The Bibliographic Database for An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology

The Bibliographic Database for An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology Martha Berryman In 1992, the fourth year of research on An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, it became clear that the current database was no longer sufficient for our needs. As the chief research assistant of the project, I therefore developed a bibliographic database for the dictionary with the help of the Department of Computer and Information Services at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The program was created with development software called 4th Dimension™ that runs on 4D Runtime™ (Computer Software, ACI, 1991). It consists of two parts: bibliographic citations of articles and monographs, and a list of the words whose etymology is discussed in those works. This resource enables researchers working on the etymology of a particular word to find all the articles that discuss that word, or all the articles that discuss words in the same semantic field or of a similar phonetic makeup. We can also search for other information contained in the citations—for reviews or reviewed books, for general works on etymology, or for topics covered by the publications. There are several workforms for the citations: article (see Fig. 1), book, chapter, and dissertation. Each workform contains the fields appropriate to the kind of publication it represents, but all the workforms have particular features in common. (A summary of the database 's records and fields can be found in Fig. 2.) If the work was written by more than one author, the other authors can be entered on another screen. The authors are entered separately, so that each can be searched independently. The additional authors also appear in alphabetical order in bibliographies, with a cross reference to the place where their publication can be found. The title field is a window on a wordprocessing module (4D Write™ [Computer Software, ACI, 1993]) in which italics and special fonts can be used. The workforms also have The Bibliographic Database for An Analytic Dictionary . ._.31 Figure ? a note field and a word field. The note field can store additional information about the publication, and the main purpose of the word field is to store all the words discussed in the publication. A box allows the automatic duplication of the entire citation; some journal issues contain a number of articles on one subject, and the duplication feature eliminates the need to retype the same information. Searches of the citation list can be made using any field or combination of fields; we frequently need a list of all the articles in the files from a certain journal. Limits can also be placed on searches, e.g., the search may be restricted to articles that appeared after or before a certain year (Fig. 3). The resulting subset of citations can be sorted in any order for a bibliography. We usually sort the list of all the articles in a given journal by volume and page number, and the bibliography then shows the articles in the order in which they originally appeared. Our volunteers who look through periodicals for articles on etymology use bibliographies of this type to ensure that they do not copy articles already in the files. Many of the publications are reviews. The books reviewed are entered as separate citations, so that they can be accessed independently in searches. This feature allows us to find all the reviews of a particu- Structure of the database Figure 2 Preference EngLFont_Name R Greek_Font_Name R FonLSIze? BIbIIoJD atSortKeyl CHSortKey2 atSortKeyS atSortKey4 atSortKeyS atSortKeyS CHSortKey7 atSortKeyS StopUlonls SIgChars left_Margln RlghUMargln Flrst_lndent FlrsLTab Secon&Jab IDonLleTt UtonUBght ate_Lett ateJUght _ B _ B Citations Author? nn_Titie_?» Journal_Title? Page? Cltatlon_Number L Dtle_Text? Uolume? Vear? Publisher? Pub_Placefl Ruthor_RoieR FormatR Ruthor2 Ruthor3 Ruthort ReuCltet ReuClte2 ReuClteS Blbllo_NumberL BookJIuthorR Blbllo_NotesT Book_SertesR Serles_NumR Reuieuied_Only8 Diss_lnfoR EditionR ReuClte4? ReuClteSL ReuClte6L UlordClte Cltatlon_Number L IDordR UlorCLMeanlng R B PageR 8lbllo_Number L B IUords ulord Meaning UtonLMeanlng Slang Dialectal Meanlng_Number? Archaicß Category_Coder Categoryr Bibliography Authorr Cltatlon_Number ? Blbllo_Numbcr ? Ruthor2R Vearr 8 B B B B Cltatlon_Number TempClte rjtatlon_Number? ulord? Pager Meaningr Notest The Bibliographic Database for An Analytic Dictionary . . ._____33 lar book. A box marked "reviewed only" differentiates these citations from the main citations, however, and they may therefore be excluded...