Simple searches

You can search by simply typing the word or set of words you want to find in the archive in the first field of the searcher and then clicking 'accept'.

For example if you want to search for all the documents about Maria-Mercè Marçal, just type Marçal in the first field and click 'accept'.

If you want to do a negative search you should tick the No box for the field where you typed the word or words that you do not want to appear in the documents of the search results.

There is a limit though: the words must contain at least two letters each otherwise the searcher will ignore them. For a more refined search, you can use the other fields (search type, format type, etc.) and also the Google search tools which are explained below.


Searches for more than one word

If you type the + sign before a word this means that the word must necessarily be in all the documents of the search results. For example, if you type +women +writers in the first field, all the results will contain both words. If you type +women writers, all the results will contain women and the top results will also contain the optional word writers.

If you type the - sign before a word, this means that the word should not appear in any of the document of the search results. For example, if you type +women -writers, the results will contain the word women but not the word writers.

If you want to search for an exact expression, you should type it in inverted commas. For example, if you type "women writers" you may find a result such as "association of women writers", but you will not find "women and writers".

By default, if you do not specify any of the above signs the words are considered optional but the files that contain all of them will appear at the top of the results list. For example, if you type women writers in the first field, the searcher will look for files containing at least one of the two words.

Searches for partial words

The asterisk is a wildcard and is placed after the search word, unlike the other signs. For example, if you type wom* the searcher will find documents containing womb, woman, women, etc.