LION (LIterature ONline)

a database containing the text of numerous English literary works of all periods; it also contains bibliographies of secondary material (critical works), with articles in full text, and links to related websites.

• for search strategies, see CATI website http://www.cati.paris4.sorbonne.fr
  then (in left-hand menu) "Campus Numérique/ Formation documentaire"
  then "1: Ressources: mode d'emploi des bases de données auxquelles le centre CATI est abonné, par Raeleen Chai-Elsholz"
  
  

Search strategies for full-text databases

• It allows keyword searches (searches for all the occurrences of a given word you select by typing it in a search box)
  • selection of keywords:
    • first select the most obvious keyword corresponding to your research -- the one which you know was used in the period you are studying (beware of anachronisms) and perform a search;
    • then look at the context of the occurrences which have been retrieved and find synonyms, on which you may perform another search
    • limiting the search field: you may choose to perform the search on a restricted corpus (the whole 'body' of the materials selected for study), limiting it by period, literary movement, origin of the author...
      
• Search concepts:
  • some of the concepts used for searching bibliographical databases (e.g. Boolean operators , see lesson on Search strategies in the section Information skills of the present website, under "cours et séminaires, DEA") may be applied to full-text databases
  • truncation: (see "stemming" in the Greenwich website ) you may replace a few letters in a word, e.g. the ending, by a symbol such as the asterisk * serving as a wildcard; the search engine will retrieve all words which contain the letters you have typed, combined with various endings.
    • a search for "navig*" will retrieve occurrences of "navigate" "navigated" "navigating" "navigation" "navigator(s)"
  • proximity operators: when your search includes two terms, you may combine them in three different ways:
    • putting the combined expression between quotation marks: "silver sea" will retrieve all the cases whre the two words occur in this exact phrase
    • using and: silver and sea will retrieve texts where the two words occur, not necessarily in this order, e.g. the sea was like silver
    • using the "proximity operators": specifying that the two words may be separated by a maximum of ... words (give a figure)

      sea near.5 silver will retrieve "the sea was like silver" but not "the sea was green, though the distance was silver". Conversely,
      sea near.9 silver will retrieve the second sentence as well.
      According to the stylistic effects you are investigating -- for instance, a terse style with oxymoronic contrasts, or a loose suggestive style -- you will select the various options (e.g. near.3 in the first case, near.9 in the second one). You may perform different types of searches and compare the results.

Perform searches on the topics of our syllabus in the corpus of selected eighteenth-century novelists , comparing the results obtained according to the search strategies used.