• 1. GUIDED TOUR
• 2. INTRODUCTION
  • 2.1 INTRODUCTION
  • 2.2 UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE OF THE DATABASE
  • 2.3 SEARCH NAVIGATION BAR
  • 2.4 TABLE OF CONTENTS NAVIGATION BAR
  • 2.5 NOTES ON MARK-UP CONVENTIONS
  • 2.6 ABOUT THE SEARCH SOFTWARE
• 3. FIND AUTHOR AND FIND SOURCES
  • 3.1 FIND SOURCES
  • 3.2 FIND AUTHORS
• 4. SEARCHING
  • 4.1 SEARCH OVERVIEW
  • 4.2 FULL-TEXT SEARCHING
    • 4.2.1 Full-Text Searching
    • 4.2.2 Wildcard Characters in Full-Text Searching
    • 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
  • 4.3 FIELD SEARCHING
    • 4.3.1 Searching in Specific Fields
    • 4.3.2 Advanced Field Searching with Regular Expression Operators
    • 4.3.3 Punctuation and Spacing in Fielded Searching
• 5. FIELDS AND THEIR DESCRIPTIONS
  • 5.1 LIST OF ALL FIELDS THAT CAN BE SEARCHED
  • 5.2 FIELD DESCRIPTIONS WITH SAMPLE SEARCHES
    • 5.2.1 Age at First Childbirth
    • 5.2.2 Age at Marriage
    • 5.2.3 Age When Writing
    • 5.2.4 All Author Forms
    • 5.2.5 Author
    • 5.2.6 Day of Month
    • 5.2.7 Document Type
    • 5.2.8 Editor or Translator
    • 5.2.9 Historical Events
    • 5.2.10 Marital Status When Writing
    • 5.2.11 Maternal Status When Writing
    • 5.2.12 Month Written
    • 5.2.13 Nationality
    • 5.2.14 Notes
    • 5.2.15 Number of Children
    • 5.2.16 Number of Marriages
    • 5.2.17 Occupation
    • 5.2.18 Personal Events
    • 5.2.19 Place of Birth
    • 5.2.20 Place of Death
    • 5.2.21 Publisher
    • 5.2.22 Race
    • 5.2.23 Recipient
    • 5.2.24 Recipient's Gender
    • 5.2.25 Record Number
    • 5.2.26 Relationship to Author
    • 5.2.27 Religion
    • 5.2.28 Source Type
    • 5.2.29 Subject Headings
    • 5.2.30 Subject Headings (Source)
    • 5.2.31 Title (Source)
    • 5.2.32 Where Sent (Geographical)
    • 5.2.33 Where Sent (Region)
    • 5.2.34 Where Written (Geographical)
    • 5.2.35 Where Written (Region)
    • 5.2.36 Where Written (Setting)
    • 5.2.37 Year of Birth
    • 5.2.38 Year of Death
    • 5.2.39 Year of Publication (Source)
    • 5.2.40 Year Written
• 6. RESULTS
  • 6.1 OCCURRENCES WITH CONTEXT/CONTEXT DISPLAY
  • 6.2 LINE-BY-LINE DISPLAY
  • 6.3 SORTING RESULTS BY AUTHOR
  • 6.4 SORTING RESULTS BY SOURCE
  • 6.5 SORTING RESULTS BY YEAR
  • 6.6 COLLOCATION TABLE
  • 6.7 NAVIGATING DOCUMENTS FROM WORD SEARCHES

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

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries provides sophisticated searching across large numbers of primary documents, as well as table of contents access to a wide array of primary sources.

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, Diaries Search, and Letters Search tools.  The search value of some of the fields in the database will not become apparent until more documents are added.

2.2 UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE OF THE DATABASE

There are three basic ways to use the database.

• Tables of Contents -- Use these to see what's contained in the database. This is the best way to check whether an author, a source, or a date is included. It's also the best way to examine what personal or historical events are in the database. To use this tool, simply click on the appropriate table of contents button on the navigation bar.
• Find Tools -- The "FIND" tools let you search for specific authors or specific works in the database. Find Authors returns a list of all authors that match your specific criteria. Find Sources returns a list of all sources (works and manuscripts) in the database. The difference between the "FIND" tools and the "SEARCH" tools (explained next) is in the results they give. The "FIND" tools do not return documents, but rather lists of sources and authors. Note the difference between a source (a collection of documents) and the documents themselves (items within a source).
• Search Tools -- The "SEARCH" tools let you analyze words and documents that meet your search criteria. The "SEARCH" tools return documents or bibliographic citations or both. In this database a document is defined as a month of diary entries, or a letter, or editorial matter.

