POESIS is a searchable database including Classical, late antique, and Christian Latin poetry.  The CD ROM includes texts from Ennius (excluding the early Roman dramatists) through Venantius Fontunatus and Eugenio di Toledo (first half of seventh century A.D.)
 

STARTING POESIS
POESIS boots only out of DOS (not windows or another operating system).  At the “C:>/” prompt, type K:poe, and be sure the CD is in the K drive (i.e. not the multi-disk player, but the single CD drive installed in the computer).

SEARCHING POESIS
POESIS is published in Italy, and you can configure the searches to run in English or Italian.  Use ALT+F, and choose “configure” to set the language to your preference.  Then hit ESC to close the configuration box.

SIMPLE SEARCH
The search screen presents two boxes: “Word Search” on the left and “Options” on the right.  In order to execute a simple, single-word search through the entire database, simply type the Latin word in the left box, and hit return.

If no occurences are found, the search engine will report this.  If occurences are found, they will be displayed in a scrollable list, noting the author, work, book, and verses on the right.   Once these finds are displayed, you can scroll through them and retrieve the selected text by pressing “return”.  In order to return to the list of finds, press ESC.

HINT #1
Use Esc to close screens and return to the previous screen.  Use F10 to finish a search and begin a new one.

HINT #2
Use ALT plus the highlighted letters of the words at the top to explore the menu bars.  The left-right arrows will then scroll between menu items; the up-down arrows will scroll through each menu.

ADVANCED SEARCHES
In order to execute a Boolean search, you will have to set the parameters in the “Options” box on the right.  To navigate between these boxes, use “tab” to toggle between the left and right box; use the up and down arrows to scroll through each box.

In the “Word Search” box, enter the words you wish to search for.

In the “Options” box, specify the kind of search you wish to perform by setting the following parameters (each is selected by tapping the space bar to toggle through the options):

Distance:   a distance of  0 to 5 words, or the section.
Operator:    the Boolean operators: AND, OR, or AND NOT
Only in sequence:  “only in sequence”: choose yes or no.

You may also specify the author or work in the spaces provided.

Hint # 3: Wild characters
The word being searched can contain one or more wild characters.   These are the signs ? and *, which have the following meanings:

? substitutes for any individual character
* substitutes for any number of characters
 

VIEWING SEARCH RESULTS
The search results will be displayed in chronological order, displaying the line in which your search elements occur as well as a label for that line on the right. For example, VE,BU,10,0069 would indicate Virgil’s tenth eclogue, line 69.  For a full key to search results, refer to the POESIS manual, pages 5-27.

You may scroll through this list, and hit return to choose to view the particular text highlighted.  To return to the list from the text, hit Esc.  To begin a new search, hit F10.
 

OTHER FEATURES
The Repeat menu allows you to repeat the search for a word or words, or to review, revise, and repeat your search history.

The Texts menu allows you to browse the authors included in the database, or to browse the works of a particular author (or collection).
 

PRINTING AND SAVING
Printing and saving are not available for this software at this time.

© 2000 Yale University Library
E-mail questions to etc@yale.edu
Phone Reference (203) 432-1775/1780

       

© 2007 Yale University Library
This file last modified 07/16/01
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