Searching via the Search Text box

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, the Search Text box is not like Googling; you can’t simply throw in a question and expect it to produce any results. Any Text has to be written in the box as it is written in the original entry. So if you’re typing in a label then add commas, spell out Road and Street, and spell out the County; or just pick out a key word from the label rather than putting the whole thing in. The advantage of this system is the ability to search on partial words, such as the beginning, middle or end of a scrawled signature or place name. And there is the facility to use – and * in place of missing words and letters as mentioned in an earlier blog post.

For a lot of early entries I was in a hurry and so didn’t bother putting in the house names, numbers and the street names. If they were based in London I usually just put ‘London’, even if the potter had had several London addresses over the years. I usually leave out North, South, South West, etc, in front of Counties. Eventually some of these details will be added.

I have, however, been adding a few Key Words to the Text box to aid searches, such as: raku, slipware, sculpture, animal and bird figurines etc, if that is their main output; especially if they don’t use a mark.

I recently realized that a few potters just use triangles as their mark, so to save having to plough through several pages of triangles I’ve edited the entries and added the text: 3 triangles three triangles , or , 4 triangles four triangles.

I’ve also realized I should have put tick boxes in for a human figure and parts of the body, like hand or foot, when the database was originally set up, so I’ve written figure, running figure, hand or foot in the text box, and ticked the animal box when I’ve upload the photos – you never know how many of those marks there are going to be until you’ve put in a few thousand entries, and by then it’s too late to change the database layout without screwing it up

But Use The Text Box Sparingly! The keywords mentioned above are for instances where all else has failed, otherwise you won’t get a result even if the potter is on the database.