Help

Tip: the Help pages are context-sensitive so that, for example, if you were looking at a book's table of contents page and clicked the Help button, you would have been taken straight to the Help section about full text content. You can of course go directly to another topic by using the Help menu in the left-hand navigation area.

 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Oxford Scholarship Online
 Downloadable PDF of the online Help text

Each book on OSO reproduces the structure of the original printed work as far as possible, with the addition of many features only supported in electronic form, such as full-text searching, cross-referencing via keywords, in-line footnotes and linking to other online texts from bibliographies.

Each book on OSO has a main page, carrying title and bibliographic information, an abstract and keywords at book level and a table of contents with clickable links to each chapter. From anywhere within a single book you can return to its main page by clicking the label table of contents at the end of the Breadcrumb Trail.

Below this appears a row showing the book's parent subject area and its title. Standard bibliographic data (author, affiliation, title, ISBN and print publication date) and a book jacket image are set out above the book's Abstract & Keywords. The table of contents further down…

…gives links to the full text (including abstract) and abstract (only) of each chapter.

Oxford Scholarship Online aims to make full use of the possibilities of electronic texts, and so we present the texts in different page blocks from the original books. Typically several whole (or part) pages of the original appear on one scrolling page at OSO.
You can browse through the full text using the Previous and Next links found at the top and bottom of each page, on the right:

Either moves your view one screen page forward or back, as appropriate

This may correspond to turning several pages in the original text. But you'll notice that we do acknowledge the original text's pagination in the presentation online:

A dotted line and accompanying legend show where the transition between one print page and the next begins. You may find this useful for double-checking a precise page citation, or when using OSO to work with a colleague who has the original book.

A few key controls enable you to move around easily within a

• To move backwards or forwards through the text, use the previous/next page controls at the top and bottom right of any full text page.
• To quickly reach another chapter, or the book's front- and end-matter, use the Contents Scroller in the left navigation bar.

• Wherever you are within a book's full text, to return at any time to the book's main (home/header) page, click on the final label table of contents at the right hand end of the Breadcrumb Trail, directly below the top navigation bar:

As far as possible we use appropriate characters to render correctly on screen all the specialized characters used in original texts, from the Latin letters of transliterated Sanskrit through classical Greek to mathematical expressions. For the latter we have used the new standard "MathML" to ensure correct presentation. Tables are re-rendered in HTML. In some cases we use special image files to render characters correctly, when we cannot use character codes recognized by standard operating systems. You may notice these characters appearing a little later than ordinary text when you are loading a new page. The scale of the text handling required means we may have made a few errors. If you find a mis-rendering, please let us know via the Contact Us facility (see How to use the Contact Us page).

OSO titles have abstracts at both book and chapter level. In the minority of cases where these have not been written by the original author of the book or chapter, they have been produced by the editor of a multi-author collection or other specialist in the subject matter.
Each abstract has a set of keywords attached. These are shown as links: click to see other abstracts (book and chapter) that share the keyword.
Note: you can carry out the equivalent search for any term by entering it in the Keywords box of Advanced Search.

Footnote numbers are provided as links (in superscript font) within OSO texts, as with the original books:

…click on the footnote number to view its text.

If the original text carried footnotes at the foot of each page, you will see the full footnote inserted into the main text like this:

You can do this with several footnotes on the same page if you choose, so that you can see them all expanded within the text. (Note: if you move to the following (on-screen) page and return, any expanded footnotes will have been collapsed again.) To hide the footnote, click the footnote number again. Where the original text grouped footnotes either at the end of the chapter or at the end of the whole book, you'll move to another page to see the footnote's full text, alongside its neighbours:

Use your browser's Back button to return to the full text.

This has two meanings in OSO:

• A cross-reference within the original text, shown in the OSO version as a link, similar to a footnote, but in the normal font size, not superscript:

– clicking this will take you to the destination given in the text.

• A shortcut to running a search on a term used in the full text, using the Cross Reference tool in the left navigation bar:

Click and drag your mouse to select a word or a few words, then click the Cross Reference icon to carry out a full text Quick Search using the highlighted words (treating them as separate words, not a single ordered phrase).

The contents scroller appears in the left hand navigation when you are viewing a single title in OSO.

It offers:

• quick routes to other parts of the current book, such as chapter heads, when you are viewing full chapter text
• the only route to some front and end matter, such as the Bibliography and Index.

Use the small arrows on the right to scroll the table of contents up and down. NB: If you are using Netscape 4.7, you will see a static table of contents in the left-hand sidebar, not the scroller. This is because the code (DHTML) we use to provide the scroller is not supported by this browser.

Several or all of the following links occur in the Contents Scroller for each title:

It offers: quick routes to other parts of the current book, such as chapter heads, when you are viewing full chapter text the only route to some front and end matter, such as the Bibliography and Index.Use the small arrows on the right to scroll the table of contents up and down. NB: If you are using Netscape 4.7, you will see a static table of contents in the left-hand sidebar, not the scroller. This is because the code (DHTML) we use to provide the scroller is not supported by this browser.

Book Contents	This reproduces the print table of contents, providing links to the chapter heads via page numbers from the original book.
Preface	Click this link to reach the book's foreword and adjacent pages, such as credits and dedication.
Appendix	Click on this link to reach a book's appendices – all are grouped under this single label in the Contents Scroller. As before you can use the previous/next controls to move through the text.
Bibliography	Use this link in the Contents Scroller to find the book's bibliography. You may notice some items include hyperlinks. Once a month OSO polls online resources to find full text versions of cited items: where we find a source, the item is presented as a link to it. In most cases the full text is available by subscription. If you or your institution already has the relevant licence, clicking the link will take you straight to the item (or to a login screen, depending on the authentication method). Where you don't have rights, the online publisher's site will usually offer information on how to get them. For the moment, bibliography items available online are likely to be restricted to journal articles. We will ensure that our regular search includes as many sources as possible as the availability of online book texts increases.
Index	This link from the Contents Scroller takes you to a reproduction of the print index, complete with links to the full text as (print) page numbers. Where there is more than one index in the original (for example People and Concepts), all are presented, one after the other. Use the previous / next links to move through the index pages.