The CERL Thesaurus contains variant names of persons, corporate bodies, places and printers/publishers recorded in books or other material printed during the hand-press era (1450 - ca. 1830). Authority files contributed by CERL member libraries and other libraries/projects concentrating on the history of the book are brought together and made searchable in one single system.
Searching the CERL Portal assisted by the CERL Thesaurus offers you the possibility to expand your search for personal and place names to include variant names recorded in the CERL Thesaurus.
For example, a search with place name Venice could be expanded with terms such as Venedig, Venetië, Venezia and more, a search on Petrarque with terms such as Petrarca, Petrarch, Petrarka and more.
When including christian name(s) in a request to the CERL Thesaurus, the only accepted format is (for example): Grotius, Hugo; Hall, Joseph; Pascal, Blaise (Querying the CERL Thesaurus with more than one term only gives meaning if the variant entries consisting of one single of the search terms are previously deselected).
It is planned (fall, 2007) to display basic biographical data contained in the CERL Thesaurus database together with each set of retrieved variant names.
How to use CERL Thesaurus Assisted Search
Enter a search term and click the Thesaurus button. The CERL Portal will search the CERL Thesaurus database for alternative personal names or place names (depending on which button is clicked) and return a list of Thesaurus records. You can select any record(s) and select or deselect any nama variant(s) of the displayed Thesaurus records, completing your Thesaurus query by pressing the Add selected terms button. The selected variant name forms are automatically added (with boolean OR) to your original search term in the Portal's search box.
Please note that adding many terms may slow down or interrupt your search. The remote index databases (access by Z39.50) have varying limits to the number of OR'ed terms and to the number of seconds a search may take. When you include remote index databases in a search, a maximum of 5-10 variant names is recommended.
The CERL Thesaurus is not case-sentitive, but it is sensitive to diacritics (Pêtraque gives zero hit).To avoid noise, exclude variant name forms in a Thesaurus record consisting of initials (f.ex. "P., F." Petrarch.
You can also access the CERL Thesaurus directly through this link. This will allow you to use all the special functionalities included in the CERL Thesaurus, such as displaying all printers recorded in the CERL Thesaurus that were active in the printing place you selected, searching for provenance information connected to personal names, or annotating information you found in the CERL Thesaurus by making use of its notepad facility.