University of Virginia Library:
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Text Collections Help

• Searching
• Advanced Search
• Viewing Search Results
• Viewing a Text
• Tools & Actions Menus
• Collectus

Authentication: Many items in the Digital Collections are restricted to the UVa community - users must be on Grounds, or authenticated through UVa Anywhere.

Recommended Minimum Browser Versions: (Some features may not work on other browsers or versions)

• Windows XP or 2000: Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 7.2, Mozilla 1.7, or Firefox 1.0.
• Macintosh OS X: Firefox 1.5.

Basic Search

• Enter a single word or an exact phrase into the search box.
• Do not enter phrases in quotation marks.
• Ignore all punctuation, e.g., "Carr's" will be searched as "Carrs".
• The search is not case sensitive; proper upper and lower case are not necessary.
• The default search type is right truncation. A search for "hen" will return hits that include "hens" "Henrietta" and "Henry" in the indexed fields.
• To turn off right truncation, type a period at the end of the search term. (ex. "hen.") This will return only those records with an exact match of the search term in the indexed fields.
• You must choose a set of texts to search. You can limit your search by a category of texts (Prose & Non-fiction or Poetry & Verse), or to a specific sub-collection (American Poetry, Westward Exploration, etc.).

Advanced Search

• Enter a single word or an exact phrase into the search box.
• Do not enter phrases in quotation marks.
• Ignore all punctuation, e.g., "Carr's" will be searched as "Carrs".
• The search is not case sensitive; proper upper and lower case are not necessary.
• The default search type is right truncation. A search for "hen" will return hits that include "hen" "Henrietta" and "Henry" in the indexed fields.
• To turn off right truncation, type a period at the end of the search term. (ex. "hen.") This will return only those records with an exact match of the search term in the indexed fields.
• Compound searching: You may enter a second word or phrase to combine with the first, and optionally specify a proximity relationship: near, not near, followed by, or not followed by
• Constrain the search by author name, title, or "first published" date range
• Scope: You must choose a set of texts to search. You can limit your search by a category of texts (Prose & Non-fiction or Poetry & Verse), or to a specific sub-collection (American Poetry, Westward Exploration, etc.).
• Number of results: how many matches are displayed on each page of search results.
• It is not necessary use to all the boxes.

Viewing Search Results

The default display of search results is by relevancy -- the texts with the highest number of matches through to the lowest number of matches. You can change the display to group the results by author instead by selecting the "group results by author" option in the box to the right. To return to relevancy ranking, select the "group results by title" option. Clicking on the title in the search results will take you directly to the beginning of the text.

The number of matches in a text will appear below right of each title, e.g. "25 matches." Clicking on the link will take you to a list of the matches that appear in that text, showing the match "in context" -- approximately five words before and after the match. Clicking on the match in the results list will take you directly to the chunk of text where that match occurs.

Viewing a Text

After finding a text through a search, you will either see the default view of a text -- the "front matter" of the text, e.g., the pages before the body of the text -- or a section of the text where a match to your search term is located. Some texts do not have transcriptions, only page images. For those texts, the default view begins with an image of the cover or fist page of the volume.

To read a section of text when there is a transcription, use the scroll bar at the right. To move between sections of the text, mouse over the "go to" button to move through next or previous sections, or mouse over the "table of contents" button to select a specific section or chapter to read. You may also click on the "entire work" button to view the entire volume. This display may be slow to load, depending upon the size of the volume.

To save a reference to the entire text in Collectus, click on the "add to collection" button. This will start Collectus, if not already started, and create a text icon that shows the title and author of the work you have elected to add to your collection.

For books with transcriptions and page images, thumbnail images to the right of the screen link to page images that can be read on screen. Use the "go to" button to navigate through page images one at a time, or click on the "view page images" button to see a grid of twenty page images at a time. Use the "go to" button to navigate through sets of page images.

For books with page images only, use the "go to" button to navigate through page images one at a time, or click on the "view page images" button to see a grid of twenty page images at a time. Use the "go to" button to navigate through sets of page images.

