Arcitext HelpHow to SearchAnyone can currently search the Arcitext database for pages of the Daily Mirror from 1903 (when the Mirror was launched) until today; just type a search term (eg, 'Blair') into the Search box on the Home page and the d atabase will tell you how many pages there are on which this term was mentioned and show you Thumbnails of the most-relevant eight pages. Note that, if you search for 'Blair', you’ll find Sir Ian Blair, Lionel Blair and The Blair Witch Project, as well as Tony Blair; if you want only the Prime Minister, your search term should be 'Tony Blair'. If you are not a registered user with Arcitext or haven’t logged in with your Username and Password, you can see only the first eight Thumbnails. If you want to see more, or do an Advanced Search – multiple search terms, date search, front/bac k pages only, see Preview pages and scroll through editions, create your own Bookshelf or Download/use full PDF pages – you have to Register and log on. Advanced SearchingIf you Search for 'Tony Blair', the database will find all pages on which the exact term 'Tony Blair' is mentioned; it will ignore any mentions where the writer may have referred to the Prime Minister (al beit disparagingly, perhaps) as simply 'Blair'. There is also the option to add extra search criteria – e.g. 'Tony Blair' and 'George Bush' and 'Jack Straw' and 'Iraq'; this will return only pages that mention all of these names. Each of the added search boxes further gives the option to amend its 'Boolean operative' – 'and', 'or' and 'not' so, if you want every page that menti ons Blair or Bush, Search for 'Tony Blair', choose the drop-down operative from 'and' to 'or', and type in 'George Bush'. If you want only those Tony Blair pages that have nothing to do with George Bush, change the operative to 'not'. You can use any combination of these; if you find you need more criteria, please let us know. If you’re unsure, for example, how a name is spelt – say, 'Beckam' – you can click Fuzzy Search: this will find all mentions of David Beckham, as well as any pages where the writer might have inadvertent ly dropped his aitches; and vice-versa for a fuzzy searched 'Beckham'. NB: Fuzzy Search should be used with caution: an ornithologist who fuzzy searches for 'Great Bustard' may be offended by many of the… superfluous results! (The next version of Arcitext will add an option for Proximity searching.) The database defaults to Search in all pages of every edition – i.e. 'body content'; there is, however, the drop-down option to search 'Front Page' only; so, if you’re looking for 'David Beckham' but don’t want football reports, you can save a lot of time by restricting your search to Front Page only. (The next version of Arcitext will add the option to search 'Back page only'.) Finally, you can opt to search for a specific Date or for newspapers within a range of dates; you can either enter the date/s you want as DD/MM/YYYY (Day, Month, Year) or click on the calendar icon beside the Date boxe s and click on the date/s required; the upper left/right arrowheads on these calendars scroll from year to year; the lower arrowheads scroll from month to month. (Arcitext by default, returns all found pages in order of 'relevance' – ie, pages with the most mentions of your search criteria; if you want your pages in date order, change the ' NB: If you simply want to find and scroll through an edition or range of editions, you can choose Front Page, a Date or date range and click 'By date alone'. If, after all of that, you simply want to start again with a clean sheet, click Reset. Search ResultThe first line on this page tells you how many 'hits' your search has found – how many pages on which your search criteria appear. If this is too many (e.g. a search for 'Tony Blair' and no other criteria will find thousands of hits, which will take an awful lot of your time to go through), you can click New/Refine Search, which will take you back to the search screen you last left, where you can refine your search by adding extra criteria. This option is present in all following screens. Hits are shown as Thumbnails, eight per view; to scroll forward, click Next; to retrace your steps, hit Previous. (A later version of Arcitext will offer the option to Go to a specific set of eight.) The Title, Date of publication and Page number of each page appears above its Thumbnail. Below each Thumbnail, there are three options: Preview takes you to a new view of the whole, scrollable edition in which that page appears, with the Thumbnail (and its facing page) slightly enlarged (see below). NB: clicking on a Thumbnail has the same effect. Save adds the Thumbnail to My Bookshelf (see below), with a pop-up confirmation each time. Download transfers the original, full-size PDF of the page to your desktop (see below). PreviewThis view shows the Thumbnail page and its facing page (where there is one – i.e. not Front or Back page) at roughly double the size of the Thumbnail; as well as this, Thumbnails of all of the pages in that edition are shown in spread s down the right-hand side. You can scroll backwards or forwards through the edition by choosing Previous or Next; you can also choose to Jump to a specific sprea d or to Front Page or Back Page. At each stage, the chosen page appears in the main view in Preview size. You can Save any Thumbnail to My Bookshelf or Download any page by clicking on the buttons under each Thumbnail. Search Result returns you to the eight-Thumbnail views, at the last set of thumbnails where you transferred to Preview. My BookshelfAll saved pages are held in your own Bookshelf for future reference; if you log off and log back on, they will still be there. The first line on this view shows how many pages you have on your Bookshelf. You can scroll through views of eight Thumbnails (in the order in which you added them) and go to Preview, Download, Search Result or New/Refine Search, as before. You can delete Thumbnails from My Bookshelf by clicking Remove under the relevant Thumbnail. DownloadDownloading any page will deliver the original, full-size PDF of the page to your desktop in Adobe Acrobat Reader; this is freeware from http://www.adobe.co.uk/ These pages are fully text searchable within Acrobat: go to Edit, Search, and input a search term; each 'hit' is highlighted on the PDF page. Registered users can download and use Mirror PDF pages, without limit, according to Arcitext’s Terms and Conditions – see Legal Information. |