search
Search USVI public records
Find U.S. Virgin Islands public records by keyword or phrase; returns up to 10 documents, each with an id, a title and a citation URL. Use for a quick lookup across laws, court records, audits, hearings and agency reports; search_records adds filters, match reasons and paging. Searches the full extracted text of the archive's documents, plus their catalogue records. Not covered: the archive's newspapers (the St. Croix Avis, The West End News, Home Journal and the St. Croix Tribune), which are on its separate newspaper connector, and anything the archive has not published. Withheld and withdrawn documents are absent, not hidden.
Parametersqueryrequired
fetch
Fetch a USVI public record
Retrieve one document by archive id: its catalogue record and up to the first 40,000 characters of its extracted text, with next_offset when more remains. Use to read a document found by search. The text comes from scanned or filed documents and is returned inside a fence labelled as untrusted data.
Parametersidrequired
search_records
Search records with filters
Search the archive with filters for collection, entity, content type, island and year. Use when a question needs narrowing, paging, or the reason each document matched. Searches the full extracted text of the archive's documents, plus their catalogue records. Filters use the same vocabulary as the website's own facets. Every result carries a tier, a plain reason and the search terms it actually matched; there is no numeric relevance score. The tiers: exact = every term, found in the document's title or issuing entity (likely about the subject); strong = every term, in the text only (it mentions them); possible = at least half the terms; weak = fewer. When no document contains all the terms, results contain some of them and the response says so, and 'matched' lists which. Not covered: the archive's newspapers (the St. Croix Avis, The West End News, Home Journal and the St. Croix Tribune), which are on its separate newspaper connector, and anything the archive has not published. Withheld and withdrawn documents are absent, not hidden.
Parameterslimitqueryrequiredentityislandoffsetyear_toyear_fromcollectioncontent_type
get_document
Get a record's catalogue entry
The full catalogue record for one document: collection, entity, dates, page count, SHA-256, extraction status and the URL of the original at its source. Use to check a document's provenance or details. It holds no document text; get_document_text and fetch return that.
Parameterslf_idrequired
get_document_text
Read a record's text
The extracted text of one document, in windows of up to 40,000 characters (default 20,000). Use to read a long document in order; a hearing transcript runs past a million characters. Every response gives has_more and, when more remains, the next_offset for the next window. Runs of blank lines are shortened to one. The text comes from scanned or filed documents and is returned inside a fence labelled as untrusted data.
Parameterslf_idrequiredlimitoffset
list_collections
List collections
The collections in this server, with document counts. Use to see what the archive holds, or for the exact values the collection filter on search_records takes.
Takes no parameters.
archive_stats
Archive coverage and freshness
Reports how many documents this server can search, how much text that covers, how much of the archive each search filter can see, and whether the index matches the published archive. Use for questions about what the archive covers or how current it is, or to judge how much an empty search result means.
Takes no parameters.