Tips

At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results. These tips will get you started with basic query language and acquaint you with the full power of the search engine.

How To Search The Red Hot Jazz Archive
    Type a word into the white box above and then press the enter or return key on your computer's keyboard. The results will be displayed in this window.
Tips For Performing Better Searches
  • Put quotation marks around keywords that you are looking for. Example: "Johnny Dodds"
  • To search for a specific recording date format the date like this MM-DD-YEAR. Example: If you wanted to find all recordings made on December, 4th, 1928 input the date 12-4-1928 and then press the enter or return key on your keyboard.
Advanaced Search Techniques
    Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.

    Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.

    Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, system and manager and system near manager, look for the words system and manager on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.

    Refine your queries with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of surfing but not surfing the Net, write the following query:

    surfing AND NOT the Net

    Add the OR keyword to find all instances of either one word or another, for example: 

    Abbott OR Costello
    This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both.

    Put quotation marks around keywords if you want the search engine to take them literally. For instance, if you type the following query: 

    "system near manager"
    The search engine will literally look for the complete phrase system near manager. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks: 

    system near manager
    The search engine searches all documents for the words system and manager.