Get Started

Getting Started

New Accounts are currently disabled.  You may browse the current content without creating an account.

Search Tips

The Basic Search Box

Start your search by clicking on 'Explore Resources.' Start by using only one or two terms, then narrow the search further by adding additional terms. Search terms that are simply added to a search box without connectors will be automatically "anded" together. In other words, searches will return only those results which contain all of your search terms.

Faceted Browsing

Facets are powerful tools to narrow your search. At any time, you can isolate specific Original Years; Tribal Communities (or 'People'); Subjects; Creator Communities; Categories; or Resource Types. 

Connecting Search Terms Together

At present, Boolean searching is not available. Further developments will introduce this type of searching, as well as allow for the ability to group search terms together using parantheses (i.e. (health AND region) NOT (tumor OR cancer). 

Wildcard Searches/Stemming

There is no wildcard feature at the moment, but one may be introduced in a future development. Also known as truncation, a special character (most commonly an asterisk - "*") can be used to find variations on a search term. For example, "child*" will produce results for "child," "child's," "children," "children's,"and "childhood." The NHD does, however, use stemming in its core search fields. Stemming refers to the database's ability to understand different word forms of a specific word/query (i.e. "Flying" is a word and its base or root word is "Fly").  

Requesting Access to Resources

In most cases, the description of the resource is accompanied by a statement: "No media is available on this item." In some cases, these items can be accessed using an external link (i.e. to PubMed Central) within the record itself. In other cases the resource description is directly paired with the resource itself. But in most cases, the NHD uses descriptions of resources to simply guide researchers in awareness of the resource itself. A significant amount of these resources are available in paper form, and a request for access to them can be made by contacting the NHD administrator at hsc-nhd@salud.unm.edu. Such requests will be filled on a case-by-case basis (i.e. if the request is reasonable and staffing is available). Note that access to some resources may not be possible due to existing copyright/intellectual property rights.

Note that your ability to access some resources may be impacted if there are specialized access restrictions in place, most notably through an established Cultural Protocol for one or more items. While many users will choose to access the NHD anonymously (i.e. they are not going to create a user account), registered users may request permission to view these resources directly from a Cultural Protocol Manager. 

Creating Personal Collections

A significant feature that was recently added, personal collections are created and managed by registered users. Registered users can indicate their interest in grouping resources together by clicking on the small 'star' icon next to each resource while searching/browsing. Note that this icon is only visible to registered users who are logged in. Personal collections can be both public and private; if public they can be shared with others. Learn more about creating and using personal collections here.