Rare Book Monthly
Westerly Women in America: A Journey Through the AE Database
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After retrieving such search results, I would then scroll down the result list to find any titles that looked like travel narratives with either a female author or reference to a female author in the title field. I had originally begun the project with the assumption that all travel narratives authored by women would be autobiographical. As I began to read through my search results, I immediately learned that this was not so. Again, it was crucial for me to read the entire bibliographic record to comprehend the content and context of the book. I ran title searches to find all records of the same book within the AE Database. Then, I would search for the one record that had the most information on that book. As I was learning, not all bibliographies are created equal; some held much more descriptive information than others. Dorothy Sloan catalogs, for example, tend have lengthier descriptions than other sources.
Within the chosen subject of my collection, I began to find sub-genres such as pioneer narratives, Indian captivity narratives, travel and description narratives, homesteading narratives, overland travel narratives. Although one could easily create collections from each of these areas, I wanted my collection to span all of these sub-genres. In my future work with the TCP project, I plan to use AE’s “Wants List” Software to arrange these different areas into their own small lists. As I read through the book descriptions, I had to distinguish between actual travel narratives as opposed to descriptions of life on the western frontier. Take for example, the title Homesteading with the Elk. A Story of Frontier Life in Jackson Hole, Wyoming by Bertha Chambers Gillette. The bibliographic description did not allude to inclusion of any travel narrative, yet I could not confirm otherwise without actually reading the book itself. A similar sounding title Cowchips ‘n’ Cactus. The Homestead in Wyoming by Florence Blake Smith is quite different. For this particular title, the bibliographic record indicated that the author moved from Chicago to homestead in Wyoming. Again, there is no reference to any travel narrative, but I probably would have to read the book in order to make a further determination.
A note about searching the AE Database. You must remove delete colons from titles in order for the database to recognize the search as a “Title” search. Otherwise, the AED sees the colon as a query symbol, such as the one used in the 1820:1920 date span search.
