If have a specific person, place, topic or thing in mind when visiting Merlin-Net, feel free to use the search box which is located at the top of virtually every page. Just type in one or more words related to what you want to find and let our search engine do the work for you! We want to make searching our photo archive as easy as possible, so here are some basic tips that can help narrow down your search and let you quickly find exactly what you're looking for.

How searching works
Searching will match the text that you type with the keywords, captions, byline and other data associated with every image in our collection. Our search engine is not case sensitive so it doesn't matter if you use upper case or lower case. We'd suggest that you start with a broad search (such as entering someone's last name) and if you receive a large number of hits, narrow down your search by entering additional information.

Here are some tips on refining your search:
First, anything you type into the search window will be applied within whatever category you are currently looking at. If you type in Roberts and you are in the NFL category, you will get pictures showing Bob Roberts playing in an NFL game. If you wanted pictures of a politician named Bob Roberts, switch to Merlin-Net's home page, or the NEWS section, then type in Roberts.

If you want to search for information on wine, you might want to put an asterisk after the word. Example: wine* will also find wines and wineries.

You can use an asterisk to replace zero or more characters at the end or middle of a word to search, or a question mark to represent a single character. (Note: wine? finds wines, wined but not wine or winery.)

Search for a phrase by including it in quotes. Upper Canada will find all articles which contain both the word Upper and Canada, regardless of whether they're adjacent or in order. "Upper Canada" will find only items which have the words in that order and adjacent. You can use the word and to search for articles containing combinations of words, though Merlin-Net will insert and automatically between words that are not contained within quotes.
Example: red leaves is the same as red and leaves

You can use the word or to search for articles containing either of two or more words.
Example: "Kennedy Space" or Shuttle

You can group terms with AND and OR using parentheses.
Example: ( ("kennedy space" or shuttle) and astronaut*)

You can add the word NOT after the first term to exclude some items Example:
kennedy not space

You can use the word LIKE before a term to do a fuzzy/phonetic search.
Example: LIKE gustafsen to find items containing Gustavson, gustafson, gustafsen, gustavsen, etc.

You can use the word NEAR to find words within 5 words of each other.
Example: President near Clinton

You can modify how near the words are by inserting a number after NEAR.
Example: protest near 10 encampment to search for them being within 10 words of each other