We are using Avant Search and have several items for which we have approximate dates. We want them to show up in the searches for users. However if, for example, we enter the items with a start date as “ca. 1961” they won’t show up in a search for “1960-1965.” Has anyone figured out a good solution to this?
Have you tried entering the circa indicator after the year instead of at the beginning, e.g. “1961 ca” . I’m not certain, but think that might work.
Almost… just tried that and the item will show up for a search with a Start Date of 1960 and nothing in the End Date, but not if I have a Start Date of 1960 and an End Date of 1965.
That’s too bad. Unfortunately I don’t have another suggestion unless you want to change the code. We actually removed the date range feature from the development version of AvantSearch because of other issues and the fact that we found in practice that of the 12,000 plus items in our collection, only a handful were using date ranges. We generally either know the date of an item, or just that it’s e.g. 1900c, but we only guessed at a range of years, if for example, there was new automobile in a photograph and we researched its years of manufacture. I’m sorry I can’t be of help to you.
Thanks for trying – I really appreciate it! So have you coded yours as 1900c and then just not worried about it showing up in searches? We, too, have only about 70 out of 20,000+ items that have an approx date or a range – so maybe I’m overthinking it!!
Yes, we just put the circa indicator after the year and no longer use separate date range fields. When we got rid of the date ranges, we copied the range into a Notes field just so we would not lose the information for the few items that had it.
Here are our guidelines for dates and this is our website if you are interested. Best, George Soules
Thank you so much!! I really appreciate it.
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