Catalog description

The on-line catalog accessible on these pages contains:
A. records related to Primo Levi’s monographic publications published in Italy, Primo Levi’s writings published in journals, his interviews and his statements;
B. records related to Primo Levi’s works published outside of Italy;
C. records related to various kinds of critical texts dedicated to Primo Levi’s works, these being the result of bibliographical cataloging, complemented subsequently by ample descriptions edited by Domenico Scarpa.
Many of the texts included in the bibliography and all the texts referred under the letter C are available at the Center and make up a part of the collection, which is housed at the Istituto piemontese per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea (Istoreto) [Piedmont Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Society]. The items (on paper or in digital format) that the Center houses can be easily identified in the on-line catalog, thanks to the icon placed under the title that marks that the text is present in the collection.Web-based digital texts are linked to the records under the heading "periodici elettronici" (electronic journals).

The on-line catalog can be consulted through five main search methods, here briefly described:
A. QUICK SEARCH. The term that the user enters for his search will be searched for all through the bibliographic records. Users can use several filters, which allow them to limit their search to the works of Primo Levi (primary bibliography) and to works about Primo Levi (secondary bibliography). Their searches can be refined further by limiting them to specific types of works (critical essays, interviews and statements, etc.). Users can also limit the chronological range of the records to be searched (searches regarding the interval between the specific year x and the specific year y).
B. BASIC SEARCH. Items can be search by title, author, and keyword, each of which is linked to a relevant list in alphabetical order. This tool aims to help users, who can merely type in one or more words of the item to be searched and then click on the word, “list,” in order to fill in the field of reference.
B. ADVANCED SEARCH. The terms that the user enters are searched for in specific sections (fields) of the bibliographic records (title, author, publisher, and keyword). The terms can be combined through the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT. Users can use several filters, which allow them to limit their search to the works of Primo Levi (primary bibliography) and to works about Primo Levi (secondary bibliography). Their searches can be refined further by limiting them to specific types of works (critical essays, interviews and statements, etc.) and to specific dates between which new records have been entered.
C. SEARCH BY INDEXES. The term that the user enters is searched for in specific groups of records (monographic publications, critical essays, etc.) that are considered to be especially useful for their general needs for information.
D. THEMATIC ACCESS. This search means is limited to searches for works about Primo Levi. Here users can search by Work in order to retrieve a list of all the records about texts that refer to a specific work of Primo Levi. Or, users can search by Keyword, choosing a keyword from a list that has been compiled in view of the critical debate that has developed so far. This type of search therefore applies only to the bibliographic records described under the letter C in the catalog section above, the annotated bibliography on Primo Levi.

The on-line catalog is the result of a development in the application Erasmo.Net that expands and enhances the informative and documentary features of the catalog and adopts it to the needs of the center. The most significant innovations are:
A. The integration of various heterogeneous types of bibliographic records into a single documentary context.
B. The extension of the display format of the records through the use of various types of digital resources, such as book covers, indexes and local or Web-based digital texts that may be partial or complete.
C. Every bibliographic record is associated with the display of all the items that define its documentary context, such as the digital documents linked to the record, the navigable keywords that are used to index the record, the links with all the records that are indexed under the same keywords, and the type of work that the record is related to.