British Drama Catalogue

Making the most of the British Drama Catalogue on OSEO

British Drama Catalogue

 

The integration of the Catalogue within OSEO enables the convenient discovery of its entries alongside texts and paratext from other editions, but it can also be navigated independently: here are some tips.

This single browsable list of every play in the Catalogue is effectively the home page. It is collapsed to year for convenience - but click expand all to see every single title.

You can always return to this home page by clicking on the oxblood-coloured heading British Drama 1533-1642: A Catalogue at the top of the rail at the left of each content page, or the Author page link from any of the Catalogue’s volume pages.

 

 

Search

From that home page, use Search within in the left-hand rail to search for plays by title.

To search across the text of the complete Catalogue, use advanced search, specifying the edition title as British Drama, using the Add Row feature to add more search fields if necessary.

Useful options in advanced search to build up your search are:

  • Author name: playwrights
  • Work title: play titles
  • Full text searches across all the content, so will find everything, including character names, costumes, and settings.
  • Year of composition includes possible results, so a search for plays dated to 1606 will discover a play dated to 1591-1639
  • Year of performance includes certain results, so a search for plays dated to 1606 will only discover plays dated to 1606.

Once you have a results list, it can be filtered with the author and date filters on the left-hand rail.

If you prefer working by narrowing down rather than building up a search, then an empty results list provides left-hand rail features that will enable you to:

  • Run a full-text search across the whole Catalogue
  • Filter by author
  • Filter by date (wide interpretation)

Navigation to specific Wiggins entries by number

Every entry in the Wiggins catalogue has its own number, and they are being increasingly used in secondary literature. They can also be used in DOIs to refer and navigate directly to the entries.

Every DOI is in a predictable pattern that includes the catalogue number: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.Wiggins1259 is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Wiggins number 1259; and https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.Wiggins814 is Thomas Kyd’s, Wiggins number 814.

(Every year in Wiggins also has its own DOI, also predictable: 1533 is https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.WigginsY1533.)

This means hyperlinks to individual entries can be constructed by rule.

As an example of the kind of use this pattern can support: our Wiggins javascript bookmarklet enables you to move, with one click, from a Wiggins number on any web page and click to navigate straight to that entry in the catalogue. Simply mouse over the number, and then click on the bookmarklet. You can also enter a Wiggins number yourself: click on the bookmarklet and then enter the number.

Anyone can add the bookmarklet to their browser; it is just like any bookmark, but contains some javascript to run the search (so you will need javascript enabled for it to work). Add it to your browser by dragging this Wiggins bookmarklet javascript into your browser’s toolbar (read more about bookmarklets in OSEO).