Welcome to PhiloBiblon (sm)(tm) |
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Volume
2008, |
Welcome to PhiloBiblon (sm)(tm) |
|
Volume
2008, |
PhiloBiblon
a project to construct a bio-bibliographical database of early texts produced in the Iberian Peninsula and to provide access to this information through an online service on the WorldWideWeb / WWW.
PhiloBiblon consists of three separate bibliographies, each of which has its own Home Page:
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BETA / Bibliografía Española de Textos AntiguosTexts in Spanish. |
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BITAGAP / Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Galegos e PortuguesesTexts in Portuguese or Galician. |
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BITECA / Bibliografia de Textos Catalans AnticsTexts in Catalan. |
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Research in all three of the PhiloBiblon bibliographies may be done through the
Máquina de búsqueda de PhiloBiblon (en español)
The compilers of PhiloBiblon are very pleased to announce that the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded the project an eighteen-month grant (1 June 2007 - 31 December 2008) to enhance web access to the data in its component bibliographies. In addition to the present access to descriptions of manuscripts and printed editions, the enhanced web site will provide access to texts and witnesses, to biographical data, and to secondary bibliography, among many other improvements.
Resource Lists providing bibliographies and live hypertext links -- to sources of use to researchers working in this area -- may be found on each of the three separate Home Pages shown above or, for information about PhiloBiblon itself and general information on Iberian Medieval Studies, on the
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PhiloBiblon
OUTLINE
PhiloBiblon is a bio-bibliographical database management system designed to catalog the primary sources, both manuscript and printed, of a given corpus of texts, along with relevant secondary bibliography and authority files for persons, places, and institutions mentioned in the database. The web-based version gives partial access to three of the bibliographies that have used PhiloBiblon to catalog the vernacular sources of medieval Iberian culture: BETA (Bibliografía Española de Textos Antiguos), BITECA (Bibliografia de Textos Antics Catalans), BITAGAP (Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Galegos e Portugueses).
I.1.1. Madison
PhiloBiblon is based upon and derived from BOOST (the Bibliography of Old Spanish Texts, which was originally established in 1974 as part of a larger project, the computer-based Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language, at the Medieval Spanish Seminary of the University of Wisconsin. The purpose of BOOST was to aid in the selection of the corpus upon which that dictionary was to be based; and the first two editions (1975, 1977), produced in-house by John Nitti, Jean Gilkison, and Anthony Cárdenas, focussed almost exclusively on that purpose.
The first edition of BOOST, containing 966 entries, made use of a standard text-oriented database management system, FAMULUS, running on the Univac 1110 at the Madison Academic Computing Center of the U. of Wisconsin. FAMULUS, originally written at Berkeley in 1967 for the Pacific South West Forest and Range Experiment Station (USDA) for management of personal bibliographical files, takes as input standard ASCII text files created with any editor, and then is used to batch sort and index the entire file. The limitations it places on the organization of more complex materials are severe: It allows only ten fields (variable length), and a maximum of 4000 characters per record. In order to compensate for these limitations, related but in fact dissimilar data elements were grouped in one field. Thus AUTH included the author's title as well as his name and lumped together authors with editors and translators; while SPRL (Specific PRoduction Location) contained both the city of origin and the name of the printer or scribe.
FAMULUS allows sorting on any and all fields in any order and indexing of any field, although index terms are limited to a maximum of forty characters. The order of fields within the record and of records within the file can be changed and the entire data base resorted and re-indexed. The final printed version of BOOST consisted of the complete file ordered hierarchically (author / title / date / present location) followed by indices of each field and vocabulary indices of the author and title fields. It was printed as photo-offset copy of computer printout, all in upper-case letters.
At the same time that editorial control of BOOST passed to a team of outside scholars (Charles Faulhaber, Angel Gómez Moreno, David Mackenzie, Brian Dutton), the Medieval Spanish Seminary at Madison under John Nitti continued to provide technical support, re-writing FAMULUS into a customized data base management system closely resembling it, but without FAMULUS's limitations on the number of fields, their length, and the number of index terms. Thus the third edition of BOOST (1984) contained fourteen data elements and allowed index terms of up to 159 characters.
Other technical changes involved the separation or collapsing of individual data fields: the addition of two new fields:
(1) CSEQ, sequence of the MS within the library, necessary since shelfmarks are not strictly alphanumeric in most libraries;
(2) FSEQ, sequence of the text within the MS. Other changes in the record structure reflected the information needs perceived by the new editorial committee.
Thus the date formulas in OPDT and SPDT, Original and Specific PRoduction Dates (e.g., 15th mid, 15th end) were not only ambiguous but were sorted alphanumerically rather than chronologically. To avoid the latter problem, in particular, they were changed to absolute numerical values (e.g., "1440-1460" instead of "15th mid").
With the change in the sorting hierarchy (from Author / Title to a topographical arrangement [City / Library / Shelfmark]), it became quite difficult to control the relationship between corresponding entries in BOOST2 and BOOST3. The Control NUMber (CNUM), the record identification number, was pressed into use as the linking element. All bibliographical information was collapsed together from the NOTE and BIBS fields of BOOST2 (which had been used to differentiate between bibliographical sources cited directly from those cited second- or third-hand) and incorporated into a single data element, BIBL. Unfortunately, this made it difficult to control the use of secondary bibliography.
