcome.
Quick Search
Type a word or phrase and click the Search button (or press the Return key). NROCAT will find all the catalogue descriptions which include your search term by searching all the database fields except date. This is a simple and quick way of using NROCAT. However, it will find records irrespective of their context, e.g., 'Wellington' will find Wellington Pier, Wellington Road, the Duke of Wellington (pub and person), HMS Wellington, and the correspondence of Benjamin Wellington. Some searches, e.g., 'will', 'administration', 'Norfolk', or 'Norwich' will find too many records to be useful, in which case use the Advanced Search to reduce the number of records.
Advanced Search
Several options are available:
- type a word or phrase in 'Any text' - acts the same way as Quick Search
- type a word or phrase in Title
- type a word or phrase in Description - describes the content of the collection or document(s) or amplifies information contained in other fields
- select a Level - definitions available in the Glossary
- select a Category - e.g., diaries
- select a Format - e.g., artefact
- select a Repository - e.g., Norfolk Sound Archive
- type a date in Date - has specific properties: see Searching by Date for more details
- type a collection or document reference number in CatalogueRef - our Guide to Holdings includes most of our collection references. Spaces and forward strokes (/) are important.
The real benefit comes from combining any of the above, e.g.
- Anyone interested in land or property belonging to Seething parish church may have found from our information leaflet on 'Researching a Norfolk Parish Church' that glebe terriers could be useful and that DN/TER is one of the key references. A search in NROCAT on 'Seething' (in Title or 'Any text') and 'DN/TER' (in CatalogueRef) will find the catalogue description for the main group of Seething glebe terriers.
- Select 'manorial records' in Category and 'Wymondham' in Title to find catalogue descriptions of records of the various manors in Wymondham. Using the Date field will limit the results even more.
- To find catalogue descriptions for 19th century Diss, type 'Diss' in 'Any text' and '19th century' in Date.
Word and Field options are available: see Search Options for more information.
Archive Category
Select an entry from the drop-down list. Only Fonds level descriptions will be searched and displayed. Use the tree icon (or its adjacent link) towards the bottom of the screen to see the whole catalogue displayed hierarchically.
Set Searches
These are mostly variants on the Advanced Search page with one or more field pre-selected, e.g., Maps has Category pre-selected as 'maps'. Word and Field options are available for most of these searches: see Search Options for more information.
Finding Church of England parish records is slightly different. Select an entry from the drop-down list and click search (or press the Return key). All the catalogue entries for the selected collection are displayed. There are two things to note:
- Some parishes are mentioned more than once, usually because of the amalgamation of parishes. For instance, Edingthorpe was a parish in its own right but later became part of the United Benefice of Bacton and Edingthorpe.
- The catalogues are in classification, not numerical, order. Many parishes have deposited records on different occasions over the years and the additional deposits have been numbered consecutively from the last used number. NROCAT re-arranges the catalogues so that all the parish registers or all the churchwardens' papers are displayed together. This means that the numbering can be out of sequence.
Probate searches can retrieve lots of records. Using the Date field can help make the the Result List more manageable, e.g., 18th century.
Authority Files
Authority files are standardized references to names or places many of which contain brief biographical or administrative information, variant spellings or alternative names. There is usually a link to the catalogue. For example:
- A Names search on 'Bromehill' in 'Any text' will find 'Feltwell, Norfolk; Feltwell Easthall Manor', among others, because 'Bromehill' is the non-preferred term for the name of the manor. Associated catalogue records are displayed at the bottom of the page with a link on the left hand side to open the detailed entry.
- A Places search on 'Houghton' will find Houghton St Giles. Click on the left hand link to view the record and see the variants. At the bottom of the page is a link to the associated records in the catalogue. Catalogue records are not automatically displayed as with the Names authority file because some places, e.g., Norwich, will have many links in the catalogue database and will take a long time to display in the Places Authority File.
No results, or not the results you want?
Try searching on a smaller number of words or fields. A search on a phrase, e.g., 'Seething parish registers', is likely to return the message 'There are no records that match your search'. The NRO does have the Seething parish registers, but that exact form of words does not appear in the catalogue.
Try another word, or a different spelling. For names, especially personal names, you may need to try variant spellings, e.g. King, Kyng, Kinge, Kynge.
Nothing on your subject, or very little?
There is no subject index at the moment. Try searches on other words relating to your subject. Think around the subject: what organizations or people might have had some responsibility or interest in the area? The Names Authority File can be searched by place via 'Any text'.
For a broad topic like agriculture, the NRO holds many thousands of documents which relate directly and indirectly to farming and estate management from the 11th century onwards, including manorial accounts, husbandry leases and maps, but a search on the word 'agriculture' produces a small fraction of these. Try other words, such as 'livestock', or 'crops', or look for the records of particular landowners and estate managers, often solicitors.
NROCAT only covers catalogued material: for more information, see the list of collections included and excluded.
The Guide to Holdings can help to provide the bigger picture. It is arranged hierarchically by group and then by sub-group and so on. Most of the catalogued collections are included in it except for the minor collections group (MC). It is a way of finding a fonds level catalogue reference to use to search NROCAT.
