Description

The British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries (BWLD) database contains approximately 100,000 pages of published diaries and letters, memoirs, and manuscripts from nearly 500 women. The databases contains indexed, published primary materials, from a 300+ year time span up through approximately 1950 (with the earliest date being 1558), representing women at various stages in life and from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In addition, British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries contains biographical information and annotated source bibliographies. Many titles available full text in BWLD are listed in the UWM Libraries' PantherCat.

From the UWM Libraries homepage, select �Resources A-Z,� click on �B,� and scroll down to British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries.

There are several ways to access the information in the British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries database.

Table of Contents

Select �Table of Contents� from any page in British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries. Choose Author, Source, Year, Place, Historical Event, or Personal Event. The way in which the resources are listed varies depending on the category. For example, after choosing Authors, an alphabetical list of authors is displayed, with biographical information and links to documents written by each author. When choosing Year from the �Table of Contents,� documents are listed by year. Some categories are limited, e.g., Personal Event has less than 40 events listed; use a keyword search for more complete information.

Find

Select �Find,� and then select a category of choice to locate Sources or Authors by entering specific criteria into the search fields. Enter keywords into one or more fields when searching in either category. For example, when searching to find a specific source, enter the author's, editor's, or translator's name, words from the title, and/or other information in additional search fields. When searching for an author, enter search terms related to the author's name and/or enter terms in one of several fields related to facts about the author's life. Search fields vary depending on the category.

Searching Full-Text Documents

To search for a word or phrase in a full-text document, select �Search Texts� from the main menu. Click on Simple, Letters Only, Diaries Only, or Advanced. Enter keyword(s) or phrases in the search in texts box near the top of the selected search screen. In the Letters Only, Diaries Only, and Advanced search screens, select a search option by choosing to search with a Single Term and Phrase Search (default setting), or use Proximity Searching.

Characters to use in full-text searching:
Truncation: Use an * (asterisk) to retrieve word variants. The * can be used to match any string of characters, either at the beginning or end of a word. For example, *habit will retrieve habit, cohabit, and inhabit. Cigar* will retrieve cigar, cigars, or cigarette.

Wildcard Character: Use a . (period) to match any single character within a word. For example, wom.n will retrieve women or woman.

Boolean Operators: To use the OR operator, insert a vertical line (|) between the words. This is useful for synonyms. For example, elderly|aged or prejudice|discrimination. Using the | symbol between words will search for both terms and will broaden the search.

To use the AND operator, leave a space between the terms. Leaving a space between words will search retrieve results where both terms are present and will narrow the search.

Searching Bibliographic Fields

To search selected fields in the database's bibliographic records, select �Search Texts� from the main menu. Click on Simple, Letters Only, Diaries Only, or Advanced. Enter words or phrases in one or more of the fields under the heading, �Limit your search by the following fields.� Search fields vary depending on the chosen search screen.

Characters to use when searching bibliographic fields:
Boolean Operators: Use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT (uppercase).

Additional Searches

Select �Help� from the databases navigation bar for additional information on �Full-Text Searching,� �Field Searching,� �Fields� and their descriptions, and other search procedures.

Results

The results format varies depending by type of search. When using the �Find Sources� and �Find Authors� screens, results will be listed in alphabetical order by author unless the sort option is changed. When using the �Search Texts� options for �Letters Only,� �Diaries Only,� or �Advanced,� choose a �Results Format� from under the �Fields� search boxes. From the results list display, click on the underlined headings to link to bibliographic information or the text of the document that matched the search. To view the entire published document, click on "View Full Text."

Print/Save Results

Select the �Print� icon from the tool bar near the top of the page. Use �Print Preview� to view the full text to verify that only the necessary pages will be printed; many titles are several hundred pages. Then use the print screen to select the specific pages to print,

Results can be saved to a disk, page by page. After the page is displayed, choose �File�Save As� from the browser menu. Then chose �a:\drive� from the drop down menu, name the file, then click �Save.�

Exit

To exit, click on the "Home" button on the browser bar.

sc/llb 5/03/2006