The screen from which you chose this help file is the Home Page for your eBook collection. It is broken up into several color-coded sections:
Green
This shows you the title, subtitle, electronic edition ISBN, Subject, Collection, and Publication Date for each of the books that you or your institution have purchased. The A-Z and Z-A arrows at the top of each column allow you to sort your list by that column, either alphabetically or reverse-alphabetecally. Click on the title to open the book, or in the Info column for more information about that book.
Yellow
This shows books that you have not yet purchased. If you click on any title in this area you will open the book in Preview mode, which allows you to view the book's title page, Table of Contents, first 20 pages, and Index.
Grey
This is a list of books that are forthcoming from ABC-Clio, along with their projected publication date. Clicking on the “Info“ link will (depending on how close the publication date is) get you a description of the book. If you wish to receive an email when these books become available, place a check-mark in the empty box at the right-hand side of the listing (next to the Info field), enter your email address in the field at the beginning of this section, and press the Notify button.
Searching the Home Page
To find a title on the Home Page, use your browser's “Find” feature. This is “Control-F” for Internet Explorer or Netscape for Windows, Option-F on Macintosh computers. Keep in mind that your browser by default will search DOWN from your currently-selected point, or UP if you choose that option in the search dialogue box. To make sure that you are searching the entire page, just double-click on any word in the white area at the very top to make sure that your currently-selected point is at the top of the page, and then search DOWN.
For help and tips on many features, simply position your mouse over any link or button. A brief pop-up description should appear. This description will indicate whether additional help is available by clicking the item. Help is also available by clicking on the main help link located on the maroon-colored bar at the top right corner of each eBook.
The main screen of the eBook has several window panels. You may adjust the relative size of these panels by using your mouse to drag the borders. The title of the book will be located on the title bar window of your web browser and on the top maroon-colored bar. Your current location in the book will be below the book title. The author's name will show if you move the mouse pointer over the book title. The left panel contains most of the features of the eBook. Click the tabs at the top of this panel to use these features. Specific help is available by hovering over the buttons and/or clicking them. If you want to set your browser to full screen and you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and newer or Netscape Navigator 6.0 and newer with Windows you can press F11 to toggle back and forth.
Go directly to a page by typing its number in the box labeled "Go To Page:" then press "Enter" on your keyboard or click the Go to Page: link. Roman Numerals in either lower- or upper-case are acceptable, as is the word "cover" to go directly to the book cover.
Press the Page Up or Page Down keys on your keyboard. NOTE: this works only while the blue navigation frame (the one that contains the "Go To Page" box) is selected; it will stop working if you click anywhere on the page of a book. If the Page Up and Page Down keys stop working, simply click anywhere in the darker blue box at the top of your eBook and try again.
If there is a "next" arrow at the bottom of the page you can click on it to go to the next page. (Not all books have "next" arrows.)
Click on an item in the eTOC (the "electronic Table of Contents" in the left frame), links in the print table of contents, in the index, or in "See also" entries of some books.
The table of contents is the scrollable window on the left panel showing a tree-like structure of the book. It is designed to allow for visual navigation by sections and chapters of the book. If you click on an item in this tree, that item will show in the main windowpane on the right side of your screen. If a branch of the tree has a "+" next to it, you may click to expand that branch of the tree. Conversely, if you see a "-" next to a branch, you may click it to close that branch of the tree. The "Cover" is also an item on the tree for convenience.
To search for any word or phrase in the book click the "Search" tab on top of the left panel of the eBook window. The search feature is capable of simple and very powerful/complex searches. More detailed, specific help is available by clicking the "Search" button. Typically, you will just type in the word(s) or phrase. However, wildcards such as "*" for multiple characters and "?" for a single characters can be used. For even more power or flexibility, you may use Boolean logic, which allows you to specify AND, OR, or NOT (e.g., "apple AND pear" or "apple OR pear").When searching for terms containing special characters (i.e., foreign language characters), use the base character.
The results of your search will show the number of times that the search term was found in the text and on what page. Search results are presented in an order that weighs where the search term was found (terms found in chapter titles or headings are given more weight) and how many times it occurs on the page. Click on the page number to jump to that page. Your search terms will be highlighted in yellow on the page. Most searches will be for the exact word(s). If you also want to search for all forms of the word(s) click the option "All forms of the word(s)."
