Click here to go to the Home Page Click here to view a list of all writers in the database View and pick from a list of all scripts in the database sorted by author View and pick from a list of all scripts in the database sorted by year View and pick from a list of all speaking characters in the scripts within database View and pick from a list of scene subjects View and pick from a list of directors, actors, producers and other people Click here to find writers in the database according to specific criteria Click here to find scripts in the database according to specific criteria Click here to find scenes in the database according to specific criteria Click here to find characters in the database according to specific criteria Click here to search the scripts for particular words or phrases Click here for comprehensive help
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Table of Contents
 
1. GUIDED TOUR

A basic 10 minute guided tour that shows the major features of the database is available. Please CLICK here for more.

2. INTRODUCTION

2.1 INTRODUCTION

American Film Scripts Online provides sophisticated searching within all texts in the database, as well as the ability to search for specific writers, scripts, characters, or scenes.

For novices who wish to get quick access to key documents, we recommend using the Tables of Contents and the Simple Search tools.

For scholars who wish to conduct in-depth searches we recommend using the Advanced Search, tool. The Find Scenes tool also contains many useful search fields.
 

2.2 UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE OF THE DATABASE

There are three basic ways to use the database.

2.3 SEARCH NAVIGATION BAR

The Search Navigation Bar lets you move around the database retrieval tools, including the Search tools. It is the same as the Tables of Contents tool bar, except that the Finding and Search tools are expanded, and the Tables of Contents tools are reduced. You can toggle between the two by clicking Tables of Contents or Simple Search in the section indicated above. (The graphic above is just an illustration; it does not have live links.)

The Search tools are divided into two separate categories, both of which search the texts in the database and return documents:

The dark blue color indicates which Search tool you are currently using. As you move from tool to tool, the color moves to indicate which tool you've selected. You may click on the light blue parts of the Navigation Bar to move to the appropriate tool.

 

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2.4 TABLE OF CONTENTS NAVIGATION BAR

The Tables of Contents Navigation Bar lets you move around the Tables of Contents tools. It works in the same way as the Search Tool bar. When using these tools, the Tables of Contents are expanded and the Full Text Searches are collapsed. You can toggle between the two by clicking Full-Text Search.

The Tables of Contents are divided into six separate categories, all of which provide quick access to specific materials within the database.

The dark blue color indicates which table of contents you are using. The dark blue moves as you move from tool to tool. You may click on the light blue parts of the Navigation bar to move to the appropriate tool. (The graphic above is just an illustration; it does not have live links.)

2.5 NOTES ON MARK-UP CONVENTIONS

Materials in the database have been transcribed using original spellings and grammar. In some documents spelling is inconsistent, even within a sentence.

For more information on mark-up conventions, contact the Editor.

2.6 ABOUT THE SEARCH SOFTWARE

PhiloLogic, a suite of software developed by the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago in collaboration with The University of Chicago Library's Electronic Text Services, provides sophisticated searching of a wide variety of large encoded databases on the World Wide Web. It is an easy to use, yet powerful, full-text search, retrieval, and reporting system for large multimedia databases (texts, images, sound) with the ability to handle complex text structures with extensive indexed metadata.

PhiloLogic in its simplest form serves as a document retrieval or look up mechanism whereby users can search a relational database to retrieve given documents and, in some implementations, portions of texts such as acts, scenes, articles, or head-words. This same document retrieval mechanism serves as the basis for defining a corpus in a full-text search. One can, for example, either retrieve all documents in a database written by women from 1935 through 1945 or one can search for words or phrases within database which fit those criteria. The typical PhiloLogic search is broken down into five distinct stages: 1) defining a corpus (i.e. limiting a search), 2) word expansion, 3) word index searching, 4) text extraction, and 5) link resolution and formatting (e.g., SGML to HTML conversion). In other words, after defining a corpus (or one may search an entire database), one can execute a single term, phrase or proximity search. By looking up indices of the word(s) in a relational database, PhiloLogic extracts blocks of text containing the search term(s) with links to larger blocks of text. These extracts are formatted to display on a Web browser and sometimes include links to images, sound recordings, other texts, or even other databases.

