| Abstract: |
The Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch (DRW) is a historical dictionary (based at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften) which documents and describes the vocabulary of the historical legal language of 7th to 19th century German. German here refers to the West Germanic language family which includes amongst others Old Frisian, Old Anglo Saxon, Old Saxon, Langobardic, Low German und High German. Besides the words directly referring to juridical expressions (such as Gericht or Prozess) the dictionary also includes many words of the common language if they occur in a legal context (e.g. in edicts or contracts). This conceptual design makes the DRW an important tool for a diverse range of historic research, e.g. cultural and social history, history of law, history of economy or linguistics. Until now, 11 of the 16 planned volumes have been published. The majority of the nearly 100.000 dictionary articles is freely available online, too. The web version of the DRW, however, is much more than just the digital pendant of the printed reference book: Via the website www.deutsches-rechtswoerterbuch.de the dictionary user has access to a wide range of options to use the dictionary as a large information system. Based on the software FAUST - also used by the lexicographers for their daily work - four databases (the dictionary itself, the sources, the digitised sources, the full text archive) can be searched online. During the software presentation the use of the DRW web version as a powerful research tool will be demonstrated. By means of a variety of possible enquiries it will be shown how the user benefits from the interconnectedness of the FAUST databases and the integration of external information resources (e.g. other important historical dictionaries or digitised primary sources). [Note: the author did not submit a full text version of this software demonstration]. |