World Shakespeare Bibliography - further details

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Entries

Nothing is included in the World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM unless it has been actually examined by the editor, a member of the editorial staff, or one of the International Committee of Correspondents. (An exception may eventually be made for books, articles, reviews, and dissertations whose existence has not been verified; these records will be clearly identified as unverified and will include what information we currently possess about them - including details of inaccurate citations and bibliographical ghosts.)

Each entry consists of a citation (giving full bibliographical information--or its equivalent for non-print media) and an annotation. In addition, entries for books, films, recordings, videos, and software will cite reviews.

Entries are searchable by author, title, subject, keyword, date, medium (e.g., journal article, film, computer software), language, publisher, and periodical title. Special search screens allow boolean and proximity searches in addition to letting users to click on names, terms, concepts, and titles to bring to the screen related records (hypertext links identify related works, e.g., the numerous discussions of memorial reconstruction, the debate over the two texts of King Lear, comparisons of Branagh's and Olivier's films of Henry V, analyses of pronoun usage, or stylometric approaches in authorship studies). Although the entire database is searchable by keyword, there is also a controlled subject index (a feature that will eventually become an online thesaurus for the database); the subject index is necessary to compensate for the inadequacies of keyword searching (e.g., a feminist analysis of Lady Macbeth might not have "feminist criticism" anywhere in the title or in the annotation to the study, but it would be tagged with the descriptor "feminist criticism" in the subject index). Records are sorted according to the taxonomy of the annual World Shakespeare Bibliography; thus, users are able to browse easily all records on, e.g., the sources of Romeo and Juliet, translations of Sonnets, or Elizabethan public theatres.

Features of the CD-ROM

Using the various search features of The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM users will be able to take advantage of hypercard technology to search thousands of records to isolate, within seconds, works possibly relevant to their research. Using the World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM, scholars will be able to conduct and print/download custom searches--for all articles after 1985 on Hamlet's age; for everything written in English and French about the ending of King Lear; for all discussions of the instability of Shakespeare's text; for all discussions by Northrop Frye of the comedies; for articles in German and published after 1985 that offer a feminist, or poststructuralist, or Freudian reading of Macbeth; for all productions directed by Deborah Warner; for all parts played by Ian McKellen; for all articles that discuss how to teach TheTempest in the elementary grades; for all reviews of Peter Brook's La tempete; for all studies of a character type, or theme, or image, or trope; for all examinations of a particular scene. With existing print bibiographies such searches are inordinately time-consuming or virtually impossible.

World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM will be updated annually. Each year, entries from the current annual World Shakespeare Bibliography will be added to the database, as will two or three year's worth of records from our retrospective project.

Further information

For further information, contact the editor, Professor James L. Harner
World Shakespeare Bibliography
Department of English
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4227

409-845-3400 (voice)
409-862-2292 (fax)
jlh5651@venus.tamu.edu

www@cup.cam.ac.uk