Welcome to our Online Collections Database!
The catalog currently contains information about manuscript collections, books, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, institutions, associations, parish history materials, and graphic materials. A few of the manuscript collection records have links to full finding aids.
Please note that our Photograph collection is currently not available online. If there is something that you would like to have researched, please contact us at archives@chrc-phila.org, or call 215 904-8149.
Tips for Searching
Keyword Search
The Keyword Search button allows you to perform a general search across multiple fields for any catalog records online. Keyword searches use OR as the default connector between words (e.g. a search for Catholic Church will return records associated with Catholic OR Church). If you want to find records where both keywords are found, type in AND between the two words. To search for a specific phrase, be sure to put the phrase within quotes (e.g. "St. Patrick"). However, it is worth noting that spelling must be correct and putting the phrase St. Patrick in quotes would exclude other versions, such as Saint Patrick. You can also use the asterisk (*) as a wildcard (e.g. a search for histor* would come up with records containing history, histories, historical, etc.). Searches are not case sensitive.
Advanced Search
The Advanced Search button can help you be more specific with your search. You can search for a word or phrase within a particular search category or use multiple categories to further narrow down your search results. To do a more specific search, for example, if you want to see what newspapers CHRC has between the years 1830 to 1880, enter “Newspapers” in the Collection field, and enter “1830” in the Start date field and “1880” in the End date field. As another example, if you’d like to see what Catholic institutions in New York CHRC has materials for, enter “Institutions” in the Collection field and “New York” in the Subjects field. Users can search within the following collections (again, remember to type in the name exactly): Associations Institutions Newspapers Parish History Parish Calendar Periodical Phrase searching with quotes and use of wildcards (*) are available in Advanced Search.
Catalog Searches (Archives / Libraries)
The catalog buttons can also help narrow down your search, by only searching with a selected catalog. If you only want to search for Archives, click the Archives button and type in your keyword(s) or phrase. You can also browse records within that catalog without performing a search. Phrase searching, wildcards (*) as well as AND/OR statements are available when performing catalog searches.