Search Tool Implementation for Historical Archive

Dr. Linda Arnold's archival project "Mexican-American War and the Media" is an underutilized resource. Providing contrasting primary sources on the War, it is the only archive of its kind. In order to make the archive's massive amount of information more accessible to researchers and students, I added search functionality to the site. Several tools were implemented and tested. Perlfect, a Perl-based open-source approach, was determined to be the best option. This report includes an outline of the steps taken to implement the search tool, a user's manual, a developer's manual, and options for future work. The archive may be accessed at http://www.majbill.vt.edu/history/mxamwar/index.htm.