[b-greek] Re: Archive Search

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 20 2001 - 06:36:43 EST


At 6:25 AM -0500 12/20/01, Paul, Doug wrote:
>Has anyone else had trouble searching the archives? It seems that only very
>recent messages turn up when a search is done.
>
>Doug Paul

Here's a response I sent out to a similar question not terribly long ago:
-----------------------------------
At 7:23 AM -0500 11/22/01, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>At 8:00 PM -0500 11/21/01, Harry W. Jones wrote:
>>To All
>>
>>Does anybody know how I can search the complete database
>>of the current BG List? When I try to search now, it
>>seems to be able to only search through a few entries
>>and not the whole database.
>
>I'll have to agree that one could ask for an improved search engine, but
>unless one knows exactly what one's looking for and the format in which it
>was indicated in a subject-header or transliterated Greek word or even the
>formatting of a verse-notation (which can vary as much as Matthew
>5:27/Matthew 5.27/Matt 5:27/Matt 5.27/Mt 5:27/Mt 5.27--and I doubt that
>exhausts the possibilities) one must try a lot of things. My own preferred
>search option is to look for a key Greek word appearing in the passage I'm
>looking for a discussion of, such as "SHMERON" or "MELLEI"--or one can look
>for a grammatical term like "passive" or "aorist". I might add that
>assisting future searches is one reason that we ought to be careful about
>marking subject-headers in messages; it's pretty common for people to
>change the topic in a reply to a message without changing the
>subject-header.
>
>Granted that there are difficulties to be lived with and worked around as
>best possible, still the database CAN be used. One needs to understand the
>options allowed by the interface, however, on the "Read Messages" page:
>
>Info shown above the listing of current messages (as it shows this morning):
> "Messages are available from 1998/06/05 - 2001/11/22"
> "These messages are from 11/06/01 - 11/22/01"
>
>Just below the currently displayed messages is a BUTTON that you can click
>on AFTER moving the POP-UP BUTTON to display any number of messages ranging
>from 5 5 to 10,000--so that, theoretically at least, you could scroll
>through the last 10,000 messages in B-Greek in the window above to find
>what you're looking for (arm yourself with patience and a pot of coffee or
>whatever!).
>
>It might be nice if the "Search for" device were coordinated with that
>display of messages, but apparently it isn't. You have to indicate by means
>of words what you're looking for and in what part of a message and exactly
>how large a database you want searched to find that. It's easy enough to
>find the messages for ONE SPECIFIC DATE, but the options presented are:
>
>"Search for" (blank-to-type-in)
> OPTIONS: "any or"/"all of these words"
> OPTIONS: "entire message"/"body"/"header"
>
>"Number of messages" (database searched):
> OPTIONS: 5/10/15/20/30/40/50/75/100/200/300/400/500
> OPTIONS: "threaded by subject"/"sorted by date"/"sorted by author"
>
>If you know or can guess the rough date of a message you're looking for,
>you can use the next option: "Jump to date", filling in a blank: (Date in
>YYYY/MM/DD format, e.g., 1996/4/21).
>
>Lotsa luck!
>
>you can search the older archives (May 1992 thru June 28, 1998) at
>http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/index.html
>
>Unfortunately there are a couple sizable lacunae in the older archives, the
>largest from Dec 1, 1997 thru May 6, 1998; we have the messages in private
>archives but haven't gotten them posted into that archive.
>
>That's about all I know about how to make the most of the system in place
>at the B-Greek website and how the search engine for the Lyris software
>works. If anyone has some helpful hints to add to this, please feel free to
>add on.
>--

--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University (Emeritus)
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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