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There is much to be said about the archives PARES contains, but the point of this particular guide is to describe the software itself.

Whatever frustrations the service may bring, we are truly in a golden age of PARES. The old website, prone to timing out, prone to breaking entirely if you had the gall to use your browser's back button, is gone. In its place is a website that is functionally modern. I have gripes and reservations, but I don't curse at my computer as much as I used to.

Why Is Part of This Spanish Website in English?

If you are an English speaker, however, you may have a new and mysterious complaint: why are some of the items partially or entirely in English?

y tho?

The good news is that this is a relatively easy problem to fix.

Simply change your computer's default language to Spanish, or another language of your choosing, and all display text will be in Spanish.

This can be a bit annoying on a desktop computer, as it messes with important settings. If I need to see a clean Spanish-only version of the page I tend to do it on a tablet.

Screenshot from my dedicated Spanish iPad

I only noticed this change recently and sincerely hope it will be reversed. Trying to cite something with an unstable title basically ensures scholarly best practices are impossible.

Searching PARES

12 years after I first opened PARES I'm still left with a basic question: is PARES Google or is it a library?

It sure seems like Google. You go to a home page. There's a place to type in search terms. Then, hopefully, you get stuff.

The problem with this metaphor is that PARES is not good at being Google. Lots of things that are digitized don't seem to be. Many sources that actually would be useful to you are not revealed in search.

PARES is not Google because documents are not websites. A website is a very long gussied-up text file. Every element is described and tagged and powerful algorithms can parse that information and make informed decisions.

Documents in PARES are card catalog entries that may or may not be partnered with a photo album. The power of the search engine is tied to the strength of the "card," which varies from document to document and archive to archive.

So, PARES is a library. Search is a great place to start, but if you are looking to go in depth on a topic it is best if you check out all the books, look at the indexes, and maybe grab a few books on the shelves near where you are looking. Or, in this case, look at what is brough up in search, but also in the parts of the archive "near" where you first find your search results.

The Actual Business of Searching