Search Help

To search for an exact phrase, enclose your search terms with double quotation marks e.g. "food and drink".

You can add the asterisk character as a 'wildcard' to widen your search:

Examples:
The search term john* will return records with John, John's, Johnson, Johnston etc.
The search term *bert, will return Albert, Egbert, Robert etc.
The search term b*er will return brother, butcher, butler, baker etc.
The search term col*r will find the spelling variations of color and colour.

To search for an exact phrase in a field, enclose your search terms with double quotation marks.
The following search fields are available, search terms can be entered in one or more fields.

Any Text

This searches all the fields in catalogue records for the terms you enter.

Collection Name

Archive collections:
This is the name of an artist or corporate body whose collection is in the Archive; the elements of a name can be entered in any order.
For personal names: if a match is not found for the name you are looking for, try entering the surname only.
You can browse the list of Archive Collections to check if a collection exists.

Public Records collections:
The Collection Name shows the category title of a section of the Public Records. You can browse the Index of Public Records.

Date

You can enter a date or a date range e.g. 1915; 1915-1920; 20th century etc.

Reference Number

To find the record for a specific Reference Number enter the number e.g. TGA 1234/1
To find a record and its related records, enter an asterisk after the number e.g. TGA 1234/1*

Reference Numbers have one of these prefixes:
TAM: Tate Archive Collections on Microfiche
TAP: Tate Archive Posters Collection
TG: Tate Public Records
TGA: Tate Archive Collections

Level

You can limit your search to a level within a collection by selecting the level from the pick list.
Collections are catalogued in a hierarchy; each collection includes different levels of catalogue description:

Fonds level: Top level of description which gives information about all the elements of the collection.
Series: Groups of records within a collection
Sub-Series : Groups of records within a series
File: A file of records within a series or sub-series
Item: an item-level record may describe a single item or several items together e.g. one letter, or a number of related letters.
Singleitem: a record describing a collection which only contains a single item

There can be any number of levels in a collection; our collections are catalogued to varying degrees of detail.

A Refine search criteria option is available for Any Text and Collection Name:

By default, a search will look for any records with all the term(s) you have entered.
However, you can choose to change the default search behaviour by clicking “Refine search criteria”. There are three options:

With all the words (boolean AND search); for example John Smith will return all records containing both John and Smith

With at least one of the words (boolean OR search); for example John Smith will return all records containing John or Smith or both John and Smith

Without the words (boolean NOT search); records will be excluded from results if they include the search terms entered in the field

Search Results pages

Catalogue records are displayed in Reference Number prefix order.
TAM: Tate Archive Collections on Microfiche
TAP: Tate Archive Posters Collection
TG: Tate Public Records
TGA: Tate Archive Collections

Results are presented with four columns: Ref No Collection Name Title Date
You can re-sort results by clicking any column heading.

Click anywhere in an entry to see the full details of a record.

How to browse all the catalogue records of a collection:

When viewing a full record, you can browse all other the records in that collection by clicking the highlighted Reference Number to open the “Hierarchy Browser”. This presents all records of a collection in a hierarchy. Some records in the hierarchy may display a ‘+’ sign; clicking it will open further records. The Title and Date of each record is shown.