To start the task I first searched some good keywords, which describe my book briefly but precisely. So I came up with words like 5 Orders, Design, Construction and precisely Drawings. So I tried to search “5 orders” as it is the beginning of my book. First I did not really found something useful, more some religion rules and orders. So I noticed that my keyword is too general. That is why I changed my keyword to “5 orders of architecture”, where I was much better served. After skimming the text I found a very interesting text snippet about the book “The stones of venice”.
This book gives us also a quick explanation about the orders, especially the Doric and Corinthian order. However, in contrast to our book, it tells us a bit more about the history of them. It tries to make us understand that “all European architecture, bad and good, old ans new, is derived from Greece through Rome, and coloured and perfected from the East”. So the architecture is more or less a tracing of the various modes and directions of this derivation. The book is very direct and makes from the beginning on clear that there are only 2 orders, Doric and Corinthian. They are the roots to the rest of the orders and architecture art, which are only varieties of them 2.
The second keyword I searched was “elements of architecture”. Here I had to search little bit longer to find something interesting. After a time I found the book “Architectural theory” from Mallgrave. This book now tries to precisely connect the styles of the elements with the orders. It gives us some connection and differences. It is difficult to understand what their saying because of the language they use. To really understand we should already have a previous knowledge.
To use Xenotheka and Alice useful, it is very important to search right with good thought-out keywords, otherwise you lose yourself in the whole literature. But in overall it is a very good invention, especially for getting information from old books.