Simple search in the MEK catalogue by title, subject, author and/or MEK ID. All given words are combined with AND. Words may be typed in lowercase and without accents: if nothing is found, the MEK server automatically retries accent-free and then stemmed.

Good for quick, broad lookups. For field-precise queries, OR-logic, exclusions (NOT) or language/type filtering use mek_advanced_search.

Returns: {total, offset, limit, hits: [{mek_id, url, authors, title, date_added}], has_more}.

Advanced (fielded) search in the MEK catalogue with up to 5 conditions combined via AND / OR / NOT over 24 metadata fields.

Available fields: main_title, subtitle, collection_title, part_title, parallel_title, original_title, series, author, author_role, corporate_author, contributor, contributor_role, publisher, subject, geographic_subject, period_subject, document_type, format, language, original_language, printed_source, rights_owner, rights_note, creative_commons.

Typical patterns:

• Works BY a person: field=author, value='Petőfi Sándor'.

• Works ABOUT a person: field=subject, value='Petőfi Sándor'.

• Person in any role: run separate author / subject / contributor searches (OR across different fields of different records is best done client-side by merging results).

• Exclusions: add a condition with operator='not' (e.g. document_type='útikönyv' with 'not' to drop travel guides).

• Language filter: field=language, value='magyar' / 'angol' / ...

• Values are matched against controlled vocabulary; use mek_browse_index to discover exact term forms, and * for prefixes.

Returns: {total, offset, hits: [{mek_id, url, authors, title, date_added}], has_more, accent_fallback_used}.

Free-text search in the full text of MEK documents. Returns matching documents with a text snippet around the match and a direct link to the match location. Use this when the query concerns document CONTENT rather than catalogue metadata, or as a fallback when metadata searches find nothing.

Returns: {total, offset, limit, hits: [{mek_id, url, authors, title, snippet, match_location_url}], has_more}.

Browse the controlled-vocabulary index of a catalogue field around a given term. Use this BEFORE subject/type/name searches to discover the exact term forms stored in the catalogue, then run mek_advanced_search with the returned search_value strings.

Returns: {field, term, entries: [{display, search_value}]}. Pass search_value (not display) as the value in mek_advanced_search.

Fetch the metadata of a single MEK record: title, authors, themes (topic hierarchy), subject headings, description, dates, identifiers. Use it to inspect / classify individual hits (e.g. to decide whether a work is fiction, history or ethnography, or whether it is BY or ABOUT a person).

Returns: {mek_id, url, title, themes, subjects, description, date_added, urn}.