The Strad Archive search engine supports syntax similar to other search engines,
especially Google. This means that if you enter multiple words separated by a
space, the search will return records containing ALL terms. Specifically, it will return all documents where all of the terms appear
on the same page. By default, the documents will be listed in order of relevance, but you can also list documents by date. You can also filter the search results be selecting specific decades, years, or months in the boxes above. You can also search for a multi-word phrase by
enclosing the phrase in double quotes. For example:
"Francesco Stradivari"
You can exclude words by preceding them with a hyphen, and you can search for
words beginning or ending with the specified characters by using the '*'
wildcard. This is especially useful for names that have multiple spellings. For
example, if you enter the search:
"Francesco Rug*"
the search engine will return all records containing the name "Franceso
Ruggeri," "Francesco Rugeri," and "Francesco Ruggieri". Likewise, searching for:
Landol*
will return all records relating to both "Landolfi" and "Landolphi".
You can also accomplish this by using the OR operator. For example:
Serafin OR Seraphin
For complete details about the search engine syntax, take a look at
Google's description.
