Search Tips

The search facility is very useful and amazingly quick, but it's also very stupid.

Computers don't work intuitively like humans.  There's no problem with a one word search if, for example, you want to find Berlioz records, just enter the word berlioz and it will list all Berlioz records.

If you're not sure of the spelling things get more complicated.  For example, is it Glazounov or Glazunov?  To find both spellings you could try entering simply glaz.

If you want to find any copies of, for example, Beethoven Symphony 9, you can find a few by entering in quotes "beethoven symphony 9" but of course it won't find any records where the character string of the records title is actually "Beethoven Symphonies 5, 9".  To make sure you don't miss any you may need to type in "beethoven symphon" and then look through all the records that come up.

There again, if you wish to find "Symphonie Fantastique" if you search for "symphonie fantastique"  you will find any titles that exactly match this spelling.  If a record has been entered mistakenly as "Symphony Fantastique" you will not find it.  To make sure that you find all possible versions you could try searching for berlioz* fantastique. without the inverted commas (""). If you use the asterisk wild card it won't work if you enclose your search in inverted commas.

A search for, e.g., Decca SXL 2009 could be enclosed in inverted commas to find it, i.e. search using "decca sxl 2009".

A safer alternative may be to use the wild card.  A search for "asd 253", for example, may find ASD 2530 and ASD 2535, but it might not find ASD 253 if there are two spaces between ASD and the number, ie ASD  253.  To guarantee finding ASD 253, better to use the following search:  asd* 253.

 I hope this helps a little with your searches!