The Indexes    |   Browsing     |   Searching

The Athenaeum index of reviews and reviewers allows users to browse or search through a database of authors, review contributors and titles, produced from the marked copies of the Athenaeum held in City University Library. For an example of the source from which this data was obtained, see a scanned image of an original printed review.

The Indexes

• The Author Index holds the names of all the writers whose books were reviewed in the Athenaeum. Author records contain lists of the titles of reviewed works, linked to the corresponding bibliographic records in the Title Index.

• The Contributor Index holds the names of all the reviewers. Contributor records contain short biographical details, and lists of titles reviewed in the Athenaeum. Again, the titles are linked to corresponding bibliographic records in the Title Index.

• The Title Index contains the titles of all books reviewed in the Athenaeum. Each Title record contains the bibliographical details of the reviewed book, and links to the corresponding author and contributor records.

Browsing

The Browse Menu makes it possible to explore the database by following links. For example, select the Browse Author option, go to alphabetic section E, and find George Eliot. Follow the link to an author record showing the titles of all her works reviewed in the Athenaeum. Select a title, e.g. The Mill on the Floss, to find the appropriate bibliographic record within the Title Index, which in turn provides a link to the reviewer, Geraldine Jewsbury, whose details are held in the Contributor Index. From here it is possible to find other books reviewed by the same contributor, and their authors.

Searching

For a more directed search, use the Name Search to look for authors and reviewers, or the Title Search to look for titles which contain particular words and phrases. In either case, a hitlist of links to matching records will appear, from which it is possible to browse and navigate as described above. The Title Search also provides options to download sets of bibliographic records identified by a query, as a single page.

Note: the search interface was initially built by a PhD student, whose work involved the use of an on-line questionnaire and bulletin board to gather information about database usage. This research has for the moment been discontinued. Please ignore any references to questionnaires and bulletin boards which may appear in search results.

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Browse Menu |   Name Search |   Title Search

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Last updated: December 1998
By: Susan Jones
sa386@city.ac.uk