GGRENir: FAQ

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Questions answered in this file:

Questions about searching GGRENir
Questions about the thesaurus used for GGRENir (and about access via browsing)
Questions about the content of GGRENir
Questions about the performance of GGRENir
1. How fast are your connections to the internet?
2. I suspect that the machine you are using for GGRENir might be a trifle faster. Am I right?
Miscellaneous questions
1. How many URLs are indexed in GGRENir, at what date was the last update?
2. To whom should I send questions that are not answered by this FAQ?

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Questions about searching GGRENir

Which search interface should I use for what types of searches?

Answer: § Use the standard interface if your search is just for an author and/or if you are searching just for an URL and/or if you are searching for something than can be described using a single term or a single phrase concerning which you are very very confident that it has been used in the title or description of all the resources that might be of relevance to you. § Use the advanced interface for searches for phrases that you'd have used to describe any resources you are looking for, but that perhaps neither we in our stupidity have used for the descrition nor the authors of the documents in their enlightened excentricity have used for the title of their documents. (e.g.: Instead of searching via the "standard search interface" for "Tudor England" [0 hits on 2000-03-23], use the advanced interface and insert "Tudor" in "field 1" of the second block and "England" into "field 2" of the second block [2 hits on 2000-02-23].). § Do as well use the advanced interface if you are looking for information about a geographic area in a certain period and that area has been rather in the focus of renaissance studies; in such a case enter the name of the area (e.g. "Italy") into any field in the second block and use block five to limit the results to those concerning a certain period. § If in doubt: use the advanced interface.

Why don't I find what I've been searching for?

Answer: This is a question to which there are many many possible answers; here are some of them:

It may be, that there is just no entry for the subject or person you are searching for in GGRENir, either because there is no resource on this subject on the internet, or because we dont't know about the presence of any such resource, or because we did not index it (see: "What is indexed in GGRENir, and what is not?" for this aspect).
It may be, that you searched for a phrase by putting all of it into one and the same input-field. Consider using the advanced search interface and breaking up the phrase into several single terms to input into several fields of the second block of that interface (see: "Which search interface should I use for what types of searches?" for this aspect).
Descriptions are sometimes not perfect: consider searching for a rather broad term instead of searching for a narrower term (e.g.: search for "Italy" instead of searching for "Tuscany").
Descriptions are sometimes not perfect: consider searching for a rather narrow term instead of searching for a broader term (e.g.: search for "Florence" instead of searching for "Tuscany").
When searching for works by a certain author consider putting her or his name not only into the fild for the names of authors, but also into a/the field for information in titles or descriptions: in some cases we did not index a certain work, but we did index an internetography that leads you to works by this author (e.g. on 2000-03-23 searching for "Shakespeare" returned only 1 hit, whereas searching for "Shakespeare" in both the author- and titles/description-fields [combined via boolean OR] returned 7 hits, amongst which 4 to resources that lead directly or indirectly to works by Shakespeare.).
Names of authors are used more or less according to the German cataloguing standards for research libraries (RAK-WB); this can lead to some surprises. But: the latinized Version of the name of an author who used a latinizes version of her or his name and the vernacular (in the vernacular used by the author: not necessarily identical to the English vernacular version of that name!) names of authors who used a vernacular version of their name should lead to hits if there are works by this author indexed in GGRENir. Consider searching by using only part of the name of a person (e.g. by searching for "Aquin" instead of "Aquinas", by searching for "Anselm" instead of searching for "Anselmo".
It may be, that you applied a "chronological limit" using the advanced search interface. Not all the records in GGRENir have been indexed using "chronological" thesaurus-terms. Consider setting the option in the fifth block of the advanced search interface to "any era".
If you are not completely happy (or worse) with the results of your search or your searches in GGRENir: Consider accessing the content of GGRENir via browsing.

Do you index the full text of the documents for which there are records in GGRENir?

Answer: No. Our automatos accesses the fulltext of the documents in order to build a "fingerprint" of the document indexed so that severe changes in the content of a document can be spotted, but there is no fulltext information in GGRENir that you could use for your searches. There are some excellent tools on the web that permit fulltext-searches (if you read German a section of a document I created for one of my courses migt be of some interest to you). When searching GGRENir you search for information supplied by our local human indexers here and you search for information given by the authors of the documents via titles and sometimes abstracts of these documents; you don't search the full text of the documents indexed.

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Questions about the thesaurus used for GGRENir (and about access via browsing)

Why do you use your own thesaurus for indexing instead of using one of the more common products (DDC, LCSH, etc.)?

Answer: Any thesaurus we could use has to have the following properties:

It must be apt for the focus of GRRENir. Thus it must map a division of knowledge and of subjects that reflects the renaissance situation (especially the situation for renaissance philosophy). Standard indexes (even those that are almost decent for indexing philosophy) however do at least tend to reflect a 19th/20th century situation.
There must be the possibility to change the thesaurus ad hoc, without getting into conflict with any sort of "ruling body".
The thesaurus as used for GGRENir must be imune to changes by persons who are not in charge of GGRENir (at least if there is no prior consent by those in charge of GRRENir).
The thesaurus must be multihierarchical (e.g.: the entry "Witchcraft, persecution of witches" is a subentry both to " Magic" and " On law and legal justice"). Thus any thesaurus, index or classification that was or is developed in order to assign books a shelfmark is not usable for GGRENir.

