5.2.3  List View

 

 

 

            This is the third option on the drop-down menu under Manuscript Views, and that's how you arrive at the destination:  only via said drop-down menu; you can't go in and out of Synopsis the way you can to travel to the Browse View.

 

List View gives you a tiny continuous view row by row of the top three levels (Manuscript, Part, Text):

• at Manuscript level, only the total number of leaves
• at Part level, the number of leaves of that particular part, and its Country and its Date of Origin
• at Text level, only the range of leaves covered by a given text

 

The implication of this is that the Manuscript level with its shelfmark and total number of leaves will be repeated as many times as there are texts in it:  if there is one text, the manuscript's shelfmark will only occur once; if fifteen texts, there will be fifteen listings of that one shelfmark.

 

And why should you find that useful?  It's because, among the four Manuscript Views, List View is the only place where one can quickly see if there are Manuscripts without Parts, or Parts without Texts (for manuscripts without images, use the Reports option).  See the next two screen shots:  Plimpton MS 018 has no Part or Text, as shows on the List View.  We click on the arrow to the left of the shelfmark, we are taken to the Synopsis View for the codex, where we discover that Plimpton MS 018 is a ghost.

 

 

When we go to the Synopsis, we are offered this information (and no data beyond the Manuscript level):

 

 

 

Aside from ghosts, why might you have records of Manuscripts without Parts or Parts without Texts?  Well, a given shelfmark might have been so badly twisted and deformed in a major publication, that you want to insert a partial record under the incorrect shelfmark as a cross reference to the correct form of the shelfmark.  Or is it possible that you might have made a mistake, just maybe?     

 

The List View box is resizeable, in case you need to have it just that bit larger to see the data more clearly.

 

 

 

List View is also the only place in DS-Access where you can choose to display the manuscripts by the repository name.  Your copy of the database may only represent one repository, or as with many American universities, your database may contain multiple libraries or repositories, all part of the same institution.

 

While List View isn't the place to perform any textual editing, it helps you to quickly see places where you might want to edit the data especially with regard to the folio numbers:  are the stated values for Manuscript and its Part(s) and the Text(s) in unison with one another?  If there are discrepancies, you will notice them far more readily in this kind of arrangement which is essentially restricted to these fields.

 

As with the other Manuscript Views, you may right-click in any of the fields/columns to bring up a context menu.  In this view, the options are somewhat broader than those offered in Synopsis (which only allows the Find option) and Browse View (which allows Cut, Copy and Paste), because here you may retrieve:

• Sort Ascending
• Sort Descending
• Find
• Copy

 

The Sort option will really only be used here for Country, so you might as well wait and perform Sorts in the Datasheet View.  The Copy option allows you to grab information from the List View columns and Paste it somewhere else.

 

List View has the by now usual small black arrow to the left of the shelfmarks; by clicking on the arrow, you go directly to that particular Manuscript+Part+Text in the Synopsis View, and you make editorial changes there.

 

By clicking Close (on the title bar), you go to the Synopsis View (and to whichever manuscript you had last been looking at before you entered the List View). You could also chose to exit List View in the same manner in which you entered:  on the top title bar, choose Manuscript Views, and grab the first choice which will be Synopsis.  This leaves the List View lurking in the background behind Synopsis, so when you exit from DS-Access altogether, you'll need to close List View at that point.