About this tool

[Under construction, August 2016]

2015: the NEWW Women Writers VRE

In this new version of the WomenWriters database, users accustomed to the previous version will find an important novelty. Instead of grouping our data in three different levels (authors – works – receptions), they are now to be found as only two: Authors and Publications. This is considered doing better justice to the fact that in some sense publications are always reacting in some way to earlier writings.

This leads to a different way of consulting, as the three buttons, Women authors, Their publications, Receptions are to be interpreted in a different way.

 

Using this NEWW Women Writers VRE

The NEWW Women Writers VRE is a search tool based on “faceted search”: by selecting all kinds of filters (“facets”), one can narrow down to a subset of results, corresponding to the (sub)corpus one needs to work on.

Given our research concerns, one will search for 1. (women) authors, 2. publications and 3. receptions of the publications. The important novelty is that these three faceted searches are connected to each other: if you make a selection for a group of authors on the Women Authors page, the publications you see listed on the Their Publications page correspond to works produced by the selected authors. For this selection of works, you can create the corpus of reception documents by clicking the relevant facets on the Receptions page.

  1. Search for authors

Go to the Women Authors page. The left-hand side shows a set of facets, as well as 2 possibilities for searching in a text field (top and bottom: Name and Provisional notes).

If searching for one particular author whose name you know: use the first text field to search for this author by her name (note that for the moment you need to provide a full name, not just the first letters). Type the name and hit enter or press the looking glass icon. The author’s name will appear on the right.

If searching for a group of authors: you use the facet(s) corresponding to the category/ies you are working on (e.g. Dutch authors, catholic authors, etc.). For the list you obtain you can group the authors’ names: chronological order, alphabetical order by name and by name of country, in order to work on them.

Clicking on a name leads you to the record page of the author; once there you can go through the whole series of records without going back to the results list (click on next or previous).

You can share the results list with colleagues, or refer to it in online publications: copy the link provided in the upper right corner.

 

The author record page

By clicking on a name in the results list you can access the individual author’s record and see the data concerning each author. The data are presented in six separate sections entitled respectively: Basic info (which is where you enter), Personal situation, Professional situation, Publications by this author, This author received and Links to relevant websites.

If a record page has a similar entry in one of the connected (thanks to COBWWWEB) databases, in the upper right corner a list box will appear. Select a data source and both entries are displayed parallel.

If logged on, you can edit the data.

Clicking on the Graph button shows the author in a network graph.

 

The network graph

This graph shows the author in a wider spectrum. It shows all related authors, publications and receptions. Authors are visualized by a pink dot; publications (works as well as reception documents) by a green dot. The selected person name is bold. Directions of influence exerted and received are indicated by arrows.

Clicking on a name in the network allows to see info and a link to that record, on the right.

You can browse through the network, and click on a dot to build a new graph based on the clicked item.

 

  1. Search for publications

Continuing on your authors selection, you can find here the publications by this author/these authors. Having already selected “your” authors, you now find all their publications in the list presented (which can be grouped according to year [still to come] and author’s name [NB NOT by title; AND author will be placed first/left; title second/at the right]).

Note that for the moment you find here together: original works and reception documents [incl. reception testimonies in private letters]

By clicking facets you can specify the type of publications you want to work on (e.g. genre, language).

By using the Time range slider you can delimitate the period you are working on.

 

The publication record page

By clicking on titles in the results list you can access the individual work record, and see the data concerning each publication. The data are presented in three sections entitled respectively: Basic info(which is where you enter), Receptions of this work and Links to relevant websites.

If logged in, you can edit the data [take care: saving for the moment is not leading you back to the non-edit screen]

Click on the Graph button to see the publication in a network graph.

 

The network graph

Like the graphs for Author records, you can also build graphs based on Publication records.

 

  1. Search for receptions

You can search for receptions of authors or for receptions of publications (i.e. works that are to be considered primary works). If you made a selection on the authors and/or publications page, the results you see are based on that selection. You can share the results list with colleagues, or refer to it in online publications: copy the link provided in the upper right corner.

 

Export to Excel

Click on Download excel if you want to create an excel file including the search results.

 

Note: Don’t forget to click on new search if you want to start over.

 

Enter new data, or edit data

Login with your Women Writers account. (If you do not have an account yet, contact Suzan van Dijk: suzan.van.dijk@huygens.knaw.nl.

 

Create a new author

To create a new author one needs to create a “basic entry” first. Click on New Author upper right corner. Fill in a name, a person type, a gender, a birth date and a death date (if only approximate dates available, use 18XX). Click save. After saving this, a persistent identifier is being made. Once this is done you can edit the author by clicking on the green edit button and fill in the rest of the data.

 

Edit an author

Click on the green edit button on the left-hand side. The edit page is again divided into six parts.

In Personal situation one can edit data (checking drop-down lists) informing about the private person of the author (i.e. Marital status, Children, Social class, Education, Religion, as well as Connections).

In Professional situation one can edit data informing about the professionality of the author (i.e. Profession, Financial aspects, Memberships and Collaborations (for the two latter: hyperlinks leading 1. to male as well as female persons – belonging to the author’s professional life, 2. to types of associations, boards, etc.).

In Publications and Receptions one can edit Publications by this author and Receptions on this author.

Click save to store the changes

 

Create a new publication / reception

Note that in this version titles of works are entered without mentioning the name of the author, reception documents are entered without referring to the work they are commenting: the connection between author-work and work-reception is established afterwards only.

To create a new publication (either work or reception document) one needs to create a basic entry (showing the title) first. Click on New Publication upper right corner. Fill in a title, document type (NB this is not identical to “genre”, but a way of contributing to the distinction between original works and receptions) and a year. Click save. After saving this, a persistent identifier is being made. Once this is done you can edit the publication by clicking on the green edit button and fill in the rest of the data.

 

Edit a publication / reception

Click on the green edit button on the left-hand side. The edit page is again divided into three parts.

In Receptions you connect this publication to another publication , by creating a reception relation to another publication you would have entered before.

In links you can add hyperlinks to external websites, in particular for instance online texts.

 

For this project we are perusing several large-scale sources, a list of which can (temporarily) be found here: Sources