In addition to simple word and phrase searches, users can perform more sophisticated searches by using extended UNIX-style regular expressions for complex wildcard searching and, in some implementations, morphological and orthographic expansion. All of these mechanisms to expand words can be combined using Boolean operators such as OR (the vertical bar "|") and AND (a space) within a variety of searching contexts.

Its functions were originally designed for scholarly research in databases of literary, religious, philosophical, and historical collections of texts as well as important historical encyclopedias and dictionaries. PhiloLogic handles notes so as not to interfere with phrase searching. Users can easily search words with diacritics (either by specifying accents or ignoring them by typing in uppercase) and non-Romanized scripts. At present there are some fifty databases on the Web under PhiloLogic containing languages such as ancient Greek, Latin, Hindi, and Urdu as well as nearly all Western European languages. PhiloLogic can also be set up to recognize or ignore manuscript notations such as different brackets, which can indicate spurious text or editorial emendations. Because the software recognizes typical text structures as real data objects, it understands units, such as words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, and pages, permitting very flexible searching and retrieval of these textual objects. Other full-text engines on the market search for strings of characters. Rather than searching for two words within the same sentence or paragraph (intellectual units), other engines must search for two words within a certain number of characters regardless of sentence or paragraph. With PhiloLogic scholars always know where they are in a given text since pagination can be displayed along side other objects. Such a high degree of indexing can lead to decreases in speed, PhiloLogic indexing has been maximized such that it is still incredibly fast on the Web.

For more information on PhiloLogic, contact Catherine Mardikes, ETS Coordinator, The University of Chicago Library.

 

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3. FINDING TOOLS

3.1 FIND WRITERS

The Find Writers tool lets you find all the writers in the database that match your specific criteria.

Practical Example:
Find all writers who have won Academy Awards for their screenplays.

Note: For a detailed discussion of the fields in Find writers see the section on Fields and their Descriptions below.

 

3.2 FIND SCRIPTS

The Find Scripts tool lets you find all the plays in the database that match your specific criteria.

Practical Example:
Find all horror scripts in the database.

Note: For a detailed discussion of the fields in Find Scripts see the section on Fields and their Descriptions below.

 

3.3 FIND SCENES

The Find Scenes tool lets you find all scenes in the database that match your specific criteria.

Practical Example:
Find all scenes set in Chinatown in New York.

Note: For a detailed discussion of the fields in Find Scenes see the section on Fields and their Descriptions below.

3.4 FIND CHARACTERS

The Find Characters tool lets you find all characters in the database that match your specific criteria.

Practical Example:
Find all characters in the database who are white restaurant workers:

Note: For a detailed discussion of the fields in Find Characters see the section on Fields and their Descriptions below.

 

4. SEARCHING

4.1 SEARCH OVERVIEW

There are two basic kinds of searching in the database.

The conventions used in each kind of searching are slightly different as shown below.

 

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4.2 FULL-TEXT SEARCHING

4.2.1 Full-Text Searching

Full-Text Searching is when you search for specific words or phrases that occur in the texts themselves.

PhiloLogic supports wildcard characters and Boolean (logical) operators, which are modeled on UNIX regular expressions to perform "pattern matching" in full-text searching. Pattern matching allows identification of a large number of words corresponding to a defined pattern. Wildcard characters can be useful, for example, in identifying cognates made obscure by affixes and vowel weakening, inconsistencies due to irregular orthography, and variations on account of word inflection as well as for discovering potential emendations for uncertain readings. The most commonly used regular expression operators (wildcard and Boolean) are listed below.

