Note: Please read through this entire page (including the usage tips) the first time you visit here. Thanks!

Keep in mind that unlike, say, Altavista or HotBot, Sendscenter isn't terribly smart. If your searches constantly result in zero matches, your search entry is probably too complicated. Some tips:

• Your search entry should ideally be limited to a single word. Sendscenter will find only literal examples of your search request exactly the way you enter it.
• Simple two- or three- word phrases can work too, but keep in mind that punctuation and spacing within the phrase also count. For example, a search for "high ones" will not match an appearance of the hypenated word "high-ones" within the archive. [Also, some multi-word matches may fail due to intervening line breaks or tags within the archive pages.]
• On the other hand, leading and trailing letters and punctuation in the archive will still result in a valid match. For instance, a search for "Leetah" will also match "Leetah's".
• Speaking of punctuation, avoid including punctuation marks or other special characters in your search request. Sendscenter will ignore most such characters or replace them with spaces instead.
• Sendscenter currently doesn't understand conjunctions like "and" and "or". So don't use words like that in your search request unless you really want that word literally (i.e. "Shade and sweet water").
• Sendscenter will return with only one page of results no matter how many matches there are. If you choose the "Verbose" option and your search request has too many matches (currently set as more than 100), Sendscenter will revert to the "Summary" mode. A message on the result page will let you know if this happens.
• Currently, the searches for "All Letters Pages" and "'multiple-EQ-title' Editorials" are mutually exclusive. If you want to search both, you'll have to make two search requests.
• During peak server usage periods, this search script may take several seconds to run. If Sendscenter keeps coming back with blank or incomplete pages, just give Sendscenter a rest for a while and come back to his den (this page) another time. Thanks!
• Sendscenter decided he didn't want his name spoken with hyphens or mixed capitalization. If he did have a hyphen, though, it'd be between the 'd' and the second 's'.

Privacy Notice: Currently, the search script also maintains a simple log of search requests. This is so that I can check the function of the program and (perhaps) generate some simple statistics of search usage patterns to help improve the script's usefulness in the future. To preserve anonymity, the search script does not check or record any sort of user information-- i.e. email addresses, IP addresses, etc-- it only logs information entered into this form.

Version History: (in case you care)
Version 1.0: (01/27/00) Original version.
Version 1.1: (02/23/00) Made serious changes to search engine to eliminate reliance on external programs. A few other changes were made as well. This version is a bit slower than the original, but should be more robust overall.