Before beginning your search, you might want to view several other links from this "gateway" page. Teachers and students from middle school through college can find suggestions for possible projects and topics. We have also provided a list of our staff a detailed description of the project, and a page of links to our sponsors.
Many users begin exploring CUAP by reading the short histories we've provided of Milwaukee and of children in urban areas of the United States. The documents and images we've gathered are organized around four central experiences in children's lives: Work, Play and Leisure, Schooling, and Health and Welfare. We have also created a section called "Through Children's Eyes," where Milwaukee children and adults who grew up in Milwaukee tell their stories through oral histories, memoirs, and other documents.
You may also want to check out the "special topics" in each content area, which offer pre-selected groups of documents and pictures on very specific subjects. You should know, however, that there are usually a number of other documents related to the special topics in the archive.
Searches open the door to documents
To search the CUAP archive, click Search CUAP or click the kite in the upper right hand corner of your screen. A page will appear with two areas: "Enter search word(s)" and "Limit your search by."
Note: If you are searching from simple search box on the CUAP home page, you'll need to click the "Advanced Search" link to see the options for "Limit your search by."
Under the heading "Enter search word(s)," type your search words into the text box. Click the "Search" button to see results.
You can also add predefined keywords to the text box. Click the "Add Keyword" link. A new window will open with a list of more than one hundred keywords. Choose a keyword to search for by clicking on it; the word will appear in the keyword search field. Close the keyword window, and then click "Search." Every document in the archive that has been assigned that keyword will be listed. (Because the keywords do not normally appear in the documents themselves, they will not be highlighted.)
Because searches can return hundreds of documents, we encourage you to use the "Limit your search by" section to narrow your search. Use the drop down menus to select a specific decade, a category of source document, or region in Milwaukee County (click on the "About Neighborhoods" link to find the boundaries for those regions). You can use all or none of the constraints (simply leaving "---" in the box means that you are not narrowing the search).
The search results page will tell you how many documents were found with a brief text preview of each document. If you chose to sort by title, the results are in alphabetical order. If you selected to sort by decade, the documents are listed in the decade order in which they were produced (for instance, a newspaper article appearing in 1889 will be listed before an oral history produced in 1967). In addition to the text of the document, you will also find out the date on which the document was created, the author (if any), and, at the end of the document, a complete citation for the document.
A Suggestion: If you're compiling information for a school paper or report, you will want to save the documents. We suggest you do that by clicking on "File" in the upper left hand corner of the document window and scrolling down to "Save As." Save the document as a "Text file"; remember to give the document you're saving a name that will remind you of its content.
Also, note each document lists a specific web address (called a "URL for Document") at the bottom of the page, which is useful for your citations.
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