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Access System Information (under construction as per 20080205) |
The CDLI access system contains, as of 5 February 2008, catalogue information for approximately 225,000 cuneiform texts, 85,000 images, and 1.5 million lines of transliteration.
Searching the Catalog
When searching for tablets in the catalog, it is possible to choose between three modes of display as well as the number of tablets to be displayed.
- Full display of individual tablets in single page browse with images and transliterations. Navigate with "previous" and "next" buttons.
- Display concise list of found texts with links to the pages with images and transliteration.
- Display list with (thumbnail) images and links to the pages with images and transliteration.
For the latter two display modes, select the number of tablets (1, 20, 50, 100, or 1000) to be displayed per web page. It is now also possible to search the dataset of transliterations for words and graphemes, limited by period, provenience, etc.
Search Tips
- Many museum and publication numbers contain leading zeros in the database so that records sort properly. For example, TRU 1 is in the database as TRU 001.
- To view a record in the full FileMaker database (all catalogue fields), click on the "full catalogue record of this text" link from the full text display page.
Simple Search of Words or Parts of Words in Transliterations
RECOMMENDED AS FAST STANDARD PROCEDURE!
The easiest way of searching in the transliterations is the simple search procedure:
- Select word or part of word from the drop-down menu.
- Type a word resp. part of a word into the data entry field for the transliteration search (follow atf-transliteration conventions).
- Select the Number of results to be displayed.
- Optional: Restrict the search by typing additional conditions into the data entry fields for the catalogue search.
- Click on the button Start Search at the end of the page.
You will receive a list of occurrences which offers you three possibilities of getting further information:
- Click on the link show full transcriptions in order to get the full texts displayed and the found word resp. parts of words highlighted.
- Click on the designation of a text to get only this text displayed.
- If more occurences have been found than are displayed, click on the arrow after the number of found texts for the next group to be displayed.
Some Useful Explanations of the Simple Search Procedure
When searching for words or parts of words in the transliterations you have to know the atf-conventions which apply to all texts in the cdli corpus. See the atf-tutorial at the ePSD website.
It may be also useful to understand how the simple search procedure works.
Searching for words:
- A word has to be written as a sequence of graphems separated by dashes. Determinatives are to be enclosed in curly brackets.
- The primary result of a simple search for a word is a list of all tablets (not lines) containing this word.
- Subsequently, searches are performed on the transliterations of these tablets in order to identify the lines containing the word searched for.
- Finally, the designations of the found tablets are displayed together with transliterations of the lines containing this word.
Searching for parts of words:
- The basis of searching for the part of a word is a search for the tablets containing the sequence of graphems of this part, followed by a search for those lines of these tablets that contain the sequence of graphems searched for.
- Searching for an individual graphem will result in precisely those lines containing this graphem. Searching for udu (sheep) as part of a word will find all tablets with the word udu, but also e.g. udu-nita (male sheep) or sipa-udu (shepherd).
- Searching for part of a word consisting of a sequence of graphems will result in a list of tablets which contain this sequence. However, due to limitations of the current search algorithm a sequence of graphems belonging to the same word will not be distinguished from an equal sequence of graphems belonging to different words. Thus searching for udu-nita as part of a word will also find tablets with the two words udu nita, but only lines with udu-nita will be displayed resp. highlighted.
Search Tips
- Sometimes, when the server is highly frequented, you may get a time-out error. Hit the refresh button of your browser until the desired results show up. We are working on a solution for this problem.
- There is no normalization of the spelling of graphems. You have to search independently for "gisz", "gesz", and "GISZ" to find all ocurrences of the grapheme. Similarly, you have to search independently for "dug", "DUG~a", "DUG~b", etc.
- Do not use empty space in the search string as long as you do not understand what then happens!