If you are using a verb on a line of its own, then avoid endings: e.g.) using the phrase "smok" will find all words that contain that string of letters - smoking, smokes, smoked etc… While the present tense is the most likely form of a verb, it won't cover all possibilities.

If the word you are searching for is part of a longer word - i.e.) "Ford" can be part of "Bedford" / "car" can be part of "carnival" - make sure you select the "exact" option by the keyword boxes.

If you're not sure how we would write something, i.e. World War One (this is the one we use in this case), World War I, The Great War, First World War; then type them all, one on each line and select the "or" option. This will find any of the words in any record. This can also be a way of finding verbs, as above.

When we catalogue, we will try to use words contemporary with the film ("groovy" for a 1960's film, "fab" for a 1970's!), along with more modern words such as "great", "splendid", "excellent". In fact, our cataloguers will normally try and include all the words they can think of to describe the images, so hopefully your way of describing things will be there. If not, try again.

Don't forget to use ENGLISH not American spellings (COLOUR not color, FAVOURITE not favorite, THEATRE not theater, etc…)!

Please avoid using punctuation / symbols in your search. e.g. the airline "Pan-Am" should be searched under "Pan Am", using space rather than hyphen.