Bartleby Weekly: March 20, 2000

Bartleby Weekly

Volume I, Issue 2. March 27, 2000

Searching Bartleby.com

On March 20, 2000, Bartleby.com unveiled a completely redesigned web site offering numerous enhancements over our previous design. While the graphical enhancements to the site are apparent, some of the behind-the-scenes changes may not be. One of these changes is a vastly improved search. Bartleby.com’s new search is much faster than before, which is important because there is now much more data to search. Searches can also be restricted to specified categories of texts, such as reference, verse, fiction, and nonfiction. Searches also return more relevant results, ensuring that users can get the information they need. These results are sorted by their relevancy, with the pages that are most likely to be helpful listed first.

From the search results page, you can view your results in three separate ways. First, clicking the search result takes you to the exact spot in the retrieved document where your search words are located. For example, a search for “undiscover’d country” in Bartlett’s Quotations returns one result, which when clicked takes you to the exact quotation containing the words “undiscover’d country,” which in this case is the famous “to be or not to be” monologue from Hamlet. Search words are hyperlinked in the results page, allowing for easier navigation through documents. For example, a search for “United States” in the Columbia Encyclopedia brings a very long entry article for “United States.” Within that article, the words “united” and “states” will be highlighted, and clicking those words brings them to the top of the page, allowing for easier navigation through the document. This feature can be disabled by clicking “Show Unmarked” in the search results page, rather than the result itself. The entry returned will have no markup, which is particularly suitable for printing. Finally, clicking on “Show Related” brings up related information based on the search results. In the previous example, clicking “Show Related” brings up encyclopedia articles related to the United States, including articles on “North America” and “President.”

Statue of Housman in Bromsgrove, England

Courtesy Bromsgrove District Council

Anniversary of A.E. Housman’s Birthday

Bartleby.com celebrates the anniversary of A.E. Housman’s birth. Born on March 26, 1859, in Fockbury, England, A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad is one of Bartleby.com’s more popular texts, containing such classic poems as “When I was one-and-twenty,” “With Rue My Heart Is Laden,” “To an Athlete Dying Young,” and “Far in a Western Brookland.”

Click here to shop the Bartleby Bookstore.