Mendele Archives Since by now (10/94) there's a lot of Mendele to read it's time to focus on making it easier for subscribers old and new to work their way through the thicket. This document deals with (I) getting back issues and (II) searching the files. (I) Getting back issues ___________________ Most subscribers simply want to get (some or all) back issues. There are two easy ways of getting access to back issues of Mendele. The first is by sending a message to the listserver at Yale; the second is by "anonymous ftp" directly from Mendele at Trinity. The methods differ in two ways. Getting files back from Yale is done via e-mail: you send a message and pretty soon you get a message back. Ftp on the other hand is interactive. But there is an additional advantage to using the Yale listserver: you can search the files for a "string" (word/s or phrase/s) and ask the listserver to mail you all numbers of Mendele containing the desired string. See below for details. 1) Back issues via the Yale listserver You can retrieve everything since March 1992. The procedure is very simple. 1. Send this message: INDEX MENDELE to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU This will bring you the "filelist", a list of Mendele's files by date. 2. Suppose you're looking for Vol2.102. The filelist tells you that this number appeared on 30 Nov 1992 and is contained in LOG9211E. 3. You send this message: GET MENDELE LOG9211E to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU and of course if you want more than one week's log, add additional lines. 2) Back issues via anonymous ftp The procedure sounds daunting but isn't. Here is how it's done: 1. Begin by typing "ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu" 2. At the request for Name, type "anonymous" 3. At the request for Password, type your username 4. At the message "Guest login ok, access restrictions apply", type "cd /pub/mendele/files". 5. The message "CWD command successful" means that you can now retrieve any file you like. a. For a list of the files, type "dir". b. To download a file to your computer, type "get filename" 6. When finished, type "quit" or "bye". Below is an actual log of an ftp session. In order to make it easier to follow, the user's input is shown in upper-case. This is for illustrative purposes only; in actual use, stay with lower-case. ***************************** >FTP FTP.MENDELE.TRINCOLL.EDU Wollongong FTP User Process (Version 5.2-05) Trying 157.252.16.7 ... Connection Opened Using 8-bit bytes 220 dot FTP server (SunOS 4.1) ready. Name (dot.cs.trincoll.edu:nmiller): ANONYMOUS 331 Guest login ok, send ident as password. Password: NMILLER 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. >CD /PUB/MENDELE/FILES 250 CWD command successful. >GET VOL2.101 200 PORT command successful. 150 ASCII data connection for vol2.101 (157.252.10.30,2085) (4968 bytes). 226 ASCII Transfer complete. Local: DUA2:[FACULTY.NMILLER]VOL2.101; Remote: vol2.101 5110 bytes transfered in 0.55 seconds (9.07 Kbytes/second) >GET VOL2.104 200 PORT command successful. 150 ASCII data connection for vol2.104 (157.252.10.30,2086) (3750 bytes). 226 ASCII Transfer complete. Local: DUA2:[FACULTY.NMILLER]VOL2.104; Remote: vol2.104 3856 bytes transfered in 0.42 seconds (8.97 Kbytes/second) >QUIT 221 Goodbye (II) Searching the files ________________________ There are two ways of searching the files. The first is via the Table of Contents file, the second is by a "string" search of the files themselves. 1. The Table of Contents file, originally compiled by Bob Rothstein of the University of Massachusetts, is simply a list of the Subject: lines for all issues of Mendele. The file, which is updated weekly, is available via anonymous ftp (see above). The holdings are: contents.1 (May 15, 1991 to May 14, 1992) contents.2 (May 15, 1992 to May 14, 1993) contents.3 (May 15, 1993 to May 14, 1994) contents.4 (May 15, 1994 to present) The simplest use of the contents files is for browsing. Any file reader will serve. It is also possible to search for a word or phrase. This is called a "string" search. There are many software packages for doing searches. If you have one, you might consider downloading all 4 files to your machine and doing an offline search. Here is an example of a search for posts dealing with theater. The software used was grep.exe which is in the public domain. It enables not only a string search but prints any specified number of context lines. The command was: grep -i -B10 theat contents.