Cook, Hardy M.  Review of *The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM."
Appeared    in *Shakespeare Newsletter* (46.2, Summer 1996, 33-34) with some
minor revisions.  (WSBCD REVIEW)

Harner, James L., ed.  The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM: 1990-1993.
Cambridge UP, 1996.  ($240 List Price)

System Requirements:	Macintosh (System 7 or later; 4 MB of  RAM) and PC
(Windows 3.1+ or Windows 95 (386 or later; 8 MB of RAM).

The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM: 1990-1993 is the first release in
The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM 1900-Present project, which, when
complete, will "provide annotated entries for all important books, articles,
book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions,
audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular
materials related to Shakespeare and published or produced since 1900."  This
release "includes coverage of more than 12,000 works published or produced
during 1990-1993 as well as several thousand additional reviews of books,
productions, films, and audio recordings)." The plan is to update The World
Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM annually, moving forward one year and
backwards three.  The next disk, scheduled for release in early 1997, will,
thus, cover 1987-1994, with 24,700 plus entries and another 30,000 to 40,000
reviews, newspaper pieces, and the like appended to these entries.

The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM differs from the print
bibliography in many ways.  One obvious difference in the media is physical:
The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM: 1990-1993 fits on one CD-ROM,
while the four print volumes that it constitutes take up three inches of space
on the shelf.  In addition, the CD-ROM bibliography, as its documentation
indicates, "both cumulates and significantly expands the annual bibliographies
in Shakespeare Quarterly, it omits several entries in the latter (especially
works peripherally related to Shakespeare, most obituaries of performers,
abstracts of unpublished convention papers, and operas not based on Shakespeare
texts), condenses some (especially by omitting non-speaking roles in entries
for productions), and conflates others (especially abstracts of published works
and book or production reviews originally listed as separate entries)."  The
1987-1994 edition will no longer provide entries for productions of operas and
will have many entries conflated for more efficient searching.

I am sure that I am not the only Shakespearean whose ritual upon receiving the
print World Shakespeare Bibliography in the mail is to turn to the "Author
Index" in the back and check my own citations.  I thought that this ritual
might be the place to begin with this examination of  The World Shakespeare
Bibliography on CD-ROM, especially with my rather modest output during these
four years.  In the 1990 print World Shakespeare Bibliography, I had two
citations: 1043 was a reference to eight abstracts in ShN from the SAA seminar
"Using the Computer in Shakespeare Studies" of which I was a participant, while
1098 was a citation of the abstract itself. In 1991, I also had two citations:
973, a piece I did for ShN on a dual exhibition at the Folger Library, "Royal
Autographs and First Folios Exhibited at Folger"; and 1322, a citation of
abstracts of four articles I made for ShN.  In 1992, there were four citations:
673, the 1992 Summer Festivals list I compile for ShN; 1065, a reference to my
review of Janet Adelman's Suffocating Mothers for ShN; and 3103 and 4654, my
essay "Jane Howell's BBC First Tetralogy: Theatrical and Televisual
Manipulation" in LFQ, and a cross reference to it.  In 1993 were a citation for
the 1993 Summer Festivals list (827) and an entry for the SHAKSPER Listserv
(962). After locating these in the print bibliography, I turned to the CD-ROM
version.

I began by starting the Cambridge DynaText Reader. From the opening screen, I
double clicked the World Shakespeare Bibliography from the book collection.
What appeared to the left is the table of contents - the four major divisions
of the taxonomy ("General Shakespeareana," "Play Groups," Individual Works,"
and "Indexes").  The subdivisions of these major divisions are accessible by a
mouse click on the plus sign to the left.  In a separate window to the right is
the text, the entries themselves with hypertext links to cross-references
indicated by a red arrow.

