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The WWP has recently moved the publication of Women Writers Online onto a new technical platform, using the powerful PhiloLogic software developed by the ARTFL Project team at the University of Chicago. This new platform enables us to expand our range of search and analysis functions dramatically. A full list of features of the new version is below. We welcome feedback and comments from all users, including suggestions for features we should consider adding. All comments may be sent to wwp_comments@brown.edu.

The previous WWO interface will be kept active for a few months to allow users time to adjust and update any special links. The old interface will be permanently retired on August 1, 2006.

New features

The PhiloLogic software provides very strong support for textual analysis and fast, powerful searching. The new version of Women Writers Online now includes:

  • detailed word frequency counts for the individual text, the search result set, and the collection as a whole
  • the ability to analyse word frequencies as a function of author, date, and other factors
  • the ability to analyse collocations, with listings of the words that appear immediately before and after the search term
  • the ability to search on similar words, to allow better searching in old-spelling texts and also searching on inflected forms
  • stronger support for context-sensitive searching, to limit searches within particular genres or textual features
  • improved results display, including keyword-in-context display and a "gobbets" display which shows a larger portion of the surrounding text
  • detailed results bibliography
  • analysis of the position of the search term within the clause structure of the text
  • sequential search refinement, allowing users to refine an initially broad search using a variety of factors

The Sandbox

In addition to these features, which will be part of the main WWO interface, we plan to inaugurate an experimental workspace in which we can test out new interface tools. These might be tools which are too specialized to fit neatly into WWO interface, or experimental ideas that aren't yet ready for prime time. They'll be available for our users to test and comment on, and the most successful ideas will be incorporated into WWO. Please contact us if you have an idea or a prototype you'd like to offer us for testing.

Features planned for the future

We are now beginning work on several new areas of development, including:

  • including genre information in the metadata for each text, to allow searching and grouping by genre
  • adding annotation features to allow readers to add glosses, commentary, and other material
  • publishing a collection of syllabi from users of Women Writers Online (please contact us if you would like to contribute a syllabus).
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