Page by Page Guide


Marked page proofs of an article, The Court of Beasts, by Ugo FoscoloGetting Started

Browsers
My Archive
Register/Log In
Adding Material to My Archive
My Bookshelf
My Lightbox

Documents

Overview and Browsing
View all Documents
Document Details Page
Download Options, Saving, Rotating and Printing
Viewing the Original Image
Share Functionality

Searching

Basic Search
Handwritten Text Recognition technology (HTR)
Boolean Functionality
Advanced Search
Search Results
Viewing Search Results

Research Tools

Video: An Introduction to the John Murray Archive
Essays
The Life Cycle of the Book
Chronology
Search Directories
Key Figures

Further Resources

AMExplorer
RefWorks/EndNote
OpenURLs



Getting Started

Before beginning to use Nineteenth Century Literary Society you may find it helpful to consult the background information contained in the introductory pages, particularly the Nature and Scope . You will also find information about the National Library of Scotland, our selection criteria, copyright and The Byron Papers in this section.

Click on the  icon on the right-hand side of the top banner of every page to link to the relevant section of these help pages.

Screenshot showing the introduction landing page

Browsers

Nineteenth Century Literary Society is optimised to use the following browsers: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, and the latest releases of Firefox and Safari.

My Archive


Click the link in the top right-hand corner to register for 'My Archive' or log in. If you are registering for the first time, enter your details into the form provided. Your first name and last name will be displayed on the site once you have logged in. A link to the privacy policy is included at the bottom of the form.

Register/Log in

'My Archive' enables you to register login details and benefit from a range of bespoke features that allow you to create your own personalised collection. Signing up is easy. Just click on the 'Register for My Archive' link on the home page, submit your login details, and off you go.

Adding Material to My Archive

Once you've logged in, you will be able to:

- Save selected documents to 'My Bookshelf.'

- Save any image from the collection to 'My Lightbox'.

- Run a slideshow of your lightbox images.

- Save your search results.

Every document, search result and individual image in Nineteenth Century Literary Society is tagged with the relevant 'Add to My Archive' button. To return to any document without the need to browse or search every time, simply click on the add button and it will automatically be stored in your individual account so you can return to it at any time.

My Bookshelf

Click the 'My Lightbox' or 'My Archive' links in the top right-hand corner to enter these features.

Once in 'My Archive' you can edit your profile, navigate to 'My Lightbox', view saved searches and documents.

Click on a saved search term to view saved search results. Click on thumbnails in 'My Bookshelf' to view your saved documents.

My Lightbox

You can organise the images in 'My Lightbox' at any time by creating a new lightbox. Enter the name of your new lightbox in the box beside 'Create a New Lightbox:' and click 'Create'. Use the tick boxes beside each image to select the images you wish to copy to your new lightbox. In the 'Image Options' menu, click 'Copy selection to another lightbox' to copy the selected images.

You can view your selection of images as a slideshow and export as PDFs by selecting these options from the 'Image Options' menu.

Documents

Overview and Browsing

You can browse the documents in Nineteenth Century Literary Society by clicking on the 'Documents' tab. This will take you to the document landing page, organised by themes. Clicking on one of the panels will return a list of all the documents associated with that theme. Using the tabs at the top of the page, you can also browse by Key Figures or Document Type. Once you have chosen your browse criteria (e.g. Correspondence under Document Type) use the filters on the left-hand side of the page to narrow down your selection. Choosing ‘List View’ will allow you to browse every document in the resource.

Screenshot of 'Browse by Document Type' thumbnails

View all Documents

Click 'List View' to go to the full documents list, filterable by a variety of categories: Date, Theme, Document Type and Key Figures. You can view a document by clicking on the thumbnail or title.

Documents are loaded 200 to a page, in alphabetical order by title and can be scrolled through. Navigation between pages with more than 200 documents listed is available at the top of the list. Users can browse previous and next pages, select a page number or a letter from the alphabetical list.

Full text searchable documents are indicated with the following icon:

Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) searchable documents are indicated with the following icon: 

From this page you can sort the order of each column, and also select the display of the last column to show either 'Theme', 'Document Type', or 'Key Figures'.

Document Details Page

Screenshot of the document details page, with text annotations explaining that linked 'Keywords', 'People' and 'Documents' can be clicked on to perform a search. Another annotation reads: 'Some documents include chapters. Click to jump straight to that section of the document. If you perform a search, choose to see only the chapters that feature results'

From the documents list, click on a title link and this will take you to the document details page that provides thumbnail images from the document, document-level metadata and the ability to start viewing the original image or select some or all of the document to download.

