Search Tips

Search

You can start by adding a keyword.

The Search For panel on the left allows you to refine your search, for example, to limit by dates or choose the order of results. You need to conduct the search first before you can refine the results by further filters.

You need to reset your search if you want to remove the filters.

The back button within the system which will take you back to your search results. The page back button will take you to the page you most recently visited.

Browse by map

Not all archives that relate to a place have been added to the map on our site. You may have to combine searching by keywords (such as street name or suburb) with browsing by map or by category.

Browse by collection

Some of our collection tiles and menu items on the home page, such as Places of Interest or Events, are selections of our records only. For more information, try searching by keywords.

Archives can appear in one of four ways:

• Not scanned – you can only search descriptive information such as title or description.
• Scanned with searchable content – the scan is searchable but optical character recognition may be inaccurate so try variations of spelling (such as an ‘i’ interpreted as the number 1 or letter L)
• Scanned but content is not searchable – such as handwritten archives that have not been manually transcribed
• Not listed – You can request City records if you think there might be something in our collection but can’t find it by searching.

Boundary changes

Local government boundary changes will affect what council records in our collection for different time periods. See the Historical Atlas of Sydney for boundary changes.