4.2.2 Wildcard Characters in Full-Text Searching

 

. (period):
matches any single character (e.g., gentlem.n will retrieve gentleman and gentlemen).
* (asterisk):
matches any string of characters, anchoring the match at the beginning of a word (e.g., cigar* will match cigar, cigars, cigarette, etc.).
* (asterisk):
matches any string of characters, anchoring the match at the end of a word (e.g., *habit will retrieve habit, cohabit, and inhabit), or in the middle (e.g., c.*eers matches compeers, cheers, and careers).
.? (period question mark):
matches the characters entered or the characters entered plus one more character in place of the question mark (e.g., hono.?r matches both honor and honour and cat.? matches cat and cats, but not cathedral, Catherine, etc.).
[a-z] (brackets):
matches a single character found in the specified range (e.g., [c-f]at will match cat, dat, eat, and fat) or any letters within the brackets (e.g., civili[zs]e will match both civilize and civilise).
# (hash mark):
matches capitalized words only (e.g., #bacon will retrieve Bacon, but not bacon). Otherwise word searches are case insensitive. Please note that this operator does not work properly in conjunction with the vertical bar (e.g., searching #hamlet|#bacon will not retrieve accurate results).
E (capital letter):
matches all accented and non-accented forms (e.g., to search naïveté regardless of accents type naIvetE).

Note: If you are using wildcard characters and would like to see a full list of the words matching your search-term, then run your search as a Frequency by writer search. The results page of a Frequency by writer search lists all the terms found in a database that match your search-term.

4.2.3 Wildcards and Boolean Operators in Full-Text Searching

4.2.4 Punctuation and Full-Text Searching

4.2.5 Selecting a Search Option

PhiloLogic at this time offers two kinds of searches: "Single Term and Phrase Search," which is set up as the default, and "Proximity Searching in the Same Sentence or Paragraph." One may select and deselect a search option by clicking on the "radio" buttons.

For a fuller discussion see the PhiloLogic User Manual

 

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4.3 FIELD SEARCHING

4.3.1 Searching in Specific Fields

When entering search terms in bibliographic fields, as opposed to the full text search box, use the following Boolean operators: uppercase AND, OR, and NOT. One can use a NOT operator by itself (e.g., in the Nationality field enter: NOT American). It must be the first term in the box with no spaces preceding and it cannot be used with other Boolean operators

4.3.2 Advanced Field Searching with Regular Expression Operators

As in full text searching, one can use regular expression operators for more specialized searching. The caret sign (^) at the beginning of a word anchors the match at the beginning of the entry (e.g., ^child will find the subject term "Childbirth," but not "Death of Child). One can also use the vertical line (|) as a Boolean operator OR. With this operator one can exclude two terms from one's search (e.g., NOT car|truck).

4.3.3 Punctuation and Spacing in Fielded Searching

When entering terms, punctuation and spacing must match exactly that in the fields. The following marks of punctuation produce a "Nothing found" message: ampersand (&), parentheses, question mark, and double quotes (""). If necessary for searching, replace the mark of punctuation with a period, which stand for any single character.

 

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5. FIELDS AND THEIR DESCRIPTIONS

5.1 LIST OF ALL FIELDS THAT CAN BE SEARCHED

Here is a summary table of all fields in the database, showing which tool they can be found on. Detailed descriptions can be found below.
 

 

Find Writers

Find Scripts

Find Scenes

Find Characters

Simple Search

Advanced Search

Actor Portraying:

 

 

 

x

 

 

Actor(s) in Script:

 

x

 

 

x

x

Adaptation by:

 

x

 

 

 

 

All Subjects:

 

 

x

 

 

 

All Writing Credits:

 

x

 

 

 

 

Awards:

x

x

 

 

 

 

Character Code:

 

 

 

x

 

 

Character Name:

 

 

x

x

 

 

Character Type:

 

 

 

x

 

 

Director(s):

 

x

 

 

x

x

Ethnicity:

x

 

 

 

 

x

Ever Produced:

 

x

 

 

 

x

Gender:

x

 

x

x

 

x

General Topics:

 

 

x

 

 

 

Genre:

 

x

x

 

x

x

Historical Event:

 

 

x

 

 

 

Nationality:

x

 

 

x

 

x

Occupation:

 

 

x

x

 

 

Organization as Subject:

 

 

x

 

 

 

Person as Subject:

 

 

x

 

 

 

Person based on:

 

 

 

x

 

 

Place as Subject:

 

 

x

 

 

 

Place of Birth:

x