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

        Table of Contents

• Authors - a list of every major author in the database.
• Sources - a complete list of every source (work or manuscripts) in the database.
• Year - every letter and document organized by year.
• Place - A list of places where letters or diaries have been written, sent or discussed.
• Personal Events - a list of key life events in the life of a woman, with all documents pertaining to each event.
• Historical Events - a list of key events in history, with all documents pertaining to each event.

        Find

• Sources  - the ability to search the database for a particular source.
• Authors  - search for Authors that are in the database by a criteria.

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.

3.1 FIND SOURCES

The Find Sources tool lets you find all the original works in the database that match your specific criteria. For example, you can find all the sources published by the Pennsylvania Historical Society or see whether a particular edition is included.

Practical Example: Find all sources that have slavery as a subject.

• Click on Find Sources on the navigation bar.
• Enter "slavery" in the Subject field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all sources that meet the criteria.

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

3.2 FIND AUTHORS

The Find Authors tool lets you find authors in the database that match your specific criteria. For example, you can find all the authors in the database that were born between 1850 and 1870.

Practical Example: Find all Ministers' wives who are also mothers.

• Click on Find Authors on the navigation bar.
• Enter "minister" in the Occupation field.
• Enter 1-15 in the Number of Children field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all authors that meet the criteria.

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

4.1 SEARCH OVERVIEW

There are two basic kinds of searching in the database.

• Full-Text Searching enables you to do keyword searching for occurrences of words or phrases in the database.
• Bibliographic Searching allows you to create a set of documents for subsequent full-text searching. Bibliographic searching is when you use descriptive fields to search.

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).

4.2.3 Wildcards and Boolean Operators in Full-Text Searching

• The vertical line ( | ) is the OR operator (e.g., avarice|greed or holy ghost|spirit).

   

• Space: serves as the AND operator in sentence and paragraph Proximity Searching (e.g., church state retrieve all cases where church and state appear in the same specified context; this is not the case in phrase searching).

   

• These expressions can be combined for more sophisticated searches; for example, searching
  old|aged|ancient m.n|fellow*
  finds any of the three adjectives together with the nouns man or fellow in the singular or plural.

4.2.4 Punctuation and Full-Text Searching

• Hyphens: Hypens act as word separators. Thus, one should treat hyphenated expressions as separate words excluding the hyphen (e.g., if searching for all-powerful, type in all powerful).

   

• Apostrophes: One must include apostrophes when searching words with apostrophes in them (e.g., only by typing God's will one find "God's"). In this database apostrophes do not act as word separators. Therefore contractions and elisions must be entered without spaces before or after the apostrophe.

   

• Ampersands: The ampersand (&) is not a searchable character. Avoid Phrase Searches where an ampersand may be used as a conjunction and realize that &c must be entered as simply c.

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.

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 Type field enter: NOT editorial). 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 personal event "Childbirth," but not "Adoption of Child). One can also use the verticle line (|) as a Boolean operator OR. With this operator one can exclude two terms from one's search (e.g., NOT adams|burr).

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.

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.

5.2.1 Age at First Childbirth

Description: This field contains the age of a woman when she first delivered a child, whether or not the child survived. It is optional. 

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict your search to women who first gave birth at a particular age. It is used in the Find Authors and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: Find documents by women who had children after the age of 40.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "40-60" into the Age at First Childbirth field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences in context.

5.2.2 Age at Marriage

Description: This field contains the age when a woman got married for the first time. It is optional.

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict your search to women who first got married at a particular age. It is used in the Find Authors and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: See Age at First Childbirth.

Note: To search for occurrences of letters or diaries where the woman was never married, or where we have been unable to determine the age, enter 9999 into the Age at Marriage field.

Description: This field contains the age in years of the author when a document was written.

