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There are two general search engines, this one, and one that we have called ‘Tight General Search’. Both of them search all of the tables and return a result by table name whether or not there any hits in the table. For single word entries they work the same; the difference comes when more than one word separated by a space is entered. This search engine searches for each word separately and returns a result if both words appear in a table, without regard to the order in which they appear and without regard to whether they appear together. It is thus approximately equivalent to a search using Boolean AND, the use of which is not necessary. It will accommodate wild cards, a ‘*’ in the middle or at the end of the word. If you are searching for a jurist the elements of whose name are likely to be spread across two fields, e.g. ‘Tudeschis Panormitanus’, please limit yourself to two words. For Boolean OR, run two searches. We did not build in Boolean NOT, but could if there were a demand for it. To approximate a string search, use the ‘tight’ engine. The ‘tight’ engine returns a result only if the words appear together and in the order in which you entered them. It is thus approximately equivalent to a string search. It can be made a little looser by using wild cards.

A general search for the name of a modern author or of a manuscript library will not return all the instances in which that author or library appears. It will, however, return the listing of that author or library in the Index of Modern Authors, and the Index of Manuscript Libraries. A further click on ‘Main Entry’ to the right of the listing will return links to most of the reports in which the author or library appears that are not found by the first search.

More specific search engines are given with the Table of Contents (an alphabetical listing by main entry), the Index of Modern Authors, and the Index of Manuscript Libraries. A comprehensive list of the available search engines may be found under Searching the Database.