Searching Foreign Language Materials

At WebClarity, we add descriptors to some databases to help you with special searches. One of the areas that we target is languages. If you’re looking for titles in a non-English format, use the Keyword filter in the Choose Databases window to locate databases that are especially good for the language you need.

How to find databases for foreign language materials

1. Navigate to the Choose Databases Window.
2. In the Keyword(s) filter box, enter the desired language, e.g., Spanish.

The Filter Options will show x of n databases displayed under the group names. You can select these resulting databases and search them immediately. You can also, of course, add them to a group for default databases for Spanish-titles searching.

You can also enter the name of a country, e.g., Argentina, for a work that was published in Argentina. Libraries in the Southwestern United States may be a good source of titles in Spanish.

Unicode databases and UTF-8 character encoding

BookWhere supports both display and searching of Unicode database records. With Unicode we can support all languages and character sets. By default BookWhere is configured to send search queries as plain ASCII text which limits the queries to the standard Roman languages; however, this is easily modified to support any language available on your PC. (You should have installed appropriate font sets and keyboard utilities and tools to support the character sets you plan to use.)

Configure BookWhere Query Encoding

1. Options->Settings->Queries tab
2. From the Encoding drop-down menu, select UTF-8.

Under the Windows drop-down list, select Query, then choose an appropriate Current Font which supports the character set in the language you plan on searching.

Now perform your search in BookWhere, being sure to select appropriate databases with the Unicode encoding support specified in the Choose Databases window.