Skip to content

ra search

Search transcribed historical documents.

ra search "Stockholm"
ra search "trolldom" --limit 50
ra search "((Stockholm OR Göteborg) AND troll*)"
ra search "Stockholm" --text --include-all-materials
ra search "Stockholm" --max-hits-per-vol 1 --limit 100

Flags

Flag Default Description
--limit 25 Maximum records to fetch from API (pagination size)
--max-display 10 Maximum records to display in output
--max-hits-per-vol 3 Limit hits per volume (useful for broad searches)
--transcribed-text / --text --transcribed-text Search AI-transcribed text (default) or metadata fields
--only-digitised-materials / --include-all-materials --only-digitised-materials Limit to digitised materials or include all records
--log off Enable API logging to ra_mcp_api.log

--transcribed-text requires --only-digitised-materials. Using --include-all-materials automatically switches to --text.

Search Syntax

The search supports full Solr query syntax:

Syntax Example Meaning
Exact term Stockholm Find exact word
Wildcard troll*, St?ckholm Pattern matching
Fuzzy Stockholm~1 Similar words (edit distance)
Proximity "Stockholm trolldom"~10 Two terms within N words
Boolean AND (Stockholm AND trolldom) Both terms required
Boolean OR (Stockholm OR Göteborg) Either term
Boolean NOT (Stockholm NOT trolldom) Exclude term

Always wrap Boolean queries in parentheses: ((A OR B) AND C*).

!!! tip "Use fuzzy search for better results" Transcriptions are AI-generated (HTR/OCR) and contain recognition errors. Use fuzzy matching (~1) to catch misread characters: stockholm~1 finds "Stockholm", "Stockholn", "Stookholm", etc.