How to use this field: Use this field when to restrict a search to materials written by women at a particular time in their lives. It is particularly useful for examining changing perspectives over time, to explore differences in the vocabulary and preoccupations of the young and the old. It is used in the Search Diaries, Search Letters and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: Find writings by girls aged 10-15 who discuss their schools.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "school*" into the Search in Texts field.
• Enter "10-15" into the Age When Writing field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences in context.

Note: To search for occurrences of letters or diaries where the woman's age is not known, enter 9999 into the Age When Writing field.

5.2.4 All Author Forms

Description: This field includes all forms of the authors' names. It includes variant names, such as maiden name, professional penname, aliases, other married names and nicknames. The same official form of the name is used for display for all occurrences of that name, regardless of the form the author used at the time of writing.

How to use this field: Use this field to see whether an author is included in the database. It is used in all the Search screens.

Practical Example: Search for Mrs. John Adams.

• Click on Find Authors on the navigation bar.
• Key in John AND Adams in the All Author Forms field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.

Description: This field details the type of document. Every item in the database has been categorized as Letter, Diary, or Editorial. Editorial matter includes prefatory matter from the original sources, appendices and other commentary.

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict a search to include Editorial matter, restrict a search to exclude Editorial matter or restrict a search to letters and diaries only.

Practical Example: Find all occurrences of the word "Cambridge" in introductory matter.

• Click on Simple Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Cambridge" into the Search Word or Phrase field.
• Select "Editorial" from the Document Type field.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences in context.
• You'll see a list of your results, showing every time the word Cambridge occurs in the Editorial matter.

5.2.8 Editor or Translator

Description: This field describes the compiler, editor, translator or author of the source title. The name is entered surname, first name, followed by a comma, and the abbreviation of the function filled (i.e. ed., comp., tr., introd., notes) if not the author.

How to use this field: It allows users to find works translated or edited by specific individuals. It is used in the Find Sources screen.

Practical Example: Find all sources edited by Caroline Gilman.

• Click on Find Sources on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Gilman" into the Editor or Translator field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences in context.

5.2.9 Historical Events

Description: This field allows you to search the controlled vocabulary of Historical Events. To see a list of terms go to the Historical Events Table of Contents.

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict a search to a specific historical event or events. It is used in the Search Diaries, Search Letters and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: Find all occurrences of the word "holy" in documents that have the Civil War as their subject.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "holy" into the Search Texts field.
• Enter "Civil War" into the Historical Events field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences in context.

5.2.12 Month Written

Description: This field enables you to view all letters or diaries written within a particular month.

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict your search to all letters or diary entries sent in a particular month or group of months. It is used in the Search Diaries, Search Letters, and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: Find all letters sent in the last quarter of years from prior to 1800.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "1500-1800" into the Year Written field.
• Enter "9-12" into the Month Written field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences of letters written between September and December for the years 1500 to 1800.
• Click on the Titles to go directly to the letters.

Note: To locate materials where we have been unable to determine the month written, enter 9999 into the Month Written field.

Description: This field enables you to find materials written by individuals of a particular nationality. This field is primarily "English".

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict your search to all materials written by women of a particular nationality.

Practical Example: Find all letters written by Scottish Women.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Scottish" into the Nationality field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

5.2.14 Notes

Description: Many records within the source database have annotations. This field enables you to perform keyword searches of these annotations.

How to use this field: Use this field to find sources based on keywords for concepts not indexed in the Subject heading field. It is used in the Find Sources screen.

Practical Example: Find all sources by or about privileged women.

• Click on Find Sources on the navigation bar.
• Enter "privilege*" into the Notes field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

5.2.15 Number of Children

Description: This field contains the number of children surviving childbirth or that were ever adopted.

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict your search to materials where the writer has a certain size family. It is used in the Find Authors and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: Compare the perspective women in large families and women in small families had on the death of a child.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "5-20" into the Number of Children field.
• Enter "death of child" into the Personal Events field. To see a list of available Personal Events click on the Terms button. Copy terms that you want and paste them into the Personal Events field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: Use 0 to find women who were never pregnant, who had only miscarriages or abortions, or who never adopted children.

Description: This field contains the number of times a woman was married during her life.

How to use this field: Use this field to find women married more than once. It is used in the Find Authors and Advanced Search fields.

Practical Example: Find all letters written by older women who were never married.