The fusion of GTIT, the General or normalized TITle field, and STIT, the Specific or variant TITle field, was a mistake of a similar sort made for the same reason, the desire to create a single title index. In two other instances, however, data elements were divided in order to reflect differences in the data they contained. Thus translators were separated from the AUTH field and given one of their own. Similarly, printers and scribes were removed from SPRL and placed in a separate field. Both of these changes were correct tactically and strategically (although it would have been even better further to separate printers from scribes.)
I.1.2. Berkeley
The limitations of a flat file database management system like FAMULUS were thrown increasingly into relief by the availability of more sophisticated systems. The next technical change was the 1985 port of BOOST from the Madison system to another main frame database management system, SPIRES (Stanford Public Information Retrieval System). SPIRES's capabilities made it an attractive solution in its own right: it was interactive, text-oriented, and allowed repeatable variable-length data elements. Ordering, searching, and report generation were reasonably simple operations. Data entry and correction were more difficult than in older system, however.
Finally, in 1987, thanks to a grant from IBM, BOOST was ported into Revelation (now Advanced Revelation), a high-end, DOS-based relational database management system with variable length, repeatable fields that can be linked together into repeatable data structures, no limitation on the number of records or number of fields, and very little limitation on their size. Records are limited to 64K, while any single field within a record is also limited to 64K. A primary consideration in the selection of a relational system was the desire to make the database easier to maintain and update, by allowing changes to be made in one record and then propagated to others related to it rather than by making the same change in multiple records.
The original 1987 database design, the work of Charles B. Faulhaber and programmer John May, has evolved constantly since then, thanks to three major NEH grants as well as to smaller ones from other sources. In the process, the database management system itself was divorced from BOOST and made available for use with other corpora. It was baptized PhiloBiblon, from Richard de Bury's 14th-c. description of an ideal library. PhiloBiblon's structure now consists of ten tables with over 650 separate data fields.
In 1993 the Advanced Revelation version of PhiloBiblon and its three component bibliographies became available on CD-ROM disk as part of disk 0 of ADMYTE (Archivo Digital de Manuscritos y Textos Españoles), produced by Micronet, S.A. (Madrid). A new, revised and expanded edition of the Advanced Revelation version of PhiloBiblon was published on CD-ROM in 1999 by The Bancroft Library. It is now out of print.
The CD-ROM offers both advantages and disadvantages vis-à-vis the Web version: While the data on the CD-ROM version are more complete, they are less current: the CD-ROM database was closed in March of 1999. Thus the numerous materials added since then are not yet available on a stand-alone system. The CD-ROM version has much more sophisticated search and sorting capabilities than the Web-based version; however, it is significantly more difficult to learn how to use, which is a serious obstacle for the casual user. Moreover, the CD-ROM version can be updated only infrequently (for financial, not technical reasons), while the Web-based version can be updated regularly.
PhiloBiblon is designed to record data concerning texts in any given field or discipline (thematic, chronological, language, etc.): the primary printed or manuscript sources themselves, later attestations, the individuals involved with their production and/or transmission, and the institutions holding the materials, supported by a wide range of search possibilities and tailored report opportunities. It is structured on the basis of ten interrelated tables, each of which serves as an authority file for the other nine. Four are central to the system:
Six other tables complement and serve as authority files for the primary tables:
Upon entering PhiloBiblon, one of the extant bibliographies is chosen for default display. Access is then provided to popup menus which allow immediate access
(1) to any of the other bibliographies,
(2) to HELP and REPORTS files (default or individually tailored reports for printouts or export to disk),
(3) to PROCEDURES (allowing creation or modification of default settings or access to one of the other biblographies),
(4) or directly to any of the ten authority files of the currently accessed bibliography.
Each of the interrelated authority files ("tables" in relational database nomenclature) is displayed in a series of linked "windows" containing fields for recording information appropriate to the table in question. For example, the Ms/Ed table (MANUSCRIPT/EDITION) records data concerning primary source manuscripts or editions in eight windows. A unique code number or record key (manid) is established automatically when the record is created and serves to link it to records in any other related table.
Many of the fields are associated and multi-valued. For example date, location, printer, and publisher are all linked in a repeatable data structure. This allows for the recording of differing opinions when various sources offer conflicting information. Thus authorities may differ on whether a given edition was printed in Sevilla or Burgos, and it is important to be able to record both places as well as their supporting authorities. Similarly, a complete list of the various watermarks that are found in a given manuscript can be linked to the leaves on which they are found and the authorities (e.g., Briquet) that record similar watermarks. In each such case, a qualifier field allows for the indication of the degree of certainty, and a source or basis field shows the authority that provides the data.
