We welcome you to explore the online catalogues of our extensive collections of cultural material related to the Great River of the West, the mighty Columbia River. New material is uploaded on a regular basis so come back often to see what’s been added, and come to know the river!
Special Collections
Tips for Searching
The Keyword Search button allows you to perform a general search across multiple fields for any catalog records online.
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. You can also search People and Creator records through Advanced Search.
The Random Images button is a great way to just browse the collection. Each Random Images page displays a random assortment of images from the records online.
The catalog buttons (Archives / Photos / Objects) can also help narrow down your search, by only searching within a selected catalog. If you only want to search for Photos, click the Photos button and type in your keyword(s) or phrase.
Search Tools
OR: Keyword searches use OR as the default connector between words (e.g. a search for Peter Iredale will return records associated with Peter OR Iredale).
AND: If you want to find records where both keywords are found, type in AND between the two words.
Quotes (""): To search for a specific phrase, be sure to put the phrase within quotes (e.g. "Beeswax Shipwreck").
Asterisk (*): Use the Asterisk as a wildcard (e.g. a search for histor* would come up with records containing history, histories, historical, etc.).