The most important search options in the arpa database:

Truncation

Using the asterisk (*) before or after a word trunk lists all HBBW (= Bullinger correspondence) letters with corresponding sequence, regardless of whether some other letters of the alphabet appear before or after.

Ex.: Stell* in the text search finds all HBBW letters that include the words stella, stellam, stellas, stellarum, etc.

Ex.: searching for *meister* generates all HBBW letters that contain the word "Hofmeister", “Schulmeister"or “Burgermeister", including inflected forms.

Search fields: sender, addressee, city

In these search fields names can be entered in complete or incomplete form.

Ex.: Bu* in the search field “sender”: clicking on the magnifying glass filters generates all names beginning with "Bu".

Text search: possible combinations

-"AND search" is possible by typing a series of words separated only by a space (without a decimal point).

Ex.: Bucer* Bibliand* Pellik* generates all letters with these three sequences "Bucer," "Bibliand" and “Pellik”, including inflected forms.

-"OR search" is possible by the use of the characters { and |.

Ex.: {Bibliand*|Pellik*} lists all HBBW letters showing the sequence “Bibliand" or "Pellik" only, or both "Bibliand" and "Pellik", including inflected forms.

"OR search" is also possible by listing the search items one below the other.

Ex.:

Viret*

Farel*

Curio*

Comte*

Exact limits of a search

- In the "search text" function, the proximity between the words to be searched for can be defined with the fields “Proximity search” and “Word proximity”.

More precise search limits are also possible

- by ticking the box "Not in footnotes"

- by defining a period of time in the fields "year from / till" on the top right.

- by the additional specification of sender, addressee or city.

Capital letters

Taking into account a capital letter at the beginning of a word is possible by attaching the + sign before that word.

Ex.: +plat* generates all HBBW letters that include the sequence “Plat” (with a capital "P").

Zoom feature

When entering a word or a name in one of the search fields, a click on the magnifying glass of another search field shows all senders, addressees or cities of HBBW letters including the requested word or name.

Ex.: Bucer in the field “sender”: Clicking the magnifying glass of the field "city" generates a list of all places where Bucer wrote letters to Bullinger from. Clicking the magnifying glass of the field "Addressee" generates the names of all co-recipients of Bucer's letters to Bullinger.

Ex.: iustificat* in the text search: a click on the magnifying glass of the field “sender” lists the persons who used this sequence in their letters.

Browse

Clicking on the button "Show content" generates the lists of contents of the digitized HBBW volumes. By clicking on a volume number in the left part of the window, the table of contents appears on the right.

When selecting the number of a specific HBBW letter, that letter is directly accessible via the "Go to" selection. The top bar arrows allow to access pages before and after the current page, or to navigate directly to a page by typing the page number in the search field provided on the same bar.

Direct access to a letter

Typing the number of a letter in the search window above the button "To letter" leads directly to that particular letter.

Exporting parts of texts

By entering a letter number in the "to letter" window or by clicking on a hit generated by a letter search, it is possible to generate a txt or xml version of the letter by selecting the corresponding button on the toolbar above the text of the letter. In this way, sections of the text can be exported into other word processing programs. Above each letter on the right side of the searched page the volume and page information is stated to allow quick citation.