The first time I posted for LAUS@PSU, I wrote about my experiences researching in Special Collections libraries in Philadelphia for a Penn State professor. This summer, however, I’m staying in State College and I’m looking for resources a little closer to home. In this respect, the Penn State Libraries deliver. One of the newest and most innovative features to be rolled out by PSU libraries is LionSearch. It is a search engine that combines all the other searches in the library– the CAT and all the journals searches so it is easy to find any material in the libraries on a particular subject. One search, all potential possibilities.
In order to test out this new search engine for hyping and creative purposes alike, I decided to search for a random topic that I find interesting and see where LionSearch takes me. I decided to search “Prometheus” as my keyword. I am currently quite invested in the myth of Prometheus in all its forms, as I am planning to write my senior thesis about adaptations of the Prometheus myth. Unsurprisingly, this keyword search turned up 34,928 results. Both the myth and the name “Prometheus” are quite well known, especially in scholarly circles, so the barrage of results is no shock. Luckily, the LionSearch sidebar provides me with ways to narrow down my search.
Under the “Refine your search” sidebar, I decided to check the “Items in the library catalogue” box and the search was narrowed down to 3,087 results, which is a much more manageable than the nearly 35,000 that bombarded me before. In order to play around a bit more with the search results, I returned to the sidebar.
I started with the “Content Type” selections, which showed me that the materials that showed up for my search of “Prometheus” range from books, the most common (2,875 materials) to kit (whatever that is) which only turned up one item. Interested in this mysterious “kit” I looked for it specifically. Turns out it is a children’s book, a collection of illustrated creation myths from all over the world. What earned it the label of “kit” I think is because that the one on the University Park campus is both a book and an audio CD. Also, James Earl Jones is a narrator for the CD, so I think I might need go to listen to this recording.
After going back to my original search of materials in the library catalogue, in order to find out what else may be lurking around the library, I checked out the feature called “Author” and saw that after Aeschylus, the author of “Prometheus Bound,” one of the first and longest documentations of the Promethean myth, the next author with the most work incorporated in the search was Ludwig Van Beethoven. Curious, I pursued this next. After including only Beethoven in my search, I found that most of his work held in the library and responsive to the keyword search “Prometheus” is audio recordings of his music for the ballet “The Creatures of Prometheus.” Most of these recordings seem to be available in the Arts and Humanities library, but there is at least one online resource. I followed up on this online resource, and I am currently listening to “The Creatures of Prometheus” on my computer as I type this. Oh, and this material is also available as a CD.
With new background music accompanying me, I forayed back to the search page and checked out the languages available for “Prometheus” texts. I didn’t follow up on any strange language texts, mostly because I would be unable to understand them even if I did, but plenty of languages were represented. English swept the top prize with 2,993 materials and German came in second with 106 titles (I actually find this fact interesting because I am reading some German works in translation for aforementioned Prometheus thesis, but I digress). The list goes on, with representations of Greek and Latin works and many European languages, until we get to some rather random inclusions, such as Bengali and Church Slavic (?).
I then took a look at the genres represented (did you know that “controversial literature” is a genre?) which quickly showed me that pretty much anything you can imagine is covered here. I was interested that the top genre was biography, as Prometheus is a figure of myth, so I took a look and quickly found my confusing factor– a publishing company called Prometheus Books. I would like to believe that this speaks to the pervasiveness of Promethean legend in modern culture, and I also note that these could easily be weeded out in a more direct and less ramble-y search than mine.
The last two filters also prove interesting and useful in a search with actual direction: a regional search and a time period search. The time period search alone shows me the way that Prometheus was represented through the ages. All the filters on the site are easy to use and manipulate, and just from this post you can see the interesting directions exploring LionSearch and the Penn State libraries can take you. So use the new technology well, post your feedback, and enjoy your explorations!