Bibliography of Scotland
Literary Writing in Scots
Since the mid-1990s, Bibliography of Scotland (BOS) records for literary works which contain a significant proportion of writing in Scots include headings of the form Poetry in Scots, Drama in Scots, Fiction in Scots, Short stories in Scots, etc. These headings have also been added retrospectively to some earlier publications, but coverage for the earlier period is not complete. These language headings appear in records on the OPAC, but for technical reasons they cannot presently be used as search terms in subject searches. They can however be used to retrieve records using a variety of keyword search strategies. The simplest approach is use the Advanced search mode to search on a chosen heading (e.g. Poetry in Scots) as a phrase in the Keyword anywhere index.
These headings are applied to all literary works containing a significant proportion of writing in Scots, irrespective of the predominant language of the work. Where the predominant language of a work is Scots this will be coded within the record, and the language can then be used as a parameter in limiting keyword searches. Thus it is possible to retrieve records for all works in Scots containing a particular keyword or combination of keywords. Different limits, including language, date of publication and country of publication, can be combined in a single search and this technique covers both literary and non-literary works.
