Announcing the New Perseus Lookup Tool

24 August 2001

The Perseus Project is pleased to announce a new tool for searching the Perseus Digital Library. The Perseus Lookup Tool now combines catalogue searching (authors, titles, etc.) with full text searching in multiple languages.

You can always access the Lookup Tool by typing a query into the Search box in the upper right-hand corner of any page in Perseus. For more information, see the tool's help page.

We have added new ways of viewing search results. In particular, you can now have the Lookup Tool dynamically generate clusters from your search results, which is helpful in discerning larger patterns. The top clusters in a search for "Augustus" are:

forum of augustus (119)
mars ultor (56)
masoleum of augustus (36)
head of augustus (36)
campus martius (35)

The top clusters in a full-text search for "Wren" are:

sir christopher wren (218)
sir christopher (246)
christopher wren (228)
miss wren (123)
st pauls (68)
great fire (55)

Clustering can also be used to find formulaic language, as in a search for Greek pontos, which finds, among others:

oinopa ponton (13)
ponton ep' atrugeton (7)
noston th' hôs epi ponton (5)
oinopi pontôi (9)
eurei pontôi (8)

When searching Greek and Latin texts, you can combine queries for exact forms with queries for any form of a particular lemma. Simply put quotation marks around the literal forms. For example, you can search for any form of vinco with the exact form amor.

Please report any problems to the Perseus webmaster.