How To Search: Good Ideas

All websites have their own peculiarites when you use them to search or browse for a book. Some websites use fuzzy logic and will correct your mispellings, and make suggestions.

Ours website will search for what you type in, but its not that simple.

Its usually better to start with one word rather than two. Example, search for Hillary, or Hillary Signed, not Edmund (or Ed or E.P.) Hillary Everest. You will get a thousand hits. On some websites a search for Hillary brings up some politician. Books may use his name as Hillary alone, or Ed, or E.P. etc. Do not use the full author's name and full book title, there are too many ways to be off by one letter. If nothing at all comes in your search, check your spelling or do a different search.

We offer a 'Simple Search' and an 'Advanced Search'. They are very powerful and fast, and here is how to maximize them.

If you are looking for books on K2, there are three way to do this. One is to type K2 into the Simple Search box and every book and DVD that mentions K2 will appear in a list. That may be the longest list. Or, type K2 into the title box on Advanced Search, and you will get a shorter list, with all books that actually have K2 in the title. Or, use the browse feature, either on the pull down list on the side of every page or the tabs at the top of every page, and click on the K2 tab. That will bring up not only all the books on K2, but also all the books on any climbs in the Karakoram. The Pull Down list says our actual subject title is Karakoram, K2 and Hindu Kush, so many non-K2 books will be listed as well.

If you only want DVDs on K2, just do a simple search on K2 DVD. Not in the tile search, as one DVD is called Karakoram, not K2.

There are some shortcuts. If you want only books by and about Reinhold Messner and Nanga Parbat, type 'Messner Parbat' (without quotes) in the simple search. That makes a the most complete list. If you want only books by Messner on Nanga Parbat, you can type Messner in the author box and Parbat in the title box. This may not always work, as Messner wrote 5 books on Nanga Parbat, and two of Messner's Nanga Parbat books use Nanga Parbat only as a subtitle. Fortunately we always use subtitles in the books' title. Also, note that we say use Parbat, not Nanga Parbat, as Nanga is so easy to mispell.

If you want a guidebook on Hueco Tanks, Texas. Again, there are three ways to find it. One, type Hueco in the simple search, or Hueco in the title search, or go to Browse on the left and scroll to guidebooks, and down to Texas, and click on it. Or on the page top, click on the red Guidebooks tab, and click on Texas in the list of areas.

If you want a book with leather bindings. Just type 'leather' into the simple search. But you might also search the other terms associated with leather and fancy bindings, such as vellum, calf, morocco, raised bands, marbled, decorated, AEG, TEG, etc.

If you cannot remember the name of the author or book, search for one word that encapsulates the book. Don't list five words and hope one works, as we did not program the website to do this (this isn't eBay!). For instance, if you are looking for the new book by Steve Crusher Bartlett, Desert Towers, but cannot remember his name or the book title, simple search for either Crusher or Towers. Utah works, with only 100 answers. Layton will get you there too, as his name is also used about 100 times on the whole website. But Huntley is used only 11 times!

Again, if you cannot find anything, E-Mail us or phone us. We will easily and quickly tell you what we have. If you can, please tell us how you searched and what did not work, so we can learn more about how people search, and make our website better!