what? where?
Electronic databases for research into Shakespeare and other early modern literature offer a bewildering range of advanced searching features. My paper for the 2005 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America explored these features and complained that each product implements standard practice in a different way. Arising from that exploration, here's a 'cheat sheet' summarizing how to do common advanced searching procedures in each of the 7 products.
| Product | Automagic | Field bundling | Truncation | Wildcarding | Boolean | Proximity | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WSB | gabriel egan hits also egan, gabriel but don't use middle initial | keywords = author, title, publisher, notes, reviews, and people | * represents zero or more charsv | Not implemented | and, or, not | Not implemented | |
| ESTC Online | i/j and u/v. also auto-truncation in fields author, title, imprint, and subject | keyword = author word, title word, subject word, and imprint word | ? represents zero or more chars | Not implemented | and, or, not | Not implemented | There's a 'command line' search that's too tricky for me to understand |
| ESTC CD-ROM | None | keyword = an unspecified collection of fields | * represents zero or more chars | ? represents one char | and, or, andnot | near, nearx (default 10 and directionless); with, withx (default 10 and in specified order | Truncation and wildcarding seem to work only in the keyword pseudo-field |
| EEBO | None | keywords = all searchable fields | * represents zero or more chars | ? represents zero or one char | and, or, not | near, near.x (default 10 and directionless); fby, fby.x (default 10 and in specified order) | |
| Product | Automagic | Field bundling | Truncation | Wildcarding | Boolean | Proximity | Comments |
| EAS | None | keyword = an unspecified collection of fields | Same as for wildcarding | ? represents one char; * represents zero or more chars | and, or, andnot | within x words of (forwards or backwards); within x words before and within x words after (providing directionality). | [ ] lists alternatives, so c[aou]p will find cap, cop, or cup |
| LION | None | None | * represents zero or more chars | ? represents zero or one char | and, or, not | near near.x (default 10 and directionless); fby fby.x (default 10 and in specified order) | |
| OED CD-ROM | None | None | Same as for wildcarding | ? represents one char; * represents zero or more chars | and, or, not selected from drop-down list | near, not near, before, after, before or after and distance selected from drop-down list | |
| Product | Automagic | Field bundling | Truncation | Wildcarding | Boolean | Proximity | Comments |
Legend
WSB The World Shakespeare Bibliography
ESTC Online English Short Title Catalogue provided via the Research Libraries Group (RLG) Eureka interface
ESTC CD-ROM English Short Title Catalogue 1473-1800 on CD-ROM, 3rd edition
EEBO Early English Books Online
EAS Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare
LION Literature Online
OED Oxford English Dictionary CD-ROM Second Edition (version 3)
Automagic special tricks the search engine does without being asked
Field bundling provision of a single pseudo-field that can be searched instead of specifying a whole collection of fields linked by OR
Truncation wildcarding allowed in the terminal position only (so wom* hits woman, women, and womb)
Wildcarding wildcarding allowed in the medial or terminal positions (so w*m hits women, whom, whilom)
Boolean linking search criteria with Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
Proximity specifying that two hits must occur with a given textual distance (so many words) of one another
char means an alphanumeric character (a-z, 0-9, and punctuation)