L'Année Philologique is an index of publications related to the history, language, literature and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome.

It has been published as an annual printed bibliography since 1924, and all the references in the printed bibliography have now been incorporated into the online database. The database, like the printed version, is updated once per year.

There is a two or three year delay before references are indexed in L'Année Philologique, although interim records are now being added to the database to provide access to more recent material. You should use other databases to find the most recent references. There is a freely accessible web database called Gnomon Online, which can be accessed on the web and is useful for locating references from recent years.

Many of the books and articles indexed in L'Année Philologique are in languages other than English. There are no abstracts provided for books, but the database indicates where reviews of books have been published. The database often gives brief abstracts of journal articles, but an abstract may be in French, German, English, Spanish or Italian. The abstract is not necessarily in the same language as the original reference.

From the UQ Library home page click on Databases
Choose A from the Select a Databse by Title option.
Then scroll down to the Année Philologique link. Click on the link.

L'Année Philologique is not an easy database to search. The various search options are shown on the top menu bar.

The Full Text search option is the most useful. It can be used in conjunction with other search options to produce more specific results.

We will look at the different search options, and then at how to display and work with your search results.

To do a basic search for references on a topic, click on the option on the top menu bar. This will open a new window.

In the search box, you can enter:

• a phrase, e.g. ruler cult
• keywords, e.g. women sparta (do not use Boolean operators such as AND, OR, NOT)
• truncated keywords, e.g. slave* (to retrieve slave, slaves, slavery)

The database will find all references in which your search terms appear, whether in the title of the reference or the abstract or the source where the reference is published. Remember that many abstracts are in French or other languages, even when the original reference is in English. So if you are searching for references on ruler cult, you will also retrieve relevant English-language material if you search for the corresponding French terms, e.g. culte souverain*

If you wish to search for synonyms (e.g. women, female) you must perform separate searches and combine them. For information on combining searches, see below.

The Full Text search is not always the best way to find references on a chosen topic. For a different approach, try choosing the Subjects and Disciplines option on the top menu bar.

This option allows you to search by broad subject categories. These are the categories used in the printed volumes of L'Année Philologique. The categories were changed from volume 67 (1996) of L'Année Philologique, so when you click on Subjects and Disciplines, you will see three options:

• Table before volume 67
• Table from volume 67
• Word(s) of the section

The third option performs a keyword search of the categories used in the contents lists. To browse the categories, select one of the first two options. This will open a new window, displaying the subject categories. Click on the + beside a category to expand it.

When you have found the most specific category or categories for your search, check the appropriate box(es) and click on the Search button.

This is the most effective way of limiting a search to material on Rome only or Greece only. It is often useful to combine a Full Text search for a specific term with a Subjects and Disciplines search for a broader category. For information on combining searches, see below.

To find information published after 1996 on a specific archaeological site, click on the Table from volume 67 option, then navigate through the Non-Literary Sources and Archaeology categories until you see an option to search for Sites. Sites are listed by the French name of the country.

Click on the Ancient Authors option on the top menu bar. Enter the author's name in the search box. You may retrieve a number of possible matches. Check the relevant matches and click on the Confirm the selection button.

To locate references written by a modern author, click on the Modern Author option on the top menu bar. When a new window opens, enter the author's family name only. Click on the Search button.

This will open a new window, listing all authors with that family name. Beware: there are two sequences under each family name.

• Older references appear in the first sequence, without a comma between family name and given name.
• Newer references appear in the second sequence, with a comma between family name and given name.

To locate book reviews written by a particular author, click on Other Criteria on the top menu bar and select Reviews by author.

On the top menu bar there is an option to search by Date of publication. There is also an option Other Criteria, which allows you to search by words in the title of a reference, specific periodical, etc.

You can use these search options and combine them with previous searches to limit your search results. For information on combining search results, see below.

The results of your search will be displayed on a Search History screen.

To display the search results, click on the number of records retrieved (709 in the above example). This will display the first group of results. The oldest references are displayed first.

Click on the open book icon to display the full details of a reference. A full reference looks like this:

To return to your results list, click on Results on the left-hand side of the screen.

Journal titles are abbreviated. The journal title is in hypertext: sit your mouse over it and a text box will appear giving the full title.

You can combine searches to get more specific results. There are two ways to combine searches:

• Recalculate the total
• Combine

1. Recalculate the total

Your searches will be listed with a check box beside each. Check the searches which you wish to combine. Click on Recalculate the total to start the search. This search will retrieve all references which contain all your search terms (i.e. it is combining the searches with the Boolean operator AND).

Click on the Read the total button to display the results.

At any time you can click on History on the left-hand side of the screen and check or uncheck searches and perform the Recalculate the total search.

2. Combine

If you wish to perform more complex Boolean searches, click on History on the left-hand side of the screen to display the Search History.

Each of your searches is identified by a query number (Q1, Q2, etc.). Unfortunately the display does not show you the search terms that you used for each query. Click on the Q button to see the details of the search.

Now click on the Combine button. When the new window opens, enter a query number in the search box, then click on the button for the appropriate operator (AND, OR, NOT) and then enter another query number. Click on the Search button.

This will redisplay the Search History screen. The combined results will be given a combination number (C1, C2, etc.).



You can perform further Combine searches, using the combination numbers or the query numbers. For example, you could perform a Date search and then combine it with the previous combined results.

When displaying records, you can use the check boxes to mark specific records for export. When you have marked all the records that interest you, click on the Export button at the bottom of the screen. This will open a new window.



This window shows how many records you have marked for export. Now click on the tab labelled Means of retrieving exports to specify if you want to download the records immediately or email them. Finally click on the tab labelled File type to specify the type of export: we recommend that you select DAT format, which is a plain text format suitable for import into bibliographic software such as EndNote.

Click on the Export button. If you have opted for immediate download of records, your references will now be displayed in a new window. Select all references (Ctrl+A) and copy them (Ctrl+C) and paste them into a document in your word processor or text editor.