With typical power-user hubris (that is, not consulting the User's Manual), I
entered "Cook, Hardy" in the "Find" panel at the bottom of the screen. I got
seven "hits" as indicated on the first line on left side by a red "7" next to
the table of contents title, The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM:
1990-1993.  Just below, "General Shakespeareana" was highlighted with a red "4"
next to the plus sign; on the right was the 1992 Summer Festivals entry (1174).
Just above these are thirteen icons.  DynaText does not as yet provide "bubble"
help identifying the icons, but the first icon, a flashlight, is normally used
for "Find," while the second and third - a triangle pointing left and right
respectively - are used for "Previous" and "Next."  So I clicked the right
pointing triangle, and viola at the top of the text window now was displayed
citation 1684, the 1993 Summer Festivals entry; on the left, "General
Shakespeareana" remained highlighted.  One more click on the "Next" icon
revealed a reference to my Suffocating Mothers review, embedded in the citation
for the work itself (1926).  Another click brought me to the entry for SHAKSPER
(2012).  The next click took me out of "General Shakespeareana" to the two
citations under "Individual Works," my essay on Jane Howell (6265) and its
cross reference (9822).  The last hit for "Cook, Hardy" was to the "Authors
Index" to which I will return in a moment.  I next clicked the flashlight icon,
which returned me to the "Find" panel at the bottom of the screen with "Cook,
Hardy" still highlighted.  A click on the fourth icon, a flashlight with in a
circle with a slanted line through it, returned me to the "Find" panel and
erased my previous search.  Next, I searched for "Hardy Cook."  The four hits
(one in "Play Groups"; the other three in "Individual Works") were embedded
references to the four article abstracts I prepared for ShN in 1991 (3883,
7077, 7809, and 9090).

With "Cook, Hardy" and "Hardy Cook" uncovering seven of the ten citations from
the print bibliography, I decided to see what a boolean search (and, or, not)
would reveal, so I searched for "Hardy and Cook."  The resulting number of hits
(28) indicated in the table of contents window is misleading.  In the first
three major divisions of the taxonomy, the search engine clearly counted a
single entry as two hits (the appearance of "Hardy and Cook" or "Cook and
Hardy" together in a single citation counted as two hits and not as one;
further, when I added my middle initial, the same single citation counted as
three hits when the "M." was present.)  What I do not understand is why in the
"Author Index" the "Cook" of the two authors before and after me (Carol,
Dorothy, Heather, and Judith) were also highlighted and counted.  This anomaly
not withstanding, the boolean search of  "Hardy and Cook" uncovered eleven
citations (1174, 1684, 1865, 1926, 2012, 3883, 6265, 7077, 7809, 9090, and
9822) and the "Author Index" entry.  The only citation I found by the boolean
search that did not show up in the two previous simple searches was 1865 - a
reference to my piece on the dual Folger Library exhibition, which was embedded
in the citation for the catalogue Peter Blayney wrote for his exhibit - The
First Folio of Shakespeare.

I have purposely postponed discussing the "Author Index" entry until now.  The
taxonomy in the left-hand window can be scrolled through to browse the CD-ROM
bibliography in a manner analogous to using the print bibliography.  I
mentioned earlier what I do when I receive the print bibliography in the mail.
I could have approached the CD-ROM version is a similar manner. Clicking the
plus sign next to "Indexes" reveals its four divisions - "Authors," "Actors,"
"Dramatists," and "Subjects."  By clicking "Authors," the letters of the
alphabet appear.  By highlighting "C" and typing "Cook, Hardy" in the "Find"
panel or by scrolling through the Cs, I reached "Cook, Hardy," revealing the
eleven citations I have already uncovered through my three searches.  To reach
any of these citations, all I needed to do was click on the citation number.
Viola, all over again, power-user hubris pay back, but what did I learn from
this experiment?

