When I search for a title with special characters I get zero results.

Symptom

I am searching for the title "Who Can Afford to Improvise? : James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners" and I get zero results
When I remove the Question Mark or using a title index, I get a good result
- This is the broken search:
  - Who Can Afford to Improvise? : James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners by Ed Pavlić
- But these searches are working:
  - ti: Who Can Afford to Improvise? : James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners by Ed Pavlić
  - Who Can Afford to Improvise : James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners by Ed Pavlić

Applies to

WorldCat Discovery
WorldCat.org

Resolution

How to search for titles with special characters in WorldCat Discovery

If you are trying to search for a title in WorldCat Discovery that contains special characters, such as colons, parentheses, or question marks, you may have some difficulty. This is because special characters can interfere with the search algorithm.

There are two best practices for searching for titles with special characters in WorldCat:

Remove the special characters and replace them with a space. This will help the search algorithm to find the title you are looking for.
Use a phrase search. To do this, enclose the entire title in quotation marks. This will tell the search algorithm to look for the title exactly as you have entered it.

Either of these methods will help the search algorithm to find the title you are looking for.

If you are still having difficulty finding a title that contains special characters, you can contact OCLC Support for assistance.

Additional information

Why am I getting no results when I use a wildcard in my search?

Learn more about anchored and unanchored searching in WorldCat Discovery

Page ID

52294