Many fields are filled in on-the-fly with data from related authority files (keyed to the corresponding code number in the appropriate file. Thus in order to link a given record to a secondary bibliographical source, it suffices to type the author's name in a pop-up index window and select the relevant record from BIBLIOGRAPHY, where the full bibliographic citation is maintained. Other fields supply information about data recorded in other files. Thus NO_CNUM shows the number of individual texts found in the particular Ms/Ed as recorded in the ANALYTIC file.
Navigation among the various related files (e.g., from MS/Ed to ANALYTIC to UNIFORM.TITLE to BIOGRAPHY) is accomplished by use of various keyboard commands or mouse clicks. Searches for specific types of data are carried out by through three different mechanisms:
(1) pop-up windows with a list of indexed fields;
(2) command line syntax using Advanced Revelation's "R-List" procedural language,
(3) conversion of the template for a given table into a query window.
The command line, in addition to defining and sorting data, also allows for the creation of ad hoc reports, for example, of all illuminated parchment manuscripts between given dates, of incipits or explicits containing a specific word, or of all works written or translated by a given author ordered by title or by date. In addition there are default formats for generating reports on information in Ms/Ed, UNIFORM.TITLE, ANALYTIC, and BIBLIOGRAPHY.
One of the things we have learned in the course of designing PhiloBiblon is that a program like this is never finished: the underlying database management software is upgraded, thereby requiring modifications in the application in order for it to remain current. As one gains experience, modifications in the data structure suggest themselves. Thus we initially believed that only a few fields would need qualifiers and bases to indicate the degree of certainty and the authority for the data. We now believe that qualifiers and bases are needed across the board and hope, eventually, to include them for all data fields.
PhiloBiblon, like the bio-bibliographies that it has enabled, is still a work in progress. Nevertheless, following the well-known proverb, "Lo mejor es enemigo de lo bueno," we believe that the Web-based version can provide a useful service to Hispano-medievalists.
The version of PhiloBiblon currently available on the Web differs in several important aspects from the Advanced Revelation database version. The information available in the Web version represents only a portion of that currently available in the Advanced Revelation database version. The Web version is based on a complete data dump of the Ms/Ed table, augmented with information drawn from the UNIFORM.TITLE, ANALYTIC, BIBLIOGRAPHY, and COPIES tables. This means that Web users can query the data for information about a given text, a given manuscript, or the specific copy of a given text in a given manuscript.
Because of the way the information in the Web version of PhiloBiblon is currently structured, it is much easier to locate and print or save descriptions of a given manuscript or printed edition than of a given text. We hope to remedy that situation, eventually, by creating a data dump on the basis of the UNIFORM.TITLE table. Such a data dump would list the invariant information about a given text from UNIFORM.TITLE, followed by a list of the copies of that text (taken from ANALYTIC) with an abbreviated description of the manuscript or printed edition containing each copy of the text (from Ms/Ed).
The Web version will be updated periodically, no more frequently than once a month nor less frequently than once a quarter.
What is missing from the Web version is the entire range of information in the related tables, which serve essentially as authority files for the primary tables: GEOGRAPHY, BIOGRAPHY, INSTITUTIONS, LIBRARY, and SUBJECT. We hope to be able to add access to them at a later date.
Three teams of scholars, working on medieval Spanish, Catalan, and Galician and Portuguese literature, have been using PhiloBiblon to create bio-bibliographical databases of the respective literatures:
While the basic parameters of each project are similar -- a bio-bibliographical listing of the medieval literary texts produced in their respective languages -- the specific details vary from one to another. Thus in BETA and BITAGAP the general cut-off date of composition for listing texts is 1500, while for BITECA it is the death of Ferdinand the Catholic (Ferran II) in 1516. For more information see the specific introduction to each bibliography.
There has been little concerted attempt to coordinate data among the three teams. Thus discrepancies will be found, for example, in the uniform titles of texts originally written in Latin. In the case of translations from one Iberian language into another, however, the team describing the translated text tends to defer to the expertise of the team dealing with the original. There has there been no systematic attempt to copy all of the information from the authority files of one bibliography into those of another. Thus the extensive information on Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana, found in BETA (bioid 1031) has not been reproduced in BITECA (bioid 1543) nor in BITAGAP (bioid 1543).
Each of the three bibliographies uses its target language (Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese) not only for data but also for descriptive text. Similarly, each of the three bibliographies tends to follow the scholarly and bibliographical conventions peculiar to its own scholarly tradition.
VII. Acknowledgments
PhiloBiblon is a collaborative project involving the joint efforts of a number of individuals and institutions.
Principal developers for PhiloBiblon are:
Institutions which have contributed significantly to the development of PhiloBiblon include:
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WWW access to and use of PhiloBiblon are free of charge. Reproduction of any materials found here is subject to the restrictions found in our Copyright Statement .
Best results will result from using latest - version WWW browsers which both render tables well and support JavaTM, but every effort will be made to present a generic service, accessible to any WWW viewing tool.
Readers are encouraged to send questions, comments, and any suggestions which they might have for the improvement of this site to Charles B. Faulhaber, email: cfaulhab@library.berkeley.edu.
Charles Faulhaber
University of California, Berkeley
10 November 1997