• Click on the navigation bar to get to Letter Only Search.
• Scroll down to the Number of marriages box. Key in 0.
• Scroll down to the Age at writing box. Key in 60-100.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: Enter 0 in this field to find women who were never married or 9999 for occurrences where we have been unable to determine the status.

5.2.17 Occupation

Description: This field describes the author's occupation, if any. It is an optional field.

How to use this field: Use this field to find documents written by a woman in a particular occupation - for example, all Teachers. It is used in the Find Authors, Search Diaries, Search Letters, and Advanced Search screens.

Note: All occupations throughout a woman's life are entered. This is not tied to when a woman is writing. An individual may have several occupations throughout her life.

Practical Example: Find diaries written by missionaries.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "missionary" into the Occupation field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: To see what Occupation terms are available click on the Terms button. Copy terms that you want and paste them into the box. Be careful to delete any semicolons and replace them with the appropriate Boolean operator.

5.2.18 Personal Events

Description: This is a controlled field that describes key events in a woman's life.

How to use this field: For a full list of all terms used in the database you can either go to the Table of Contents: Personal Events or you can click on the Terms button adjacent to the field. Use this field to restrict your search to documents pertaining to a key event, such as childbirth or the death of a spouse. It is used in the Search Diaries, Search Letters, and Advanced Search fields.

Practical Example: Find all references to the word "joy" in documents that have "death of child" as a personal event.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "joy" into the Search in Texts field.
• Enter "death of child" into the Personal Events field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

5.2.19 Place of Birth

Description: This field describes the location of the author's birth, if known. It is an optional field.

How to use this field: Use this field to find women born in a particular place or region. It is used only in the Find Authors screen.

Practical Example: Find authors born in Scotland.

• Click on the navigation bar to Find Authors.
• Scroll down to the Place of Birth box. Key in Scotland.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: To see what Place of Birth terms are available click the Terms button. Copy terms that you want and paste them into the Place of Birth field. Be careful to delete any semicolons and replace them with the appropriate Boolean operator. Use "Not indicated" to find occurrences where we have been unable to determine the place of birth.

Description: This field describes the location of the author's death, if known. It is an optional field.

How to use this field: Use this field to find women who died in a particular place or region. It is used in the Find Authors screen.

Practical Example: Find all authors who died in Massachusetts.

• Click on Find Authors on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Massachusetts" into the Place of Death field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: Use "Not indicated" to find occurrences where we have been unable to determine the place of death. To see what Place of Death terms are available click the Terms button. Copy terms that you want and paste them into the Place of Death field. Be careful to delete any semicolons and replace them with the appropriate Boolean operator.

5.2.21 Publisher

Description: This field indicates the name of the publisher of the source work.

How to use this field: Use this field to find all source works by particular publisher. It is used in the Find Sources screen.

Practical Example: Find all sources that were privately printed.

• Click on Find Sources on the navigation bar.
• Enter "privately" into the Publisher field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: Publisher names are standardized and may vary from the form of the name that appears on the source's title page.

Description: This field indicates whether the author was White, or Not Indicated or Not Applicable.

Note: If you enter "Not Indicated" the database will respond with all documents where the race of the author is unknown.

5.2.23 Recipient

Description: This field indicates the name of the person to whom a letter is addressed.

How to use this field: This field is used in the Search Letters screen.

Note: Names are entered surname, first name, initial.

5.2.24 Recipient's Gender

Description: This field indicates the gender of the person to whom a letter is addressed.

How to use this field: It is useful for analyzing differences in vocabulary in letters addressed to men as opposed to women. It is used in the Search Letters screen.

Practical Example: Find all letters to men from married women.

• Click on Letters Only Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Married" into the Marital Status field.
• Select "Male" from the Recipient's Gender drop-down box.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: The gender of the recipient may be known even if the recipient name is not known.

Description: This is the mandatory, unique identifier for each document in the database. It consists of the source work identifier and the individual document number, in the form: S1-D001.

How to use this field: This field allows you to go quickly to a specific entry in the entire database. Type in the document number exactly as it appears; the field is case sensitive. It is used in the Search Diaries, Search Letters, and Advanced Search screens.

5.2.26 Relationship to Author

Description: This field describes the relationship between the recipient and the author of a letter. It primarily describes family and romantic relationships; all other relationships are listed as Other.

