Early Modern Spain

Translations Database: How to use the Database

Searching

The database is searchable through a series of indexes. Click on the ‘Select an Index’ pick list and choose which one you want to use in order to interrogate the data.

The two most important indexes are:

Person by Name: click on one of the letters at the top of the screen and a list of people whose surname begins with that letter will be displayed in the left hand column. You can then click on the person’s name to call up all the books associated with that person (whether as a printer, translator, author etc.).
Text by Title: click on one of the letters at the top of the screen and a list of all the titles beginning with that letter is displayed on the left hand column. To see a full bibliographical record for that text click on the title.

There are a number of other indexes as well. The database can also be searched according to:

Language: after chosing this from the pick list of indexes, choose a language from the pick list to the right and all the texts in that particular language will appear on the left.
Location: this lists the libraries where the collated copies are held. This allows you to explore the holdings of particular institutions and research libraries.
Person by Role: you can limit your search of people in the database according to their role in relation to the translations, obvious ones being a list all the authors, translators or printers it contains. You could though explore the people index solely for artists or editors.
Place of Publication: choose from the pick list of places where translations where published. This is particularly useful for example in exploring the activities of continental presses like St Omer or Louvain.
Style: this allows you to specify a particular textual form, for example, if you are interested only in translations of poetry or drama.
Text by Date: delimit a chronological date range, to find out what was published when.
Text by ID: references are often made within the database to books related to a particular translations. This index allows you to navegate to those texts according to an ID reference.
Text in the Database: a free text search for keywords in the title, dedication or preliminaries.
Textual type: this enables you to look just at Books of Chivalry or Botany, just pick a type from the list.

Understanding the display of the records and other information

Text Records

Beneath the short title, displayed in bold at the top of the page, are a series of tabs, labelled – Title Page, Publication Details, Dedication, Bibliographical, Additional Information and People. Click through them to find out more about the translation.

The 'Title Page' tab reproduces everything as it appears on the title page.
The ‘Publication Details’ contains brief bibliographical and descriptive details on the text. For a full collation see under the ‘Bibliographical’ tab.
Under the 'Dedication' tab there is the dedicatee's name, along with a summary of preliminary material, and frequently transcriptions from the dedications or prefaratory material, especially where this elucidates issues to do with translation or the political and historical context of the text.
The 'Bibliographical' tab contains format information, as well as a collation of the signatures and pagination to allow bibliographers to identify the unique copy used to create the database record and compare it with copies in front of them. This may lead, we hope, to the identification of further issues and variants. There is also space here for detailing marginalia and other copy-specific.
'Additional Information' records the STC number and location of the copy collated. It also includes the text's number in Allison and Rogers' bibliography The contemporary printed literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, where appropriate, and any information in the Stationer's Register or details about the book's provenance.
Finally the 'People' tab lists any person known to be associated with the production of the book according to their role, from translators and authors to editors and booksellers. Clicking on the name will take you to the corresponding entry in the 'Person' index and allow you to view other translations with which they were involved.

People Records

The name is displayed in authority form at the top of the page in bold. Below are further details about that person, their use of a pseudonym, the name transcribed from the text(s) if different, information about how that person has been identified and so forth. Below the texts in the database associated with that individual are listed. Clicking on them takes you to the corresponding text record(s).

Some users may notice that a number of the fields are empty at present. As it says in the introductory page this is a work in progress, so we hope that as time goes by they will gradually be supplemented.

Any information about recent scholarly work on any aspect of the contents of the database would be welcome and should be emailed to a.samson@ucl.ac.uk.

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