International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing ArtsSociété Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle |
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Actes du XIVe Congrès International des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du SpectacleBeograd 15-20 septembre 1980. Beograd : 1982. ISSN 0361-7500 The Presentation of TANDEM by the National SIBMAS Centre of the Federal Republic of GermanyIII
Werner MederDemonstration of the Theatre Information System TANDEMpp. 97-102
As mentioned earlier in this session, the computer terminal in front of the audience is connected via a conventional telephone line with the computer centre of the Gesellschaft für Information und Dokumentation (GID) in Frankfurt am Main. For interactive searching in the TANDEM files the input to the computer is done at a keyboard similar to that of a typewriter. The reply of the computer in this dialog will be written on the screen of the terminal and additionally may be printed by the on-line-printer next to the terminal. To perform searches in the stored data and to edit the results of the retrieval process on the screen, standard computer programs are used. We apply for this purpose the IBM software STAIRS which originally had been developed for retrieval in bibliographic files. TANDEM data were adapted in accordance with the needs of the (potential) users as well as with the conventions of the information retrieval system STAIRS. TANDEM files have been stored on magnetic discs to achieve a comfortable dialog with short response time to the search queries. The first part of the demonstration mainly deals with the "production
file" of TANDEM. Fig. I shows a typical unit of documentation.
For searching productions of a certain work the knowledge of the original title is needed as a key for a successful access to the file and for complete results. This prerequisite may be fulfilled e.g. by searching with SOMMERNACHTSTRAUM and receiving A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM as the original title of this work. Retrieval with this title results in six productions from different theatres. The search result can be restricted in various ways, e.g. by combining it with AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL as the translation author. In four of the six productions Schlegel's translation was used. The production file can be applied for both retrieving the actor who played a certain role in a given work, e.g. the THESEUS in SOMMERNACHTSTRAUM (result: 9 names of actors), and getting a 'role profile' of a certain actor, e.g. of TONI BERGER (result: 16 roles in 10 different works). in both cases the output is a list from subsets of the casts of each production involved. Context information like title, author, theatre, director, date of first night, etc, are also available and may be added to the output due to the users' special needs. Another approach in searching the production file is to find out for a given theatre in which works a given actor played a role, e.g. LOLA MUETHEL and RESIDENZTHEATER MUENCHEN (result: 6 productions), or in which production of a given work a given artist was the director, e.g. HAMLET and MAX REINHARDT (result: 1 production). In a similar way, as mentioned above, search results may be restricted to a given time interval in which the first night took place, e.g. searching for FIDELIO with the premiere in 1975 or 1976 selects one of the six stored productions of this opera. The second part of the demonstration refers to the "object file". Fig.
2 shows a typical item stored.
Production-related objects are correlated with its production by a production number included in both the production and the object files. By searching e,g. with PRODUCTION NUMBER 455 of a certain Hamlet production (Deutsches Theater Berlin, 1909) all stored objects (33 items) like stage design sketches or photographs are retrieved- Each unit of documentation includes all information needed in addition to the description of the object for e.g. orderinq copies from the institution which holds the material in its archive. In the third part some searches in the "work title file" will be demonstrated.
Fig. 3 shows a typical item from this file.
By searching e,g. for BERTOLT BRECHT as an author 38 titles are retrieved. A search for BRECHT in a different function than author shows that he is the author of HERR PUNTILA UND SEIN KNECHT MATTI as well as a co-author of the text source used for this work. Searching for an author's name and a given title of his work delivers all stored editions of this title, e.g. searching for HAMLET retrieval 17 items, the oldest edition from 1603 as well as the latest one from 1978, a translation into German. At any time of searching changing from one file to another is possible, e.g. after retrieving inforrmation on HAMLET in the work title file a search for HAMLET in the production file will inform which of the stored work titles were used and perhaps which roles included in the work title were omitted in the productions. Due to the fact that all data elements are searchable, any approach and any combination of search terms is possible. In addition to this, for searching of words with uncertain or unknown spelling, a truncation facility is available, e.g. by knowing the word NATO and the fragment INFAN... the title LUDUS DE NATO INFANTE MIRIFICUS by Carl Orff may be found. The main difference between a conventional printed index or card file
and the computer-assisted searching in the TANDEM databanks is the following:
In case of the conventional tools the search strategy has to be predefined
while in case of a databank the strategy is upset "in situ", i.e. in the
moment when the problem arises, and the process of retrieving can be modified
at any time due to the user's needs and the search results received up
to now.
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