How to use this field: It is useful for analyzing differences in vocabulary in letters addressed to variant groups of relationships, e.g., siblings or parents. This field is used in the Search Letters screen.

Practical Example: Find all letters to brothers from married women.

• Click on Letters Only search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Married" into the Marital Status field.
• Select "Male" from the Recipient's Gender drop-down box.
• Enter "sibling" into the Relationship to Author field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Description: This field indicates the type of source.

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict a search to a specific type of source. It is used in the Find Sources screen.

Practical Example: Find all diaries published by the Yale University Press.

• Click on Find Sources on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Yale University Press" into the Publisher field.
• Select "Diary" from the Source Type drop-down box.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

5.2.33 Where Written (Geographical)

Description: This field identifies the location where letters or diaries were written. The names are standardized in an authority file. Generally, specific localities will be used (e.g., Boston (Mass.), but there may also be state or regional locations used. State abbreviations for cities and towns are taken from the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Second edition, 1988, and conform to the old-style postal abbreviations.

How to use this field: Use this field when to restrict your searches to materials written from a particular place. It is used in the Search Diaries, Search Letters, and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: Find all letters written in Massachusetts.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "Massachusetts" into the Where Written (Geographical) field.
• Select "Letter" from the Document Type drop-down box.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences in context.
  

Note: To see what Where Written (Geographical) terms are available click the Terms button. Copy terms that you want and paste them into the Where Written (Geographical) field. In the case of a diary where the location changes over a month, the where written at the beginning of the month is described.

Description: This field indicates the place the author is writing from (i.e., city, town, farm, shipboard, etc.).

How to use this field: Use this field when to restrict your search to all letters or diary entries written in a particular kind of place - e.g. shipboard. It is used in the Search Diaries, Search Letters, and Advanced Search screens.

Practical Example: Find any letters written while on board ships.

• Click on Advanced Search on the navigation bar.
• Select "Letter" from the Document Type drop-down box.
• Enter "Shipboard" into the Where Written (Setting).
• Click on the Search button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

5.2.35 Year of Birth

Description: This field indicates the year of the author's birth, if known. It is an optional field.

How to use this field: Use this field to find women born in a particular year or period. It is used in the Find Authors screen.

Practical Example: Find all authors born during the American Revolution.

• Click on Find Authors on the navigation bar.
• Enter "1775-1783" into the Year of Birth field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: Use 9999 to find occurrences where we have been unable to determine the year of birth.

5.2.36 Year of Death

Description: This field indicates the year of the author's death, if known. It is an optional field.

How to use this field: Use this field to find women who died in a particular year or period. It is used in the Find Authors screen.

Practical Example: Find me authors born in following the Civil War.

• Click on Find Authors on the navigation bar.
• Enter "1866-1999" into the Year of Death field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

Note: To search for occurrences where we could not ascertain the year of death, key in 9999.

Description: This field describes the year of the source's publication. It is an optional field.

How to use this field: Use this field to find sources that were published in a particular year or period. It is used in the Find Sources screen.

Practical Example: Find all sources published between the American Revolution and the Civil War.

• Click on Find Sources on the navigation bar.
• Enter "1784-1860" into the Year of Publication field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

5.2.38 Year Written

Description: This field indicates the year in which the letter or diary was written.

How to use this field: Use this field to restrict your search to all letters or diary entries written in a particular year or range of years.

Practical Example: Find any letters or diaries written during the American Revolution.

• Click on Simple Search on the navigation bar.
• Enter "1775-1783" into the Year Written field.
• Click on the SEARCH button.
• The system responds with a list of all occurrences.

6.1 OCCURRENCES WITH CONTEXT/CONTEXT DISPLAY

Occurrences with Context Display is the default results format option. This report indicates the number of texts searched, the search term(s) entered in a defined corpus, and the total number of occurrences found. (The number of occurrences displays at the top of the report if PhiloLogic has detected the number before generating the first 25 occurrences. If not, the total number of occurrences displays at the bottom of the report.) Following this general information is a list of occurrences.

Each occurrence is represented by a short citation consisting of abbreviations for the author's name and the title of the work with a reference to where the term(s) in question occur within the document. (Full entries for the short citations are listed in the Results Bibliography at the bottom of the report.) Along side the citation is listed several levels of context, shown in red in the example below (links to the table of contents and occurrences have been disabled).