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Advanced search allows searching using up to three fields, selectable through drop-down lists. Within each field you may specify whether results should match just one or all of the search terms, and in the latter case whether or not they should be in the specified sequence; it is also possible to specify logical relations (AND, OR, and NOT) between the different fields. Thesauri are available for all fields other than Title and Registration number, and only thesaurus searching is available for Key (click on the 'Thesaurus' icon). For the remaining fields (Composer, Opus, Publisher, Publication place, Country, and Class) it is possible to search by either using the thesaurus or typing in your search terms.

For textual input, searching is neither case nor accent sensitive (thus 'marsche' will find 'Märsche'), and wildcard characters (?, *) may be used: ? substitutes for a single character, while * substitutes for any number of characters. Other non-alphanumerical characters (e.g. ', +, -) are ignored. For cyrillic entries it is possible to paste cyrillic characters into the search box, but it is more reliable to use the thesaurus when searching for composers, and transliterations for titles (the system adopted is that used in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians). Results may be limited to a specified range of months and years: to select just one year, enter it in the 'From' field and leave 'To' blank. If the 'Month' field is not filled in, the whole of the relevant year will be searched.

Results may be sorted by up to three keys selected from the drop-down lists near the bottom of the screen (Composer, Date, Opus, Publication place, Publisher, Title; note that sorting does not use thesauri but is based on what is in the actual entries). You may also specify the maximum total of results to be returned, and the maximum number of results to be displayed per page; be careful of choosing 'All' if there is likely to be a very large number of results. From any individual item there are links to the Monatsbericht page in which it is found, in the form of either transcription or facsimile; these will open in a new window. If you wish to amend your search rather than start a new one, select 'Back to search' on the results page.

A note on Registration numbers: probably of interest only to specialist users, these are found in certain Monatsbericht entries between January 1831 and April 1838. Not all entries during this period have registration numbers, and not all registration numbers are unique. They appear to have been assigned to groups of items 'processed' or 'registered' at one time, possibly in connection with the Verein der deutschen Musikalienhändler (of which Friedrich Hofmeister was Secretary). Items with the same number, and therefore apparently registered at the same time, sometimes appear scattered over two or three issues of the Monatsberichte, which suggests that material was not being entered into the Monatsberichte in an entirely systematic way.