Rare Book Monthly
Westerly Women in America: A Journey Through the AE Database
non
Onward to AE’s “Wants List” Software:
After compiling my initial “Collection List” into a word document, I began to experiment with the “Wants List” Software being introduced by AE. This software is linked to the AE Database, so that one can conveniently select records from the AE Database to create one’s own unique bibliography. After adding about 100 titles into the software, I had created what the software calls a “Provisional Want” list. From the control panel on the left of the screen, I had the option to create and name a “Want List”. Naming the list “women’s narratives”, I then went back to the control panel and selected “Arrange Wants." This brought up an option at the top of my “Want” list to select and transfer any and or all titles to my women’s narratives list from the “Provisional List.” I also had the option to delete any records that I no longer wanted in my list. After several hours of plugging in titles from my initial “Collection List” document to the “Wants List” software, I opted to scrap the word document and directly use the “Wants List” software. I was beginning to understand that this software could organize and maintain my collection ways far superior to a word processing document.
As I had initially arranged my collection list alphabetically by author’s last name, now I had other options to manage the organization of my list. As an example, each record has the following fields: sl number, author, place printed, year printed, title, date (date meaning date added to list not publication date), deleted and status. One can sort the list either by author, place printed, year printed, title or date. Another neat thing is that the titles are hyper linked to a pop up window of the original AED bibliographic record. I found that this came in handy when I wanted to quickly refer to other information on the record, such as the source name or date printed. When working with hundreds of titles, duplicate entries are always inevitable. To my glad surprise, the “Wants List” Software would not allow me to enter duplicate records onto the “Provisional List.” In addition to creating the list of titles from the AE Database, I also had compiled a small list of titles that were not yet included in the AE Database, but that I had wanted to add to the final collection. With the “Wants List” software, I was able to add these records under the “Add Wants” option. The “Add Wants” form has the following fields to use; author name, title, place printed and year printed. The title field is large enough to add notes about the title, if needed.
In summary, I had fun experimenting with new and creative ways to use the AE Database and “Wants List” Software to form my own collection of Women’s Westward Travel Narratives. I am still learning the software, and would like to ideally have a collection of over 250 titles. This will take further exploration into AE Database searches. In my opinion, the “Wants List” Software is quite user-friendly, and works as a perfect complement to the AE Database. I predict that as the AE Database expands its sources and records, the “Wants List” Software will become an even more powerful tool.