Tools & Actions Menu for Working with Page Images

When you are looking at page images retrieved through a search or in a text, each image includes a "Tools & Actions" menu. There are four options available under that menu:

• "Get Information" - View the full information about the image, and view that image and any related images. Images on the Full Information screen also include the Tools and Actions menu.
• "Open in ImageViewer" - Open the image in a new window that allows a user to resize an image, change the brightness settings to make an image brighter or darker, change the contrast settings to change the degree of difference between the lightest and darkest elements of the image, and to rotate the image. Click on the image to view the Toolbar. Click again to close the Toolbar.
  
  For ImageViewer troubleshooting, please see the Collectus digital object collector tool page.
  
  
• "Add to Collection" - Add the image to a personal collection using the UVa Library's Collectus digital object collector tool. Collectus allows a user to view image or text files that are stored in the digital library and, if desired, to collect references to those files into either an xml or an html file that is stored locally on the user's hard drive, or on a floppy disk. The two parts of Collectus are the Object Collection Window and the ImageViewer (also available from the search results).
  
  The Object Collection Window allows a user to select images or texts from a Search Results or Browse screen and save references to them as a group. The references to these images or texts can be saved to the user's local hard drive, to a floppy drive, or to a mapped network location in an xml file, which can be reopened in Collectus to retrieve the user's saved search results set. The references to these images or texts may also be used to create an HTML web page that is saved to the user's local hard drive, to a floppy drive, or to a mapped network location.
  
  The first time you click on this button, Collectus will be installed onto your computer, and will be automatically updated upon later uses. For Windows, the application will install automatically. For the Macintosh, users will need to double click on the downloaded file (Collector.jnlp) to complete the installation.
  
  NOTE: Collectus and the ImageViewer require that your computer be configured to use Java 2. The ImageViewer will not work with the online Digital Collections and you cannot add images into personal collections using Collectus without the proper Java and browser configuration.
  
  
  • Windows:
    • Windows XP or Windows 2000 operating system.
    • Java 2, version J2SE 1.4.2 (aka JRE 1.4.2) OR LATER, including Java Web Start (Download and run the free installer from Sun at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html -- Click on "Download J2SE JRE."). If your system has earlier versions of Java installed, any earlier versions must be uninstalled and the machine rebooted first before a new installation can take place).
  • Macintosh:
    • Mac OSX 10.4.4 has proven the be the most reliable in supporting the Digital Collections tools.
    • Java 2, version J2SE 1.4.2 (aka JRE 1.4.2) is required. To run this version of Java, OS X 10.3.4 or later is required. According to Apple, All Macintoshes with OS X 10.3.4 or later come with Java 2, version J2SE 1.4.2 (aka JRE 1.4.2) already installed. For improved compatibility, Apple has released their own updaters/installers with varying names for varying versions of the OS.
    • If you have OS X 10.3.4 or later and have NO Java versions on your Macintosh:
      • Download and run the free updater/installer for Java 2, version J2SE 1.4.1 (aka JRE 1.4.1) from Apple at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120274
    • If you have OS X version 10.3.4 or later and need to UPDATE your Java version to the REQUIRED Java 2, version J2SE 1.4.2 (aka JRE 1.4.2), including Java Web Start:
      • Download and run the free updater/installer from Apple at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/javaupdate142.html.
    • If you have OS X 10.3.9, Apple has reported that there may be issues with Java that require an update.
      • Download and run the free updater/installer from Apple at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/javaupdateformacosx1039.html
    • If you have OS X version 10.4 ("Tiger") or higher and want to ensure that you are running the correct version of Java:
      • Java 2, version J2SE 1.4.2 (aka JRE 1.4.2), including Java Web Start (Download and run the free updater/installer from Apple at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/java131and142release2.html).
        • NOTE: For OS X version 10.4 ("Tiger"), Java 2, version J2SE 5.0 release 1 is available at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/java2se50release1.htm. This version is NOT required for use of the Digital Library.

  
  For Collectus troubleshooting, please see the Collectus digital object collector tool page.

• "Download Image" - This allows you to download a screen-sized version of the image to your computer. A dialog box will open to allow you to select a location to save the image. You may name your downloaded files whatever you wish, but be sure to include the extension, such as "lewis&clark_toc.tif". Many items in the Digital Collections are restricted to the UVa community - users must be on Grounds, or authenticated through UVa Anywhere to download images. Not all images support downloading, as required by some licenses to the University.