Contact Us

If you need to report a problem using Digital WPI, or would like to request assistance or share feedback, please email us at digitalwpi@wpi.edu

Known Issues and Planned Enhancements

Digital WPI is continuously undergoing review and enhancements as we work to share the diverse and rich resources that highlight our innovative teaching and learning and cultural heritage. Below are a few recognized issues and planned enhancements. To report an issue, please contact us at digitalwpi@wpi.edu

• Image download options - Users are reporting issues with the Download options from the image viewer, notably “Current view 640x480px (jpg)” where the images downloaded does not match the user’s desired view. Other image download options operate as intended.
• Slow loading times of images - Some images are taking more time to load than anticipated.
• Limits on available search facets - Currently only one search limit facet from each category can be applied.
• Search feature on collections pages for student works : - Searching for an advisor name does not currently work.

Explore Collections

Browse by Collection

From the navigation menu under “Browse”, you can choose to browse collections by selecting the general category then name of the collection. The facets on the left side of the page can be selected to limit/filter the results.

Browse by Project Center

From the navigation menu under “Browse”, you can choose to browse all Project Centers by selecting the general geographic area then name of the project center. This is a list of all official WPI Project Centers and each link will take you to the works associated with the selected center. The facets on the left side of the page can be selected to limit/filter the results.

General Search

The persistent search box (located on every Digital WPI page) can be used to search all records in Digital WPI. To search for content enter keywords, phrases, authors, and other terms in the search box, and then click the magnifying glass icon next to the box or click the return/enter key. Searching is not case sensitive. For example, searching for "washington monument" or "Washington Monument" will yield the same results.

A result will be returned when your search terms match text stored in that record’s descriptive metadata fields (e.g. title, names, subjects, abstracts/descriptions) or, in the case of text documents (e.g. IQP report, MQP report, thesis, dissertation, monograph/book, etc.), in the full text of the resource/document as well.

Filtering Your Results

After doing a keyword search, use the facets/limiters on the left side of the page to limit/filter your search. You can limit a search, for example, to content published in a specific year or range of years, authored/created by specific people, on particular subjects, in a particular collection (e.g. IQPs, Historical Images, etc.) and so on. You may remove limiters/filters by clicking on the “x” to the right of the filter term at the top of the results list. Note that not all works use all of the filters/facets.

Reorganizing Search Results

Sorting Results

You may also customize how your search results are sorted by selecting from the Sort By drop-down menu:

• Relevance - Sorted by weighing searched keywords against where those keywords were found in the file’s metadata (title, description, etc.)
• Date uploaded - Sorted by the date (most recent first, or least recent first) the record/file was uploaded to Digital WPI

Number of Results Displayed

You can view 10, 20, 50, or 100 items per page by choosing from the drop down menu at the top right of the search results.

How to Refine a Search

Boolean Operators

BOOLEAN SEARCH, using AND, OR and NOT operators will be available soon!

+ or -

• + : The “+” (or required) operator dictates that the term after the + symbol MUST exist somewhere in the document. To search for documents that must contain “watershed” and may contain “planning” use the query: +watershed planning
• -: The “-“ (or prohibit) operator excludes documents which contain the term after the - symbol. To search for documents which contain “Global” but not “warming” use the query: global –warming

Quotation Marks

Use quotation marks around a phrase to return results with that exact phrase. For example, a search for greenhouse gas will return results with the terms greenhouse and gas separately, in addition to items where they appear together. By searching for “greenhouse gas” you will only get results containing that exact phrase.