First, I learned that all of the citations except those to the unpublished
abstract of my SAA seminar paper that were in the print version appeared in the
CD-ROM (as the document to the bibliography indicates)* and that the article
abstracts that had received one citation in print were embedded in the four
abstracted articles in the CD-ROM as was my review of Suffocating Mothers and
the Folger Library dual exhibition piece (again, as indicted in the
documentation). Second, I learned that one can use the indexes and the table of
contents (taxonomy) to search or browse The World Shakespeare Bibliography on
CD-ROM in a manner comparable to the ways one uses the print version and that
one can initiate both simple and complex searches of the database.  In fact,
the power and speed of searching is the clearest advantage the CD-ROM has over
its print counterpart.  By using the keyword, proximity, and boolean search
capabilities of the CD-ROM, one can identify studies in moments that would
require skimming through compete volumes of the print bibliography.  Let me
illustrate.

A simple search to find references to "Fluellen" might start in the table of
contents section: Click "Indexes"; click "Subjects"; click "F"; type "Fluellen"
in "find" box; resulting in two hits of articles discussing Fluellen.  The
taxonomy, however, indicates other hits.  To see what they were, I could scroll
through the list or return the text window to the beginning and enter
"Fluellen" in the "Find" panel.  Either way ten reviews of Henry V with stage
credits for Fluellen are located in addition to the initial two references to
essays.

However, much more sophisticated searches are possible using the "Search Forms"
dialog box. To reach it, I clicked on "Book" from the menu bar and selected
"Search Forms."  The top half of this dialog box records "Past Searches."
Below this is a search form selection panel, with the default display being
"Standard," and another "Find" panel.  At the bottom are four buttons: "Find,"
"Cancel," "Previous," and "Next."  In this default configuration, "Search
Forms" acts just like the "Find" panel at the bottom of the screen.  Clicking
on "Standard" reveals the other search forms: "Entry Title," "Entry Author,"
Entry Number," "Proximity Search," "Keyword Search," and "Keyword and
Language."  The "Search Forms" dialog box can be left open and used to maneuver
through searches with the results displayed in the text window. "Entry Title"
is used to search words in titles; "materialist," for example, appears in three
titles in this CD-ROM.  "Entry Author" locates only the author, editor,
compiler, and the like of entries.  "Entry Number" quickly locates citations by
their numbers.  "Keyword" searches for entries that contain particular words in
their keyword field.  "Keyword and Language" searches entries in a particular
language: "King Lear" and "fr" locates Yves Thoret's "Le m‚canisme de
d‚chirement dans Le roi Lear." "Proximity Search" is especially powerful,
locating, for instance, "Branagh" within "10" words of "Ado."  These searches
can be further enhanced using wild card operators "*" and "?"; thus "act*" will
locate act, acts, acting, actor, actors, action, and so on, while "advi?e" will
locate all instances of both "advice" and "advise."  Boolean operators can be
used to construct very complex searches: "(Hamlet and Q1) or (Hamlet and bad
quarto)" will find all cases of "Hamlet" occurring within twenty words of
either "Q1" or "bad quarto."  Other complex searches can take advantage of the
underlying Standard General Markup Language (SGML) encoding of each
bibliographical entry to perform context searches using the keywords
"containing," "directly," "in," "inside," "null," "in," "with," and "=."  I
repeat the searching tools illustrate the clearest advantage of the CD-ROM over
its print counterpart, yet there is still many more ways to use the CD-ROM.

I mentioned above that The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM contains
cross- references - hyperlinks.  Clicking on Venus and Adonis in the table of
contents window brings the text window to the Venus and Adonis, Scholarship and
Criticism, Editions and Texts sections. Scrolling down the text reveals a
number of hyperlinks, indicated by a red arrow to the left side of the entry.
Double clicking the red arrow at Jonathan Bate's "Sexual Perversity in Venus
and Adonis" brings up a cross-reference to Bate's Shakespeare and Ovid, a book
that incorporates the essay that appeared in Yearbook of English Studies.  The
"Annotation" feature allows users to create their own hyperlinks, bookmarks,
and notes that are appended to entries the user selects. Selecting "Book" from
the menu bar and then "Create Annotation" from the submenu bring up the
annotation choices: "Create Bookmark," "Start Hyperlink," "End Hyperlink,"
"Create Note." There are also icons for creating a bookmark, opening a note,
starting a hyperlink, and ending a hyperlink.  If I want to append a note to an
entry, I would first select "Create Note," then compose, name, and save the
note.  If I wanted to bookmark this entry, I would select "Create Bookmark" and
then name it.  If I wanted to hyperlink this entry to another, I would select
"Start Hyperlink," move to the entry I wanted to link, select "End Hyperlink,"
and name the cross reference.  Having done these things, I could then use the
"Manage Annotations," submenu under "Book" directly to go to a bookmarked
entry, note, or hyperlink.  Red symbols to the right indicate bookmarks, notes,
and user-created hyperlinks.  Clicking these also activates them.

