4.0844 How to Search Humanist Archives (1/120)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 20 Dec 90 17:34:43 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0844. Thursday, 20 Dec 1990.

Date: Wed, 19 Dec 90 17:05 EST
From: Jean Veronis <VERONIS@VASSAR>
Subject: How to Search -- Listserv database facilities


The HUMANIST messages are archived in notebooks. You can retreive them
by sending a GET command to LISTSERV@BROWNVM. However, notebooks are
usually huge files, and it's not a very good idea to have them sent on
the network.

Listserv provides database facilities which would enable you to access
information in archives in a more flexible way. Instead of getting the
whole archive, you will be able to get only the subject lines. For
example, if you want to know all the topics discussed on HUMANIST this
month, just send the following message to LISTSERV@BROWNVM:

//SEARCH JOB ECHO=NO
DATABASE SEARCH DD=RULES
//RULES DD *
SEARCH * IN humanist SINCE 01-DEC-90
INDEX

You can, of course, replace 01-DEC-90 by any other date in the same
format. You will receive a file that looks like this:

> SEARCH * IN humanist SINCE 01-DEC-90
--> Database HUMANIST, 55 hits.

> INDEX
Item # Date Time Recs Subject
------ ---- ---- ---- -------
002600 90/12/02 22:14 68 4.0782 Renaissance Meeting in Toronto (1/56)
002601 90/12/02 22:18 91 4.0783 Graduate Program in Humanities Computing (1+
002602 90/12/02 22:20 103 4.0784 Classics Review (e-)Journal (1/91)
002603 90/12/02 22:25 120 4.0785 Conf: Machine Translation (1/108)
002604 90/12/02 22:38 192 4.0786 Confs: NL & Ontology; Sentence Processing (+
002605 90/12/02 22:58 46 4.0787 Jobs: Computational Linguistics (1/35)
002606 90/12/02 23:19 136 4.0788 Qs: French SW; French & Spanish CAI; IPA; .+
002607 90/12/02 23:21 24 4.0789 Etext Q: Oral History, World War II... (1/1+
......

You can also restrict the search to messages containing given words. For
example,suppose you want to retreive all the messages that speak about
SGML or the TEI. You just send the following file to LISTSERV@BROWNVM:

//SEARCH JOB ECHO=NO
DATABASE SEARCH DD=RULES
//RULES DD *
SEARCH (SGML or TEI) IN humanist SINCE 01-JAN-90
INDEX

You can of course replace SGML and TEI with other keywords, and use AND
instead of OR, or more complex AND/OR combinations. You will get a file
that looks like this:

> SEARCH (SGML or TEI) IN humanist SINCE 01-JAN-90
--> Database HUMANIST, 117 hits.

> INDEX
Item # Date Time Recs Subject
------ ---- ---- ---- -------
001343 90/01/01 18:54 140 3.885 Poetics Today (141)
001370 90/01/08 20:28 179 3.912 WP/NB; NotaBene's Ibid (180)
001386 90/01/14 22:31 206 3.928 discussion groups (207)
001427 90/01/29 19:47 73 3.969 German poetry? samhell? SGML? (74)
001431 90/01/29 19:53 192 3.973 call for software reviewers (192)
001433 90/01/30 20:34 88 3.975 Sam Hill (89)
001460 90/02/05 20:43 104 3.1002 SGML; hanzi; pingpong; bibliographic manage+
001492 90/02/12 21:34 94 3.1034 audio input; Mac troubles (95)
......

You may want to restrict the search for keywords to the subject line (in
the previous example, LISTSERV was searching for SGML or TEI in the
whole message). In that case, send the following:

//SEARCH JOB ECHO=NO
DATABASE SEARCH DD=RULES
//RULES DD *
SEARCH * IN humanist -
WHERE SUBJECT CONTAINS (SGML or TEI) -
SINCE 01-DEC-90
INDEX

Here is the file you'll get:

> SEARCH * IN humanist -
> WHERE SUBJECT CONTAINS (SGML or TEI) -
> SINCE 01-JAN-90
--> Database HUMANIST, 26 hits.

> INDEX
Item # Date Time Recs Subject
------ ---- ---- ---- -------
001427 90/01/29 19:47 73 3.969 German poetry? samhell? SGML? (74)
001460 90/02/05 20:43 104 3.1002 SGML; hanzi; pingpong; bibliographic manage+
001499 90/02/13 20:35 84 3.1041 decline of noisy reading? SGML and hypertex+
001508 90/02/14 20:50 153 3.1050 SGML and hypertext (154)
001514 90/02/15 19:56 195 3.1056 e-critical editions; bib of SGML/hypertext+
001518 90/02/15 20:15 161 3.1060 book; resource person; talk on SGML/hyperte+
001526 90/02/16 22:48 125 3.1068 SGML and hypertext, cont. (126)
001543 90/02/22 21:10 90 3.1086 Chi's no Mega; SGML and hypertext (90)
......

If you want some of the documents sent to you, just ask PRINT instead of
INDEX, along with the item numbers. Suppose, for example, that you want
the two documents on SGML and hypertext above sent to you. Just send
the following to LISTSERV@BROWNVM:

//SEARCH JOB ECHO=NO
DATABASE SEARCH DD=RULES
//RULES DD *
SEARCH * IN humanist -
WHERE SUBJECT CONTAINS SGML or TEI -
SINCE 01-DEC-90
PRINT 1508 1526

And you will receive a file containing these documents.

There is much more. If you want to know send to LISTSERV the following
message:

INFO DATABASE

By the way, send all the commands to LISTSERV@BROWNVM not HUMANIST!