* and the results are shown below. Contents of Vol. 1 no. 139 January 19, 1991 1) Yiddish theatre in Cairo (Yude-Leyb Proger) ---------------------------------------------------- Contents of Vol. 2 no. 185 April 27, 1993 3) Yiddish theater/show/camp? (Rifka Igel) ---------------------------------------------------- Contents of Vol. 3.002 May 16, 1993 4) Yiddish theater and Klezmer music in New York (David Niemeijer) ---------------------------------------------------- Contents of Vol. 3.226 February 10, 1994 1) Yiddish theater diminished (Michael Auslin) ---------------------------------------------------- Contents of Vol. 3.230 February 11, 1994 4) Yiddish theater (Paul Bakan) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.041 June 26, 1994 2) Festival of Yiddish Music and Theater (Henry Mullish) Any or all of these files can then be downloaded (see earlier section). 2. "String" searches of the files This kind of string search is not limited by the (always arbitrary) words in the Subject: line. It searches the entire text. You can do this easily by sending e-mail to the Yale listserver. The procedure is as follows. Please bear in mind that you're dealing with a big beheyme of a computer that doesn't know any khokhmes, which means that you have to do things _exactly_ as described here. 1. The heart of the matter is what is called the "job skeleton". It looks like this. // JOB Echo=No Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * select /* This is the basic stripped-down job skeleton. Think of it as an envelope whose contents (specific commands that you will write) will be understood and obeyed. Any search command to the listserver _must_ be written inside the jobbed skeleton. If you intend to do a search it is _strongly_ recommended that you copy the job skeleton to a separate file (you might name it "zukh.oys"). You can then edit and reedit that file, making only the changes without disturbing the envelope itself. Here is an example of a command to search for every occurrence of the name Asch. //DBlook JOB Echo=No Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * select asch in mendele index /* Two commands are involved: search (select) for a string and list all hits (index). Mail this to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu and if you've done everything right back comes the following. > Select asch in mendele --> Database MENDELE, 12 hits. > index Item # Date Time Recs Subject ------ ---- ---- ---- ------- 000097 94/04/29 10:32 236 Mendele Vol 3.337 000126 94/06/10 16:29 192 Mendele Vol 4.019 000130 94/06/14 13:05 175 Mendele Vol 4.023 000132 94/06/15 19:52 158 Mendele Vol 4.025 000138 94/06/19 15:05 216 Mendele Vol 4.031 000140 94/06/20 16:14 169 Mendele Vol 4.033 000143 94/06/22 16:58 274 Mendele Vol 4.036 000144 94/06/23 14:02 267 Mendele Vol 4.037 000146 94/06/24 12:02 173 Mendele Vol 4.039 000152 94/06/30 14:24 199 Mendele Vol 4.044 000166 94/07/18 12:09 180 Mendele Vol 4.061 000200 94/08/26 18:30 204 Mendele Vol 4.094 The listserver has found 12 numbers of Mendele in which Asch's name appears. Now assume you want to see Vol 3.337 an vol 4.031. Back to the []. Here's how it looks now. //DBlook JOB Echo=No Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * select asch in mendele print 000097 print 000138 /* Note that you write the Item # (col.1 of the index) and not Mendele's internal names. Send this to the listserver and back come the two numbers you asked for. Suppose you'd wanted all 12 files. Then you could have written this. //DBlook JOB Echo=No Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * select asch in mendele print all /* 2. More complex searches A string search is not limited to a single word or name. Here are a few examples of what you can do. // JOB Echo=No Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * select or in mendele since 91/06/01 index select and in mendele since 91/06/01 index /* These examples should take care of most of your needs. If you want information on how to do really fancy stuff, send this message to the listserver: info database If you have any problems with any of this (or if you find any of it unclear, badly-written or plain incomprehensible) please let me know. Noyekh Miller