Return Comments: jzeman@phil.ufl.edu
Please note that the MS Excel and Access formats employed here are just tools with which we are working; as I note below, this is an experiment, and should not be taken as a commitment to any database tool. Think of these files as instantiations of organized data on a level of abstraction more general than any file format.
This material may be considered part of an experiment in cataloguing the Peirce papers. I must emphasize that this is not even a beta version of this database, even though it should already be useful. The text for the Manuscripts and Appendix I is based on the html version at IUPUI; I scanned and OCR'd the chronology (Appendix II). The versions posted here do not yet include the correspondence or the other Material in The Annotated Catalogue of the Writings of Charles S. Peirce.
One of the self-extracting exe files available has (currently) three files prepared in MS Excel97: mss. xls, chrono.xls, and append~1.xls; the other file available for download expands to an Access file (robin.dbm) with tables Manuscripts, Chronology, and Appendix I corresponding respectively to the mentioned xls files.
The Manuscripts table/xls file contains all the data in the manuscripts section of Robin. Robin is quite explicit in the Introduction about the data fields he divides these entries into (see pp. xvii-xix):
These are the rightmost 7 fields in the Manuscripts Table. Prior to these I have placed a manuscript number field, and a number modifier field. The numbers are as in Robin, except in those few cases in which manuscripts are inserted into the order; Robin indicates these with a letter (from a to d--e.g., "316a"); I have used a decimal fraction (at or below .4, to prevent rounding up with a narrow column). I also place Robin's letter in the modifier field. That field will also carry the "*" which he uses to indicate a reference to Appendix I; the mentioned example is also such an entry, so its modifier field will be "*a" while the ms number field will be "316.4".
The leftmost 2 fields in this table (not counting "ID") indicate Main Heading (e.g. "Mathematics" and Secondary Heading (e.g. "The Simplest Mathematics").
The Chronology Table is based on Appendix II; all indicators of a range of ms #'s (e.g., "584-586") have been expanded to all the numbers in the range (584, 585, 586) and each occupies its own row, associated with the appropriate year (here 1869); this portion of the table looks like this:
| ID | Circa | Year | Appendix II ms# | Appendix II index | ms# |
| 65 | 1869 | 584 | 65 | 584 | |
| 66 | 1869 | 585 | 66 | 585 | |
| 67 | 1869 | 586 | 67 | 586 | |
| 68 | c | 1870 | 88 | 71 | 88 |
The "Circa" field indicates years that Robin gives as approximations; the last row shown illustrates this. The mss which Robin calls "Early" are assigned "1000" in the year field; those called "Late" are given "5000"; "9999" is used for undated mss, which are included here, though not in Appendix II; the "Appendix II ms#" for the 9999 years is blank. "Appendix II index" was assigned before adding the undated mss; undated mss get 999 here (I count 844 mss in Appendix II). The "ms#" field gives all such, undated as well as included in Appendix II.
The Appendix I table carries data from that appendix; I have not worked that over too much.
I have posted as a separate database material from Arthur Burks's Bibliography in Volume 8 of CP. Cautionary remarks are as above. Whereas the ms # is a key link between the tables discussed above, the BIB_ID field, which is based on Burks's classification; the following is from the "Abbreviatins and Conventions" section of the Robin Catalogue:
All bibliographical references and cross references are made with respect to Arthur W. Burks's "Bibliography of the Works of Charles Sanders Peirce," Collected Papers, Vol. VIII, pp. 260-321, and to Max H. Fisch's "A First Supplement to Arthur W. Burks's Bibliography of the Works of Charles Sanders Peirce," Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Second Series, edited by Edward C. Moore and Richard S. Robin, The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1964 and to his "Second Supplement," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society II, X (Spring 1966), pp. 51-53. Burks's bibliography is divided into three sections: General, Items from The Nation, and Miscellaneous. The first two sections are arranged primarily in chronological order; the third section is arranged alphabetically. Following the method Burks has adopted, references and cross references to bibliographical items are as follows: First the section is given, "G" for the General Section, "N" for The Nation Section, and "M" for the Miscellaneous Section. Next come the year and the number of the title under that year for sections "G" and "N"; only the item number for section "M." Thus "G-1883-4" refers to the fourth title under the date 1883 in the General section; "N-1901-3" refers to the third title under the date 1901 in The Nation section; and M-5 refers to the fifth item or name in the Miscellaneous section. Items preceded by ''sup(1)'' refer to Fisch's first supplement to Burks's bibliography; those preceded by "sup(2)" refer to Fisch's second supplement.
This can also be used to connect to tables in the Robin databases, though some work on isolating a BIB_ID field there is needed (and shouldn't be too hard).
Comments: jzeman@phil.ufl.edu