Refining your search in PBE I: Selecting Individuals with Common Attributes

Sometimes it is useful to see a set of individuals who have two attributes in common - have been associated with both Rome and Constantinople say, or were both a bishop and associated with Rhodes. Finding such a list manually is tedious, requiring one to read through the individuals in one list one by one, and finding in the article headings those who also possess the other attribute as well.

For an example of how the Selection Features can assist, we will use it to find the set of names who have a location of both Rome and Constantinople associated with them.

  • First, find the list of all individuals associated with Rome by choosing the 'Locations' index and locate the Rome list by first choosing the 'R' locations, then the 'RO' locations, finally searching through the RO list until you see the beginning of the Rome list appear on the screen.

  • The heading for most attributes within the PBE indices, including the Rome location attribute, contain a small checkbox that is used to indicate that you wish to further process the names associated with this attribute using the PBE Selection feature. Click in the box beside the "Rome" heading, as shown to the right of this text.

  • Similarly, and still within the 'Locations' index, locate the Constantinople list by first switching back to the general 'Alphabet' list, choosing the 'C' then 'CO' index, and locate Constantinople in the list. Click in the box beside the 'Constantinople' heading, as shown to the right of this text.

  • You have now selected the two lists in which you wish to find common individuals. The tools to do this can be found by switching now to the 'Refining your Search'  panels, which you do by locating the 'Go To...'  selection box in the upper right corner of the browser window and choosing 'Refining your Search' from that list, as shown to the right.

  • The screen will change to something like this:

     You can see the two locations you checkmarked earlier presented under the heading 'Current Saved Lists'.

  • Check the checkboxes beside the two headings under 'Current Saved Lists' by clicking in each of them. By doing this you are indicating that you want to do something with them.

  • Now locate the 'AND' button which appears near the upper centre of the browser window. Click on it to indicate that you want to find the individuals that appear in both the lists you chose in the previous step.

  • The screen will change to something like this:

    The list containing the common names appear in the 'index' frame in the lower left part of the browser window. Notice the heading says:

    (Location: Constantinople) AND (Location: Rome)

    indicating that the list consists of those individuals who have both location ROME and location Constantinople associated with their names.

    Note that the names are highlighted and underlined in the resultant list. As in the basic index lists, one can read the article associated with any of the individual in this dynamically generated list by simply clicking on the name.

Restricting the list to a particular time period

The 'Floruit' selection boxes can be used to further reduce the size of the list. Suppose we were interested in individuals associated with both Rome and Constantinople in the eighth century. To generate a sublist from the existing list:

  • First, indicate that you want to do something to this resultant list by clicking in the box beside its identifier in the upper left corner of the screen, as shown to the right.

  • Now, locate the floruit selection boxes, which appear in the upper right corner of the browser screen. They will initially contain the text 'Earliest : Latest'. Set them both so that the time range they indicate covers the entire eighth century (as shown to the right).

  • Now, indicate by clicking on either the 'AND' or 'OR' buttons that you want the sub-selection process to begin.

  • The screen will change to something like this:

    The list containing the common names that lived within the VIIIth century appear in the 'index' frame in the lower left part of the Netscape window. Notice the heading now says:

    (Location: Constantinople) AND (Location: Rome) FLOR E VIII:L VIII

    indicating that the list consists of those individuals who have both location ROME and location Constantinople associated with their names, and are restricted to those who lived in the period Early VIII to Late VIII.

For more detailed information on how to search according to floruit period, click here.

Use the Help Index on the left to access additional Help resources, or use the Back button on your browser to return to the previous page.