IMPORTANT! Quick Search is most useful when searching for authors and keywords. To search other fields, for example, within a title or by date, use the Advanced Search page.

More precisely, Quick Search searches only four fields in the database (Author, Keywords, Periodical, and Ref ID). These are indexed fields and are most conveniently searched using * as a wildcard to represent zero or more characters.

Author search. To search for a particular author enter the surname and truncate with an *. For example, to search for publications by Peter de Clercq enter clercq*. (Try it and see the difference if you enter only clercq; using *clercq* gives the same result as clercq*.)

Keyword search. Keywords are subject terms devised by the SIC bibliographers to classify the references. To see what terms have been used, browse the current list of KEYWORDS. Searches can use the whole of the term, e.g. telescopes or Islamic Instruments. (Capitalization does not matter.) It is also possible to search using the beginning of a keyword and truncate with a wildcard, e.g. meteorological* (quicker than typing meteorological instruments. Thus telesc* will work as well as telescopes). A string within a keyword term can also be topped and tailed with a wildcard, e.g. *computing*. The last example will find all records classified as either Calculating and Computing Devices, Calculating and Computing Devices - Mechanical and Electronic or Calculating and Computing Devices - Slide and Other Rules.

To see all records, enter * and click Search.

For the background to the project and current contact details, see ABOUT. We welcome comments and suggestions.

For further general help and hints, see HELP.