For a better search........

• Note that the search mechanism will find index entries containing words which start with the terms you specify.
• Remember that you are looking for words which occur in the index, not concepts which may occur in the mind.....
  • search for Binder rather than articles about Binders (but you should probably also search for Bookbinder as an alternative)
  • you may wish also to include index entries that contain the words binding or bookbinding and their plurals, in which case you could include these words as alternatives, but it would be easier to enter bind and bookbind, and select find entries containing any search term
• Remember that you are searching the index, not the full text of the article.
  • if you would like to see what sort of entries are present in the index, we suggest that you enter a year (eg 1984) in the box, and choose construct an alphabetical index for any year.
• Use fewer terms rather than more: in most cases, a single word will give the best result, but you may need to enter synonyms as alternatives, as in Binder above, and see the next item about foreign words.
  • search for Shakespeare rather than the works of William Shakespeare,
• Titles of foreign books are usually present in the index in the original language: if you wish to include these entries you will need to enter the English and foreign forms of the word as alternatives. Take advantage of the fact that the search mechanism will find all entries which contain a word starting with terms you specify. The commonest languages in the index are English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Latin.
  • for example, if searching for entries relating to Spain we suggest you enter spain espan (for Spanish and French forms), hispan (for Latin and derived forms), spagn (for Italian forms), and spani (for German forms and English adjectival forms) as alternatives. Note that the index does not contain diacritical marks, nor does it contain anything which might replace them, e.g. a German letter which should have an umlaut is shown as the simple letter, and no following e is added.
• Search for the singular rather than the plural, unless you intend to exclude index entries that contain only the singular: however, if the word has an irregular or strong plural, you may need to search for both forms as alternatives
  • search for auction rather than auctions; you will need to search for both foot and feet, but note that librar will find both library and libraries (and librarian).
• Similarly, avoid using possessives, unless you intend to exclude the non-possessive form.
  • a search for Caxton will also find Caxton's, but a search for Caxton's will not find Caxton
• If you are searching for a person's name, it is usually better to use the surname alone; the forename is often absent or abbreviated in the index. You may need to refine the search in the case of common surnames. We suggest that you first of all search using the surname alone and then review the results before refining the search.
• Avoid using single letters or common words such as the or of; the search mechanism will reject such terms as they result in an excessive number of matches.
• Avoid using punctuation: the search mechanism searches for letters, numbers, and the embedded apostrophe, and regards all other characters as separators.The apostrophe is best avoided unless essential, as when it is unavoidable to use a possessive, or in Irish surnames of the form O'Shaugnessy.