PHI Workplace

There is an instruction booklet that accompanies this CD-ROM. If you require further assistance after consulting this helpsheet, please ask an Etext Center employee for the booklet.

I. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF STRUCTURE AND CONTENT:

From the LETRS Software QuickGuide:

PHI Workplace is a Windows application designed to read and search through Classical texts produced by the Packard Humanities Institute. There are currently two CD-ROMs related to this field. The first, PHI's CD-ROM #5.3, contains virtually the entirety of Latin literature up to A.D. 200, including the later writers Servius, Porphyry, Zeno, and Justinian. The second, CD-ROM #6, contains both the Inscriptions of the Christian Empire and the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papryi. The Inscription, a database of nearly 87,000 Greek texts of the late imperial and Byzantine periods, is intended as a resource for the study of late antiquity. Texts in the collection range chronologically from the accession of Diocletian to the fall of Constantinople (A.D. 285-1453). However, pre-Constantinian Christian inscriptions and Jewish inscriptions of the earlier Roman period are also included, as are non-Christian texts dating to the period of the Tetrarchy or later. In addition to the macaronic Greek and Latin of many of these works, the Judaic corpus includes material in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Duke Data Bank, on the other hand, began in 1983 as a ten-year project at Duke University to construct a machine-readable data bank comprising all published Greek and Latin documentary papyri. Defined broadly, this includes all original documents (as distinguished from literary and subliterary texts) written on papyrus, parchment, ostraca, wooden or waxed tablets during a period extending from the 4th century B.C. to the 8th century A.D. Of the 421 volumes of such papyri published since 1813--over 35,000 documents--375 of them had been included on CD-ROM #6 as of April 1991.

II. STARTING UP PHI WORKPLACE:

Place the CD-ROM you wish to use (#5 or #6) in the computer's CD carrier by pressing the button outside of the CD-ROM drive to open and close it. You should see the Phi icons on the desktop. You can also access PHI by clicking on the Start button and selecting either "Phi5" (for PHI Disk 5) or "Phi6" (for PHI Disk 6). If you cannot find these icons, please ask a staff member for assistance.

III. USING PHI WORKPLACE:

CD-ROM #5:

The main navigator bar, which should appear immediately upon startup, allows one to navigate through the archive. There are four main buttons--two labeled "Search" and two labeled "Open." Pressing the "PHI5" button in the "Open" row will take you to a menu list of all the authors represented in the archive. It is important to note that the authors are listed by the Latin, as opposed to English, forms of their names.Clicking on any one of the authors' names will take you to the document or documents associated with that author.

The search function works along similar lines. Clicking the "Author" icon presents you with a list of authors. Clicking on an author's name restricts your search to that author. Search terms are entered into the main window in the resulting dialogue box. It is often best to enter search terms without thier inflected endings in order to maximize the number of results. Clicking on "Work" allows you to restrict the search to a particular work by a particular author.

You can conduct more advanced searches (including keyword searches of the entire archive) by clicking on the "Search" pull-down menu at the top of the main window.

Note: If you would like a record of your search results, you have several options. You may burn them to a compact disc or save them to a floppy via the portable disk drive. You may also save them to your home directory or email them to yourself. You need to make sure, however, that your computer is formatted to read unicode characters if your results contain any nonlatin characters. The Etext Center does not provide a public printer at this time.

CD-ROM #6:

CD-ROM #6 operates in exactly the same way as #5, but provides the user with three separate databases. The "Open" row on the navigator bar, for example, allows you to browse either "Classical Inscriptions" (Class.), "Christian Inscriptions" (Chr.), or the "Duke Databank" (DDB.). The "Search" row allows you to restrict the search functions to any of these three databases. Advanced search functions are similarly located in the "Search" pull-down menu.

CD-ROM #6 allows one to enter search terms in Greek. If the program is not displaying Greek, or not allowing you to enter search terms in Greek, ask an Etext staffmember for assistance.

One line help is available though the "Help" pull-down menu. There is also an on-line "Quickguide" available at the LETRS (Library Electronic Text Resource Service) website.

IV. EXITING PHI WORKPLACE AND REMOVING THE CD-ROM:

To exit PHI Workplace, click the Exit button of the main window, or go the File pull-down menu on the main navigator bar and select Exit. You should find yourself back at the Windows desktop. You can then eject the CD-ROM by pressing the button below and to the right of the CD carrier. Please place the CD-ROM back in its case and return it to an Etext Center assistant.