Digital Mirror
John Thomas Collection
How to search and view the results
Choose to search the John Thomas Collection
To limit your search to the John Thomas Collection you must first choose the John Thomas option from the drop-down list underneath the keyword search boxes.
Viewing search results
Once you have made your search a Search Results page will display thumbnail images of your results together with details of the creator, title and date of the item. To view a larger image you should click on the thumbnail image and the browser will display the larger image in a new window. To return to the Search Result page you should click on the 'Back' button on your browser.
Searching again
To begin a new search remember to choose the John Thomas option from the drop-down list underneath the keyword search boxes if you wish to limit your search once again.
Searching by subject
To search for photographs by particular subjects you should remember that there are five key categories of subjects indexed: personal name, corporate name, meeting names, place name and topic.
Searching by place name
Place names appear in the bibliographic record as they do in the Ordnance Survey 1:50 000 gazetteer. This means that you should normally search for the English or Anglicised form of the place name and not its Welsh form, but in some cases where the Welsh form is the preferred Ordnance Survey form, that form should be used in searching. You can search the Ordnance Survey gazetteer here.
Examples of a place name search
SEARCH Wrexham
(This search will retrieve all bibliographic records where the word "Wrexham" appears, but that includes all bibliographic records where it is indexed as a place name.)
SEARCH Blaenau Ffestiniog
Searching by personal name
If you are looking for photographs of a particular person you can do this by entering the person's name in the usual order; this is true even if a person does not use a surname or has a compound surname. You should use the form of the name by which the person is best known.
Examples of a name search
SEARCH Percy Thrower
(Remember that it is a keyword search and any record which contains the words "Percy" and "Thrower" will be retrieved so you might get results which are not relevant to your request.)
Searching by corporate name
A corporate name covers a wide variety of named subjects such as commercial companies, musical groups, political parties, governments, castles, &c. But you should not worry if you don't know to which category your search belongs because the search will be made across all the categories. The process of searching for corporate names is similar to the search for personal names enter the name you are looking for in direct order.
Examples of a corporate name search
SEARCH National Federation of Women's Institute
SEARCH Chirk Castle
(This search will retrieve all bibliographic records which include the index term "Chirk Castle", but remember it will also retrieve all bibliographic records which contain the words "Chirk" and "castle").
Searching by meeting name
A meeting name will include events such as particular eisteddfodau and games.
Example of a meeting name search
SEARCH Llangollen International Eisteddfod
Searching by topic
In topical indexing the Library of Congress's Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms (lctgm) has been used as the controlled vocabulary and in rare cases the Art and architecture thesaurus (aat) and the Library of Congress subject headings (lcsh). The user should be aware that this is an American thesaurus which follows American spelling and conventions. For example to search for pictures of Cars you should use the index term Automobiles, for Railways you should use Railroads, for Harbours you should search using Harbors, &c. You can consult an on-line index to the thesaurus, http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/print/tgm1/toc.html, in order to decide which topical search terms to use.
Examples of a topical search
SEARCH Weddings
Searching for photographs by genre
The photographs have also been indexed for genre using the Library of Congress's Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II: Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms (gmgpc) as the controlled vocabulary. Once again the user should be aware that this is an American thesaurus. You can consult this and index to the thesaurus on-line, http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/print/tgm2/toc.html, to decide which genre search terms to use.
SEARCH Landscape photographs
SEARCH Group portraits
