Refining your Search in PBE I: Floruit Selection

The list of 'Anonymus' individuals is very long in the PBE I CD. Suppose you wanted only to see those who the PBE indicated were active in the early part of the eighth century (floruit of E VIII).

  • First, find the list of all 'Anonymus' individuals by choosing to view the 'Index of Names', and then choosing first the 'A' names, then the 'AN' sublist. Search through that list until you see the 'Anonymus' names appear on the screen.

  • The heading for most attributes within the PBE indices 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 that box. The result is shown to the right of this text as it appears on a PC.  It may appear slightly different on a Macintosh.

  • Switch to the 'Search Refinement' panels by first locating the 'Go To...' selection box in the upper right corner of the Netscape window, and choosing 'Refining your Search' from it.

  • The screen will change to something like this:

  • You can see two selection boxes, one containing the word 'earliest', and the other containing the word 'latest'. Set the first one to indicate the floruit expression that corresponds to the beginning of the eighth century:

  • Similarly, set the one containing the text 'latest'; to the same floruit date: E VIII. The selectors should now appear as shown to the right.

  • Now one must indicate what saved list is to be processed by the floruit filter. As the first step in these instructions you checked the 'save list' box beside the 'Anonymus' list of names. Because of this, it now appears in the upper left corner of the browser window, with a checkbox beside it. Indicate that the floruit filtering is to be applied against this list by clicking in that checkbox now.

  • Now it is time to generate the list. Do this by locating the 'AND' button in the upper middle of the browser window and click on it.

  • The result of these operations is a screen similar to the following:

    The generated list appears in the lower left portion of the Netscape window. The list heading is '(Name: Anonymous) FLOR E VIII' and this heading indicates that the list was generated by selecting from the Anonymous names only those individuals whose indicated floruit period includes the early eighth century.

  • Articles for any of the individuals in the list can be viewed simply by clicking on an individual's name/number.

Floruit Ranges

The example here has shown you how to sub-select from a list of individuals for a single floruit period. A range of floruits can be coded by indicating different floruit values in the two selection boxes. 'E VIII : L VIII; would select any individual living any part of the eighth century, for example.

If you wish to select individuals who lived in or before a given floruit, leave the first floruit box as 'earliest': 'earliest : E IX', for example selects those individuals who lived in or before the early ninth century.

Similarly, to select individuals who lived in or after a given floruit period leave the second floruit box showing 'latest', as in 'L X : latest'.

For more detailed information on how to search according to common attributes, click here.

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