How to use DDRS

 

When you start a DDRS search, you're given a choice between doing a basic search and an advanced search. (The links are for UCLA.) You might as well always use the advanced search option; if the only field you fill in is the top one, this is equivalent to doing a basic search anyway. You begin by entering the terms you want to search for in the search fields at the top of the screen. You can search for words found in the title or abstract of a particular document, or in the text of the document itself. You can also do a “keyword/subject” search: this turns up documents containing the words or phrases you specify in their titles, descriptions, or in their first fifty words. You then use the remaining fields to limit the search in various ways—by date of issue, agency of origin, classification level, and so on. For example, for “Document classification” you can choose “top secret” to get only the documents originally given the highest regular classification—these are presumably the most sensitive, and therefore the most interesting, documents available. By holding down the control key, you can select documents in more than one category—for example, both secret and top secret documents.

In theory, this is a very powerful finding aid and can be an effective (and efficient) way to generate source material bearing on particular topics. You can zero in on documents that were produced within a particular time frame, or by a particular agency, or which dealt with a particular subject, or indeed that meet all three criteria. But be careful, because this search engine is by no means perfect. Not all documents dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, are labeled as such, so a subject search for that term would not yield everything in the DDRS database dealing with that episode. Searching by date and perhaps by agency of origin might be a more effective way to generate listings related to that topic.