Search Rules

This search engine helps you find beautiful fine art on the Ross Collection website. Here's how it works: you tell the search system what you're looking for by typing in artists names, titles or parts of titles in the search box. The search system responds by giving you a list of all the pages in our index showing art related to those search terms. The most relevant subjects are normally listed at the top of your results.

How To Use:

1. Type your keywords (artist name or title or keyword) in the search box.
2. Press the Search button to start your search.

Here's an example:

1. Type windsor castle in the search box.
2. Press the Search button or press the Enter key.
3. The Results page will show you several pages on this website showing hand made prints of Windsor Castle.

Tip: Don't worry if you find a large number of results. In fact, use more than a couple of words when searching. Even though the number of results will be large, the most relevant content will always appear at the top of the result pages.

More Basics - An Overview

What is an Index?

Webster's dictionary describes an "index" as a sequential arrangement of material. Our index covers all the hand made prints currently shown on this website. When you use our search system, you search the entire collection using keywords or title or artist name.

What is a Word?

When searching, think of a word as a combination of letters and numbers. The search system needs to know how to separate words and numbers to find exactly what you want. You can separate words using white space and tabs.

What is a Phrase?

You can link words (and numbers if relevant) together into phrases if you need for example a title where specific words appear together. If you want to find an exact phrase, use "double quotation marks" around the phrase when you enter words in the search box.

Example: To find the image "A cat may look at a king" rather than other images of cats or kings, type "A cat may look at a king" in the search box. You can also create phrases using punctuation or special characters such as dashes, underscore lines, commas, slashes, or dots.

Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

Searches are case insensitive. Searching for "Dog" will match the lowercase "dog" and uppercase "DOG".

Searches try to look for the singular as well as the plural and vice-versa, so "dog" finds "dogs" and "ships" finds "ship" but this is not foolproof when the singular & plural are less simple ("lady" and "ladies" for example)

Including or excluding words:

To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Example: To find subjects of "Oxford" but not the "university" try +oxford -university

Expand your search using wildcards (*):

By typing an * within a keyword, you can match up to four letters.

Example: If you are trying to find a print by an artist whose name is either "Lewis" or "Lewin", but you are not sure which, type in lewi* which will give you the results for both.