The Ricorso Search Engine has been set up to search the entire website from this page with some exclusions by reason of copyright - e.g., whole-text versions of the works of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. You can search each of the major region separately (viz., Authors A-Z, Bibliography, The Library, or The Journal), or search the whole website (All Regions)

Select the region you want to search and enter the search term(s) you are looking for. The results are ordered in rank of frequency of results of a giving term so searching “All Regions” is not usually the most efficient means of using it. Results are displayed in response to any term or terms entered in the first box, - e.g, artist and piano will bring up any files containing the words artist and the word piano even if these are not contiguous.

Try to elmininate as many extraneous terms as possible, particularly those which might occur in any text (e.g., a, the, those, are, not, both, whenever, &c.) Obviously recurrent terms like Irish or novel, or dates (e.g. 1897, 1963) will throw up unmanageable numbers of files if not limited by less recurrent terms. The search engine is not case-sensitive.

Although Ricorso contains a hefty sample of Irish literature and criticism, it is not co-extensive with that literature itself, nor anything like it. In my experience the search engine is most useful for locating material which one knows to be on the website. Nothing reveals the partial nature of the selection as quickly as a search directed at your pet topic or favourite term - but it’s still worth trying and may reward you with a welcome discovery in an unexpected quarter.

The search ‘bin’ that collates all terms on the website is refreshed every ten minutes and so reflects editorial changes and additions more or less immediately after then are uploaded. A log of newly edited files is kept in the “About Ricorso” section and this shows the level of activity on the website but not the actual changes or additions. Some additions are announced in “The Journal” when I have time to do so.