The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM surely provides an impressive
array of tools for searching and manipulating within its database, but how does
one move that information out of the database into other forms?  One can copy
text to the clipboard.  Any amount of contiguous text can be highlighted in the
text window and saved to the clipboard.  From the clipboard that information
can be pasted into an application.  One can even copy material to the clipboard
with its SGML encoding.  In preparing this review, I have many times toggled
between the CD-ROM and Word 7.0 to paste names, titles, and other information
directly into this document.  However, others times, I wanted to print or
export the entries for later use.  Herein lies my biggest complaint with this
version of the DynaText software used with the CD-ROM.  To print or export an
entry, that entry must first be highlighted in the table of contents window.
If this is not done, printing begins with the first entry and would continue to
the last unless the printing is suspended.  I have in my recycling bin next to
my desk about six copies of the first few pages of The World Shakespeare
Bibliography I printed mistakenly.  This difficulty is not the responsibility
of James Harner or the Cambridge University Press but of Electronic Book
Technologies, Inc., of Providence, Rhode Island, the company that makes the
DynaText program.  Not only should printing be simplified, one should also be
able to tag a list of entries to be printed or exported at the same time rather
than having to process by single entries.  The only other major suggestion I
would offer to improve the DynaText interface would be the addition of an icon
that would return the user to the beginning of the text.  As I have noted, a
search proceeds from the current location in the text - this was the reason
that when I was in the Indexes after I highlighted the letter "C" I could type
"Cook, Hardy" in the "Find" panel and go directly to my name in the "Author
Index."

Other changes are planned for the next few releases.  For The World Shakespeare
Bibliography on CD-ROM: 1987-1994, users will be able to limit searches by
document type (book monograph, book collection, article, dissertation, film,
production, recording, and so on).  It is also hoped that DynaText will build
in features that allow users to display hits in short form (rather than
scrolling immediately to the first hit) and allow marking of multiple records
for printing or exporting.  It is also planned that this version will have some
omnibus entries that group miscellaneous general-interest pieces (such as the
newspaper articles on the discovery of the Globe and Rose; general pieces on
the RSC; travel pieces and general introductions to major Shakespeare
festivals; organizations (SAA, Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft).  In the
future are also plans for changes in the taxonomy (especially in the sections
for Editions, Apocrypha, and Biography).

Much credit should be given to the Cambridge University Press for keeping the
cost of The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM affordable for the average
end-user.  All too often the temptation is to cater to the library market with
outrageously overpriced CD-ROMs that only libraries can afford.  Also, every
expectation is that yearly upgrades will be similarly low-priced; my hope would
be that an upgrade would cost roughly the same as buying a single copy of the
Shakespeare Quarterly print edition.

The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM gets my enthusiastic endorsement -
even with the limitations of the DynaText included with this first release, this
is the best bibliographic software I have ever used.  Do I plan to upgrade
every year?  No doubt about it.  Does this mean that I will no longer purchase
the print version with my Shakespeare Quarterly subscription?  Well. .  .  The
most current print version is, and it appears that it will remain, available a
year or more ahead of its CD-ROM counterpart.  Thus, until the print and CD-ROM
WSB are released at the same time, to be able to have access to the most recent
material on a subject, it would still be wise to have the Shakespeare Quarterly
version available. The print version does look good on my bookshelf, but it
does take up quite a bit of space.

				Notes

* Abstracts of unpublished papers are also soon to be excluded from the print
bibliography.