Using TLS Centenary Archives (Times Literary Supplement) 1902-1990
(a little bit to get you started)
The TLS Centenary Archives (TLS) is an integration of the Times Literary Supplement and its index, which provides users with access to nearly a century of literary criticism in image form. Besides making the source material more easily accessible, the TLS database reveals for the first time the authors of previously anonymous reviews. Future editions of the database will complete the coverage through the year 2000.
To access the TLS:
- Click Indexes and Databases on the Library's Home Page.
- Next, click T on the alphabet row in the center of the screen.
- Find the TLS Centenary Archives (Times Literary Supplement) link and click it.
- Click the appropriate “connect” link (on or off campus), and you're in. This is the search screen you should see:
It is the Article Search screen. Here you can search for all works by a certain author that have been reviewed in the TLS; you can search for a specific book title to see everything written about it in the TLS; you can call up all the reviews in the TLS written by a certain contributor. Your search can be as broad or as focused as you wish.
For example, to find out the reaction to Arthur Conan Doyle's new Sherlock Holmes novel, enter Doyle, Arthur in the author field (always Last Name, First Name) and The Hound of the Baskervilles in the title field. (The TLS seems to ignore “The” at the beginning of a title.) You will get a list of results like the one below.
Click the Detail link for the review you want to see. In this case, should you choose the review of 1902, you would then see a screen like the following:
The reviewer in this case was Andrew Lang. To read Mr. Lang's review, click the View Facsimile link at the top of the screen. You will then be presented with a facsimile image of the printed review:
(Mr. Lang found Hound “disappointing.”) The display, you will note, is very small. To enlarge the print so it is readable, click the Zoom in button at the top. Each time you click Zoom in, the magnification increases.
Clicking on Contributor Search in the left sidebar brings up this search screen:
Searching in this screen will produce information on the contributors themselves. (There is no information on the authors of the books reviewed, unless those authors are also contributors.) Here you may search by the name of a known contributor, call up a list of all the contributors belonging to a particular profession, or generate a register of those who reviewed writing on a particular subject or in a particular language. For information on Virginia Woolf as a contributor to the TLS, you would type Woolf, Virginia in the Name field. This will produce the following result:
Clicking the link under Name will then give you this:
Clicking the Other reviews by this contributor link will produce a list of all of Virginia Woolf's contributions to the TLS:
If you were curious to know what Woolf thought of A Room with a View, you would click on Detail and then View Facsimile to bring up her remarks. (She found it “as clever as” any of Forster's other books.)
A Few Notes On…
Searching: If, after an unsuccessful search, you return to the search screen to try again, always click the Reset button. This clears the old search from the search engine. If you merely delete and retype without clicking Reset, you will get the results of the previous search again.
Help: Help in the TLS is context sensitive. For example, clicking Help while in the Contributor Search portion of the database will produce guidance specific to Contributor Search.
Printing: Facsimile articles may be printed, but this requires an Adobe® Acrobat or TIFF image viewer. You have the option of printing the image on one or more pages, according to how large you'd like the print to be. (Printing a full page on one 8 ˝ x 11 sheet produces typescript that requires a magnifying glass to read. Printing the same image on two landscaped pages produces a more readable copy.)
Address questions or comments to Mike Russo at mrusso1@lsu.edu.