Today I was trying to build a list on Letterboxd of movies on my watchlist that are also available at my local library. My library uses a library management system from TLC (The Library Corporation). If your library’s online catalog url ends in .tlcdelivers.com, that means yours uses it too.

The “Advanced search” feature allows some complex searches, but omits important attributes like media format. To search for only DVDs, enter film name format:"DVD" in the search box. This should filter out books and other recording types. I’m sure other undocumented search flags exist. Please email me if you know of any. I thought there was a hidden -format flag, but it turns out that whatever I put after -format was just being interpreted as part of the search. Therefore, searching with -format:"DVD" would favor results that had the word “DVD” in the metadata.

Check out this obscure documentation on actual TLC search flags.

Because TLC search reveals a lot of URL query parameters, I believe it would be possible to make an unauthorized CLI client…maybe even one that has a -format flag!