Both the song sources (broadsides, leaflets, etc.) and the individual songs have been included on this website. The 'hits' you find from any search entry will therefore include both entire broadsides and individual songs.

The full song lyrics are presented as images rather than as full digital texts. You can search through the text of the first two lines in a song lyric and you can search by keyword (including genres, like murder songs, light music, etc.). If applicable, you can also search by song title, chorus, and author and composer names. You can also search through the popular melodies by melody name in order to find all the different songs written to a single melody.

The broadsides and other song sources can be searched by words from the title and - if applicable - by author's name, city of publication, publisher's name, printer, singer and vendor, and by year or century of publication.

The spelling for all the lyrics has been modernised; you can perform searches using either old or modern spelling.