Referring to the Yahoo groups search function:
>>It works - you just have to keep hitting the "Next" link
>>at the top of the results to go further back into the
>>archives, because it only searches groups of c. 150
>>mesages at a time.
The process can be speeded up manually. After you hit
'Next' the first time, you'll get a URL of this general
format:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/messagesearch/35441?query=gwen%20etymology
(Here I searched on <gwen etymology>.) The number before
the question mark is the message number of the *last*
message of the group actually searched. If you change it
manually to 5000 and submit the following URL, you get 20
messages in that thread, from Nr. 4917 to Nr. 4950:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/messagesearch/5000?query=gwen%20etymology
This is of some help even if you don't know the approximate
message number, provided that you have some idea of the
date, since you can take bigger jumps. (If someone were
feeling very energetic, a table listing the last message
number for each month since the group's formation might be
of some use.)
Brian