Ancient wisdom, or my own?

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Charles C Doyle wrote
> * For some reason (or no reason), the "advanced search" feature for
> Google Books no longer allows me to search by date.
> What's up with that??

I am not sure what you are asking, Charlie. The version of the
advanced search web page that I am shown still has two slots to
specify upper and lower bounds for the dates:

http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

I should note that advanced search has not worked properly (for me)
for more than a year. GB search generates false negatives and false
positives.

For example, if you specify a lower bound of 1800 and an upper abound
of 1860 then sometimes GB will refuse to show an item with a date that
falls within the range, e.g., 1832. Yet, the 1832 item will be
displayed when an alternative search is performed. It is very
aggravating and makes proper searching more difficult, perhaps
impossible.

Also, items that do not contain a match for the search pattern are
sometimes shown. For example, if a review of a book contains a match
then Google will sometimes display the book itself as a match. Please
note that this mechanism is conjectural. I do not have access to the
implementation code for Google search.

Garson

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