As we did not and do not know about any thesaurus (with the exception of the one we use) that has the mentioned properties: we are using the thesaurus we are using: our own thesaurus.

Why don't I find what I'm looking for in the thesaurus?

Answer: One or more of the following reasons could explain this:

It may be, that there is just no entry for the subject or person &c. you are searching for in GGRENir, either because there is no resource on this subject on the internet, or because we dont't know about the presence of any such resource, or because we did not index it (see: "What is indexed in GGRENir, and what is not?" for this aspect).
It may be, that there is a thesaurus-term, that is corresponding to your needs, but it is burried deep deep inside of the thesaurus. There are two ways to find out whether it's there:
1. consider having a look at the "shortcuts concerning some non-philosophy areas of interest"
2. or consider · accessing GGRENir via searching, searching for a term you think apt for describing what you are looking for (see: "Which search interface should I use for what types of searches?" for this option); · display the results "in definitely verbose format"; · have a look at the index-term used for them; · choosing one of these index terms will bring you to the appropriate place in the thesaurus.

I've come across an index-tem the entry for which threatens me with more hits in the database than I'm willing to have a look at. What should I do?

Answer: You might proceed as follows:

Select the Latin name of that index term (e.g. "Physica generalis"),
switch to the advanced search interface,
enter that Latin name into "field 1" of the second block,
restrict the number of items retrieved by entering one, two or three additional mandatory terms into "field 2" to "field 4" and/or limit the set of results by restricting the results to records concerning a certain era using the options offered by block five of the advanced search interface.

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Questions about the content of GGRENir

What is indexed in GGRENir, and what is not?

Answer: § The subject focus of GGRENir is on Renaissance intellectual history, with a special focus on history of philosopy. GGRENir is rather weak in some fields and extremely weak in other fields (it is certainly not the best resource if you are looking for information about Shakespeare) while there are fields in which it might be termed almost decent. § There is a certain bias in favour of "scholarly" resources and a certain bias against "historical re-enacting resources" and most papers read in undergraduate seminars and tutorials. This does not mean, that we consider such resources as useless or devoid of value: they are just not in the focus of our interest (at least as far as the content of GGRENir is concerned: we are of course very interested in the papers our undergraduate students read in our seminars - but that's a different context). § The "temporal" focus of GGRENir is on ca. 1348 to ca. 1648. § At the moment GGRENir is rather "eurocentric". This is not due to any lack of interest on our side in resources concerning the time from 1348 to 1648 outside of Europe: we just do not know about many such resources. § Ahem, indeed, alas, it is true: there are many many languages we do not read. Thus there may be eccelent resources available we did not include because we were unable to asess them due to our linguistic incompetencies.

When using GGRENir I found out, that there is no entry for http://aaa.bbb-ccc.ddd.ee/fff/, although it is an excellent resource and probably in the focus of your internetography: why don't you add it to the database?

Answer: That's probably due to our ignorance. Please do tell us about this resource by sending an eMail to ua212ac@mail.lrz-muenchen.de.

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Questions about the performance of GGRENir

How fast are your connections to the internet?

Answer: At the moment we have 10 Mbits per second on our (rather small) local network and 100 Mbits per second to the internet. The largest result of a real search that was encountered between the start of GGRENir in March 1999 and 2000-03-22 under ideal conditions would thus have needed something like 2 seconds to transfer. If you suspect a "bottleneck": use traceroot (i.e. tracert from the Command-Line of most Windows machines) to find out where it is.

I suspect that the machine you are using for GGRENir might be a trifle faster. Am I right?

Answer: Yes, you are right. It has a fast processor and it has fast disks and its RAM is sufficient in most cases, but: it is not used only to serve GGRENir. You will sometimes notice, that response to your first search in GGRENir is slower than is the response to your second, third, etc. search: in such cases probably the database-index for GGRENir has been swapped from RAM to disk and has to be reloaded from disk to RAM. We are observing the developments of the situation. The hits to the server increase; the use of GGRENir increases. We are (slowly, tentatively) thinking about transfering our WWW-services to a new machine (3 or more processors, 1GB RAM), but: such a machine would be rather expensive, and we don't intend to start charging for the use of GGRENir; thus: if you want to offer yourself as a sponsor: please make yourself heard … [;-)]!

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Miscellaneous questions

How many URLs are indexed in GGRENir, at what date was the last update?

Answer: These and similar questions are answered by a special file ("GGRENir: State of the Database (Dates, Updates, URLs, Hits, ...)"). That file can be accessed via the link "---> Information about the current state of GGRENir" in the "responsibility-statement-block" of the GGRENir homepage. In case you should want to boomark that file or/and should want to submit it to a program that checks for updates: the URL is: http://www.phil-hum-ren.uni-muenchen.de/GGRENirDB/GGRENirUPD.htm.

To whom should I send questions that are not answered by this FAQ?

Answer: If these questions are questions about GGRENir: consider sending an email to Heinrich C. Kuhn (hck@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

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Author: Heinrich C. Kuhn
Document created: 2000-03-23
Last update: 2000-03-27