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S E A R C H S H A W |
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The works of Bernard Shaw are so numerous and various that providing a
searchable database including them all, or as many as can be found, is still
a distant hope. One thing holding this
back is that Shaw’s works will not go out of copyright in most of the world
until 2020, but until then various efforts are being made to put aspects of a
complete concordance online in forms that do not violate copyright laws. In some major libraries you can
still find the 10-volume, hardbound version of A Concordance to the Plays and Prefaces of Bernard Shaw, compiled
by E. Dean Bevan and published in 1971.
That concordance uses the 1930s Constable editions of Shaw’s works,
which can still be found in many libraries, so it is still useful. An effort is underway at Ball State
University Library in Indiana to digitize this compilation, and we will
announce here when it is ready for searching on the internet. In the meantime, the fastest growing
concordances-in-the-making are underway in Canada and Spain, and both use the
Bodley Head collection of Shaw’s works where possible. The one in Canada, the Sagittarius-Orion Project
under the auspices of Kay Li at York University, facilitated by the Shaw
Festival in Ontario and supported by Canadian granting agencies, is building
what is essentially an online teaching tool for students in Canadian schools
and will not be fully visible to the rest of the world until 2020. But there’s still much valuable
information provided that is accessible, starting at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/virtual-tour-of-shaviana. You could write to Kay Li at oriongbs@yorku.ca to see if she could help with your search. In Spain, at the Universidad de Extremadura, Linguistics Professor
Gustavo A. Rodriguez Martin is digitizing all the Shaw material he can get
his hands on and is quickly building the most accessible search engine currently available,
accessible in the sense that he will be happy to assist anyone with a search
of the Shaw materials he has digitized.
Eventually, after 2020, he may be able to put his entire concordance
online, but for now you would have to write to him at gustavoadolform@gmail.com. First,
consult his Table of Contents at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3CicJE5s_rELXJlX2hrTkRKWFk for the works currently digitized, but note that
all of Shaw’s plays and novels even it not listed here would be included in
any search. Professor Rodriguez Martin also maintains a quite entertaining “Bernard Shaw
Quotations Page” at http://shawquotations.blogspot.com.es , which investigates quotations that are often
ascribed to Shaw on the internet and elsewhere, some of which turn out to be
apocryphal, and he invites requests for searches there as well. And the gold mine of Shaw material
scattered around on YouTube, especially the videos,
is being collected at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxGpZjHhix37VN-zFfX6psg/playlists. Another fascinating project is GeoShaw,
which identifies and tracks Shaw’s spatial whereabouts on planet Earth. This can be accessed at https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=1373283,
and if you have questions about it or contributions’ to make, email Gustavo
at geoshawmap@gmail.com. Professor Rodriguez Martin would also be happy to provide Shaw scholars
with spreadsheets with the results retrieved by any given search term or
phrase. As examples, you can: 1.
Search
for a given word; say, "impecunious". See the results at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3CicJE5s_rEX2NFOFRKdDRxUzQ/view?usp=sharing. Click on
“Open” at the top to find references to Shaw’s works or works on Shaw. You can also click on “Print” and
“Download”. 2.
Search
for all the derivatives of a word; say, all the words beginning with
"PSY”. See the results at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3CicJE5s_rEdHVub09LY2V4aWM/view?usp=sharing. Click on
“Open” at the top to find references to Shaw’s works or works on Shaw. You can also click on “Print” and
“Download”. 3.
Search
for all occurrences of any two words within ten words of
each other, such as “Charlotte – Marriage”: See the results at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3CicJE5s_rEWloyUzRUVWw1a2c/view?usp=sharing
. Click on “Open” at the top to
find references to Shaw’s works or works on Shaw. You can also click on “Print” and
“Download”. 4.
Search
for all occurrences of an exact phrase, such as “Be That as It May”: See the results at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3CicJE5s_rEZW45bjlQcURDREE/view?usp=sharing
. Click on “Open” at the top to find references to Shaw’s works or works
on Shaw. You can also click on “Print”
and “Download”. And so
on. There are almost endless
possibilities. So while Shaw’s works are not as “searchable” as we’d like them to be,
they’re becoming more so by the minute.
Taking advantage of the services offered above would no doubt
encourage even speedier development of these search engines. WEBMASTER:
dietrich@usf.edu (please
report links that don’t work) |
