Guide to the use
Guide to the use of the Edisco search mask
The bibliography constructed in the contest of the Edisco project has 2 features. On one side, it wants to be presented as it is, making use of the potentiality in the information retrieval of electronic catalogues. It wants to guarantee the navigability and the aggregation of information as a function of the most ample and diverse analytical/ historiographical outlooks. On the other side, it gives the chance to get access to information generally extraneous to standard descriptions of catalogues (for example the price of the volume). Furthermore, through the introduction of specific fields (typology, subject, type of school), it adds a semantic/disciplinary articulate section. The meeting and the combination of standard elements, additional information and typological/semantic analysis, represents the additional value to this database. What it is proposing is so an in progress version of a search that is giving very good results. We hope to be able to develop more and more the database informative elements, proposed for the moment in an experimental way and to implement, in view of the increase of register materials, the possibility to layout the results of each single search.
The search mask proposed at this stage gives the chance to combine catalographic elements with typological/disciplinary elements. The properly bibliographical part of the records of Edisco is contructed following the distribution of informations set by ISBD (M) , with some changes regarding the punctuation marks.
It is then possible to make searches in the fields proposed for this section (till now Title, Author, Publisher, Series, and shortly also Place), combining them through the two main boolean (and-not) operators, and filtering them, if useful, through a chronological selection.
The fields need to be filled up using a key term from the specific area (Title, Author…)or an entire string (such as colonna infame or Storia dell’Italia moderna). Is then possible, if necessary, to utilize two distant terms in the same area by fixing them in separate windows and by duly sliding the selection menu of the fields beside each window (transforming in this way, for example, the Author field in a second window part of the Title field). It will be possible, just to make an example, to find all the editions of “I Promessi Sposi” written by Alessandro Manzoni, that do not contain the text of la colonna infame and that have been written between 1890 and 1910. As usual, is recommended precision in fingering the datas.
The category filter is instead constructed on a predefine base of options for each area, easily practicable thanks to the sliding menu beside the window.
It consists in typological definitions fixed as a function of the interests and of the interpretative grids that the Edisco research made possible to find. They correspond, on one side (book typology), to a specific classification of documents made by the researchers and, on the other side (subject), to a large horizon of categories identifiable on the basis of the normative and programs’ sequence or the editorial policies of the publishing houses. The type of school is the one declared in the book or, in some cases, recognized in the ministerial repertories.
It needs to be taken in consideration, while making the search, that, by now, just a part of the material recognized and described on the properly bibliographical level of this sector of reports have been completed. The searches could so give partial results, not exhaustive of the documentary richness of the material found.
