Choosing Keywords

• Try the obvious first. If you're looking for information on Beethoven, enter “Beethoven” rather than “German composer”.
• Use words likely to appear on a site with the information you want. “Piano Quintet” gets better results than “music for piano, violin, viola and cello”.
• Make keywords as specific as possible. “Eroica symphony” gets more relevant results than “Beethoven symphony”.

Automatic "and" Queries

There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to search for Schubert’s Trout Quintet, simply type:

Automatic Exclusion of Common Words

Keyword Search ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Keyword Search will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box.

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., “carnival overture” ) are included in the search.

For example, to search for carnival, overture, use:

~ OR ~

Capitalization

Keyword Search searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for “mozart”, “Mozart”, and “MoZaRt” will all return the same results.

Word Variations (Stemming)

To provide the most accurate results, Keyword Search does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. In other words, Keyword Search searches for exactly the words that you enter in the search box. Searching for  “concerto” or “concerto*” will not yield “concertos” or “concerto grosso”. If in doubt, try both forms: “sonata” and “sonatas” for instance.