Search Help Screen

Tales Online-Advanced Search Help

On the advanced search screen you will be able to do both a Boolean search and also a specific search for a specific category or categories.

Notice that each category is organized alphabetically and each term is preceded by a box. Clicking on a specific box or boxes will narrow the search so only terms contained under those categories within the database will be searched for tales as output. Thus if you are interested in the individual that compiled, collected, or created the tale (i.e. Hans Christian Andersen), you can search for either an editor, collector, or an author by clicking on the specific box. If you are not sure what role that individual had in accumulating the tales, click all three and all three areas will be searched.

You can also search for a specific illustrator. Although we do not currently include illustrations, we do list the illustrator’s name if an illustration(s) is included in the tale.

Searches can be done for tales from a specific country, ethnic group/tribe, region, and/or state. You can also search by appropriateness, character, collection (name), field collected, genre, journal article title, keyword, motif description, motif number, narrator, setting, storyteller (if available), tale title, Tale type, and variant title.

Specific instructions for searching for motifs are included in the help screen under “Thompson Motif Index Search.” We would suggest your clicking on motif number or motif description after you have ascertained that information. Then you can include both or either information with another term you have clicked to be searched.

If you choose keyword as your search criteria, we have created a list of keywords for each tale that describe emotions, language, moral messages, aspects of specific cultures or cultural details, relationships, conflict, meanings of relationships, and religions, etc.

To search setting, click on “setting” box and use terms such as “castle,” “forest,” or “island.”

Tales about a specific character: Choose character as your search criterion. Then you can use two different kinds of search terms:

Character names: You can search by the character’s name, such as “Boots,” “Cinderella,” “Jack,” “Snow White.” Such a search will pull up all tales in which this character appears. Sometimes storytellers refer to their characters by general terms such as “boy,” “princess,” “king,” “merchant,” so these terms may also help you find the tales you want.

Character roles: Different character roles are described in detail in the Glossary. Essentially, a character role tells you what the character does in the tale, whether he or she is the “hero,” “heroine,” or “villain.” You can search for tales by the character’s roles, although it is important to note that every tale in the database has a heroine or hero, although at times, their role is not necessarily described in those terms.

Tales by title: Choose title and type in the exact title of the tale if you would rather consult the results screen to see the “short summary” of the tale. As mentioned in the simple search help screen, on the blue bar at the top of the simple search screen is “List all tales” which are linked to the full text screen. The short summary is not available.

Tales from a specific country: Here again, on the simple search screen is a list of “Countries/Languages” on the blue bar, however, this list is not linked. Therefore, choose country as your search criterion and type in the name of the country from which you are interested in reading tales (such as, “Russia,” “Liberia,” “Mexico,” “England,” or “Afghanistan” ).

Storyteller: Unfortunately, since most of the tales in collections and many contained in journals do not give credit to the storyteller, it may not always be possible to search for a specific storyteller. If it is present, it will appear on the performance screen.

Tales collected by famous collectors such as the Brothers Grimm: Choose collector as the search criterion and type in the collector’s name as the search term. Note that the Brothers Grimm will not be found in the storyteller field because they didn’t create the tales that appear in their famous collection. Instead, the Brothers Grimm heard the tales from storytellers and then wrote them down for publication.

Search by tale type: Tale type is discussed at greater length in the Glossary. Essentially, the term “tale type” refers to those tales that share the same basic plot, such as different versions of Cinderella. If you haven’t had some folkloristic training, you probably won’t choose to search for tales by tale type.

Search by motif number or motif description: These two items are described in detail and the instructions for their use are contained on the help screens for the “Thompson Motif Index Search.” For a brief description that might interest you in using the Motif Index: Essentially, a motif is a small part of a tale, such as a character, an object, a setting, or an action. So that folklorists and others can easily refer to such things, these motifs can be referred to by standard combinations of numbers. For example, the motif about a flood that almost destroys the world is motif A1010. World flood. If you were interested in locating all the tales that include world flood as an element in a tale across cultures, you would first locate the motif number and description using the Thompson Motif Index Search and then click on the two boxes for motif number and motif description and the tales that have been analyzed to include these specific items will appear on the search result screen.

NOTE: All motifs in the complete “Thompson’s Index” are contained in this database and are linked to those tales that have been assigned that specific motif. The sixth volume which is the index to the other volumes is linked only to the five volumes that contain all of the motifs. All tales in the database are analyzed by motif and contain as many motifs as are pertinent to each tale.

BOOLEAN SEARCHING

Another method of searching contained on the advanced search screen is Boolean logic. Boolean logic is another way of searching two terms at once. First, choose a search criterion. Then choose between “and,” “or,” or “not” (discussed below) and type in two different search terms.

and A search for search term A and search term B (for example, “anger” and “jealousy”) will locate tales that include both variables. Only tales that include both variables (in this case, both anger and jealousy) will be accessed.

or A search for search term A or search term B will locate tales that include either variable. So, all tales about anger and all tales about jealousy will come up with an or search.

not A search for search term A not search term B will locate all tales that include anger but don’t also include jealousy. When you are doing a not search, the sequence of the search terms is very important. “Anger not jealousy” would access completely different tales than would “jealousy not anger.”

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