L’Année Philologique
(APh)
APh provides bibliographic details of journal articles, books and chapters in multi-authored books on ancient Greek
and Roman civilization. It represents a digitization of the original printed annual bibliographies and covers material
published since 1949, with plans to convert earlier volumes in due course. Note that there are no full texts available
via this database.
Accessing the Database
Access the University of Manitoba Libraries Home Page at http://umanitoba.ca/libraries. Under Find Articles,
Books and More on the left hand side of the screen, click on Collections & Databases A-Z. Choose the letter A,
then select Année philologique. Once you are at the APh home page, click on Enter.
Note that UM students and faculty can access the database from home but are required to log in by using their
Library Account ID and Password when prompted by the ‘User Authentication’ screen. For more information on
your Library ID and Password, go to: http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/help/
New Search and Search History
Your search begins in the New search screen. You can carry out a very basic search on e.g. the publications of a
particular author (ancient or modern) or a subject keyword by choosing one of the links near the top of the screen.
For instance, to find out what there is on the database by Christopher Gill, choose the Modern author link and
enter the surname Gill in the search box. Click on Search, tick all the likely entries, click on Confirm the
selection, and your selections will appear on your original page which has now become a Search history screen.
To run another search, either select another search option from the top of the screen, or click on New search to start
again. Be aware that selecting New Search will wipe out your previous search history, so proceed with care.
To carry out a more sophisticated search, build up a series of basic searches and combine the results (for more
information on combinations see Search Tips overleaf). E.g. to search on the portrayal of women in Greek
tragedy, click on New search from the blue vertical bar on the left hand side, then select the Full text link from
near the top of the screen. When the pop-up search box appears, type in women and click on Search. You will
find yourself back in your original screen with the Search history display. Then click on the Full text link again
and repeat the process, but this time with the term Greek; then a third time with the term tragedy. You should now
have a Search history screen with three search results, with the word ‘Total:’ and the number of results found.
You can combine searches from the different options. E.g. to locate the work Richard Seaford has published on
Euripides, you can click on New search, then Modern author and type Seaford and select all the variations of the
author’s name that appear or click on Select all and then on Confirm the selection. You will now have a Search
history screen with the results so far. Now click on Ancient authors and type in Euripides. Again you can click
on Select all and then on Confirm the selection. The Search history screen will now have the two searches listed.
Click on the Combine button and enter the numbers of the searches you want to combine, e.g. Q1 AND Q2.
Other Search Options
Subjects and disciplines: the three options are related to the subject arrangement used in the printed version of
APh, the first two reproducing the arrangement as it can be found in the volumes themselves, the third allowing you
to search on the keywords used. These three options are occasionally helpful, but should be used with care. For
example, searching on the Drama subsection in Genres will not find material on individual Greek or Roman
dramatists; to do this, you will need to run a separate Ancient Authors search. Note too that the third section
(Word(s) of the section) does not offer a free-text search, but is limited to the database’s own terms. Word(s) in
the title (in Other criteria) offers a narrower search than Full text and is useful when the latter produces too many
items. The other options in Other criteria and in the Date link are limiting commands; see Search Tips (below)
on their use.
Search Tips
To improve your search, you can make use of Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) in the search options Full text,
Word(s) of the section (in Subjects and disciplines), and, in the Other criteria option, Word(s) in the title,
Publisher, Collection, and Periodical. For example:
Euripides AND women will find material containing both words
Women OR woman will find material with either word or both words
Greek NOT Roman will find material with the word Greek except where Roman also appears.
To use these operators, build up a number of searches in the New search screen and click on the Combine button.
You can combine not only previous searches, using the format Q1, Q2 and so on, but also previous combinations of
terms, using the format C1, C2 and so on.
In the same search options, use the truncation symbol (*) for variant spellings and word endings. E.g. Philosoph*
will find all material with any word starting with this stem, e.g. philosophy, philosophical.
In Modern author and Ancient authors, end truncation is automatic. For instance Euripid (without typing an
asterisk) will find Euripides, Euripidean, and non-English variants, e.g. Euripide.
You can refine your search by combining it with the Date search, and (in Other criteria) the Publisher,
Collection, Periodical and Language searches.
Displaying Results
If there is more than one item found, you can examine them by clicking on Read the total or the underlined
number in the Search history Results box. The items are listed in brief format in groups of ten. Click on the Book
icon to see the full record. You may be offered a brief summary of contents. Beware: articles in journals are often
abbreviated; there is no list of abbreviations provided online. Instead, you must consult the list in the printed
version of APh, located on the first Floor of the Elizabeth Dafoe Library (Ref Z 7016 A5). The same caveat applies
to the otherwise very useful list of book reviews that is appended to monograph records (and preceded by the ║
symbol).
Note that if you see UM Links at the bottom of the full record, you can click on it to see if the University of
Manitoba Libraries has the item online or in a printed version.
Printing or Saving Results
From either the brief or full display, you can select up to 50 records to print; click on the Print command at the
bottom of the page, and when the new window appears, select the print criteria and then click on Create a PDF
file. The result can be printed or saved to a file.
E-Mailing Results
Click on the Export command at the bottom of the page, and when the new window appears, select the export
criteria and then click on Means of retrieving exports. Select Export to an e-mail address, enter your address,
and then click on Export.
Help and Logging off
A link to a concise Help screen is provided on the blue menu on the left of the screen.
To exit the database, click on Logoff on the blue menu on the left of the screen.
Warning
When building up a series of searches (as described overleaf) make sure that the pop-up search box has entirely
cleared itself between each search. If you work too fast you may find the search box fails to pop up. If this
happens, one solution is to close down your browser and start again.
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This guide is a slightly adapted version of L’Année Philologique (APh): A Library ‘Essentials’ Guide ©University
of Exeter CG 07/07 http://www.library.ex.ac.uk/guides/essentials/anneephil.pdf , used with permission 09/09 ces