VLsearch

This site was created for the World Wide Web Virtual Library search engine: VLsearch. As such it was intended to be accessed directly from VL pages and have no index.html or other main page. Bowing to popular request (or to the 404 messages in the Web statistics …), here is a 'main page'.

The search form is available in various language variants:

There is also a help page on the use of Boolean terms in searches.

The language of the search form does not fundamentally affect the search results, except that in the basic search (always) and in the advanced search with 'Use synonyms' set to 'yes' (the default) and/or 'word forms' set to 'all' (the default), then the search will be for:

1. the word or words you requested (obviously)
2. English synonyms of the requested search word(s), regardless of the language of the search form
3. English 'word forms' of the requested search word(s), regardless of the language of the search form
4. synonyms of the requested search word(s) in the language of the search form (if we have a suitable synonym dictionary)
5. 'word forms' of the requested search word(s) in the language of the search form (if we have a suitable spelling dictionary)

Thus search results will vary depending which form you use.

Some referring search boxes may also initially restrict searches of the database to pages from the referring site.

News about VLsearch is covered in the main WWWVL news pages.