Search Requests
Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches.
Special Characters
Search terms may include the following special characters:
apple is weighted 5 times more heavily than pear in sorting search results
If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for.
For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).
"Regular Expressions" can also be used to perform complex pattern-matching searches.
To create a bookmark for the current page, click on the "Notes" tab on the left panel of the eBook window. These notes/bookmarks will be accessible no matter what computer you are working on (i.e., you can enter the note in the library and use it later at home). Notes also act as bookmarks because they are associated with a page in the book.
Before you can use notes, you must log in with your userID (your e-mail address) and password. If you do not yet have a userID, please type in your e-mail address and click the "Get password" button. Your newly created password will be sent to your e-mail address immediately. If you forgot your password, you can type in your existing/registered e-mail address and click "Get password" and your existing password will be mailed to your e-mail address.
After you login, you will see the "Notes" button, which will create a note/bookmark for this current page. To make a bookmark for a certain page, please go to that page before you click the note button. This will associated the note with the page, thus acting as a bookmark. The quantity of your notes for this book will be shown in parentheses on the "Notes" button (e.g., "Notes (2)" indicates that you currently have two notes.
When you click the "Notes" button you will see a list of your notes. You can edit, delete, and print your notes from this screen. You may print all or some of these notes by selecting the checkbox next to the note. The results will show in a separate window in a printer-friendly format. You may also highlight all your notes and copy and paste them to your word processor at any time.
If you are logged in, you may change your password by clicking on the button and it will prompt you for your current and new password.
Warning: Notes are automatically erased by the system if they are inactive (not accessed) for twelve months.
History Reference Online Help
To use the dictionary, click the "Dictionary" tab on the left panel of the Book Window. Simply cut and paste or type your desired word(s) in the box and press the "Enter" key or click the "Look Up" button. The dictionary feature uses the comprehensive Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which includes a thesaurus.
The citation feature conveniently provides a usable citation to the current
entry for use in your bibliography. This feature is accessed by clicking on the
"Citation" button on the right side of the black Title Bar. The four most
popular styles are provided. In order to use the citation, simply select the
text with your mouse and copy and paste to another program.
The Citation contains a URL which does not change over time. You can copy and
paste just the URL into a word processing or HTML document, e-mail message, or
web browser. When the URL is in a document or application that allows it to be a
live link, clicking on the URL will take you directly back to the entry cited.
This is a convenient way to navigate back to an entry at a later time, and to
share the reading of an entry with members of a class.
You can print one page at a time by clicking on "Print" located on the maroon-colored bar in the upper right area of the eBook window. This will print the current page with a header showing the title and page number. Copyright information will print at the foot of the page.
The ABC-CLIO eBooks website supports Internet Explorer or Netscape versions that are less than two years old. As of January 2004, this is Internet Explorer 6.0 (released October 2001) or newer, or Netscape Navigator 6.2 (released October 2001) or newer. For Macintosh users, Internet Explorer 5.1.4 (released January 2002) or Netscape 6.2 should work correctly. Mozilla, Opera, and other browsers are not specifically supported, but should work. In general, older browsers will work in most areas; fonts and support of formatting styles are the areas that are likely to be the most affected.
Not entirely, but you can make it much smaller. Click on the border between the left-hand frame and the book, and drag the separator to the left to see less of the left-hand frame. (Note that your cursor will not change into a double-headed arrow the way it does with some frame types, but the frame is sizeable nonetheless.)
Some eBooks contain special foreign language characters. ABC-CLIO uses the International Standard for fonts, called Unicode, which allows for up to 65,000 different characters. Fonts are controlled and limited by the local web browser and to a lesser extent the operating system. When you open a book that we have identified as having many foreign characters, you will see a message indicating the presence of special characters.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Windows 2000 or Windows XP supports Unicode, but unfortunately there is no single font that contains all 65,000 characters. We recommend the default font of Times New Roman, which is provided with Windows. For many of the rare characters, we use the Windows font called Arial Unicode MS. This font is available from Microsoft in Office 97 or newer. In addition, there are even rarer characters that are not available in this font: S with comma below, z with hook below, A with dot above, a with dot above, and E with cedilla. In the near future we will be creating a supplement font available for download and installation that will support these.