Scroll through thumbnails to select and view images. Use the 'next' and 'previous' buttons to show the next or previous document details page. Use the back arrow beside the 'next' and 'previous' buttons to return to the document list. Download the full document or a range of pages as a PDF using the PDF drop-down selection boxes.

Where available, some additional information will also be displayed underneath the metadata. The Keywords and People details within the metadata are clickable and will generate a search for the same term across the whole resource.

Download Options, Saving, Rotating and Printing

For the best-quality printout, it is recommended that you download the required image(s) as a PDF. Within the document details and the image-viewing pages you have several options. From the document details page you can download the entire contents of the document or specify a page or image range as a PDF document which can then be saved or printed. The image or page numbers available will be displayed in a drop-down box. Click on the required image/page to select the range to be downloaded.

When there is a page range provided there are sometimes a number of "unpaginated" images listed at the start of those available to download. These images can also be selected to download as each "unpaginated" page listed represents an image. For example, if there are six "unpaginated images" listed and you want to download them all, simply select the first image listed in the drop-down box and then select the sixth unpaginated image listed in the second drop-down box.

From the image view, you can download the current page you are viewing or an entire document. Clicking on these options will open a new window for the PDF to download. Please bear in mind when downloading entire documents that many of the files will be quite large and can take some time. You will require Adobe Reader for this facility, which can be downloaded for free by clicking here.

Viewing the Original Image

Clicking on the thumbnail or chapter list will generate the image-viewing screen. You can increase or decrease the magnification of the original image by using the  symbols in the top left-hand corner of the image-viewer window. To move around the image you can drag the document by holding down the left mouse button and then moving the mouse to the preferred view.

The icon  will open the image viewer in full screen.

The icons  will rotate the image, which will resize to fit screen view.

The icon  will return the image to its original position.

There are various ways to navigate through a document and you can also download images to print or save. Where available, some printed documents will have additional navigation features such as jumping to the next article or selecting a specific page number.

Users can use the plus/minus buttons in the top left corner, or their mouse wheel, to zoom in and out. The image can be rotated using the arrow buttons. It can be made full screen by clicking the 'toggle' button, and returned to its original setting by clicking on the 'home' button. Users can also return to the Document Details page, browse to the next/previous image, jump to a particular page, search within the document, add image to My Lightbox, or download the image or article.

Clicking on the 'Thumbnails' tab will display all the thumbnails for the document.

Screenshot of the image viewer, with text annotations highlighting buttons to zoom in or out, enter full screen mode, rotate the image, return to standard view, return to document details, view the next or previous image, download the image as a PDF, or add to lightbox

Screenshot of the document thumbnail view

Share Functionality

By clicking on the  button in the top right-hand corner of the page, you can bookmark and share the page you are viewing via a range of web-based resources and social-networking sites.

Searching


The search engine searches across all document-level metadata including bibliographic details, full text of printed material and selected additional editorial features. Searches are carried out at document level for all documents and at image level for full text searchable documents.

Basic Search

A basic keyword search box is available on all screens in the top right-hand corner. Type in your search term and either click on 'Go' or press enter. You can also integrate searches with Boolean text for more advanced queries. Underneath the basic search box are links to the 'Advanced Search' option as well as a list of 'Search Directories'.

Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR)

Adam Matthew is delighted to be able to deliver groundbreaking Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) search technology for the manuscript material in this resource. This delivers document-level full-text search results highlighted in handwritten documents. See our dedicated HTR help page for more information about how to use this technology to explore Nineteenth Century Literary Society.

Boolean Functionality

Boolean Operators

The keyword search supports the Boolean operators AND, OR and AND NOT between keywords. Using the terms 'agreement' and 'memorandum' as examples: To return results in which both 'agreement' and 'memorandum' appear, use AND between terms (TIP: The search engine already does this by default – see section on Automatic AND Queries).To return results which have either 'agreement' or 'memorandum', add OR between terms.

To return results in which ‘agreement’, but not 'memorandum' appears, add AND NOT between terms. This will search for 'agreement' but exclude any pages which also include 'memorandum'.

TIP: You can use either upper or lower case for Boolean terms.

Automatic AND Queries

By default, the search engine only returns results which contain all your keywords. The search engine automatically uses the AND operator, so there is no need to use this when searching for multiple terms.

TIP: To broaden or refine the keyword search, try using fewer or more terms.

Phrase Searching

By adding double quotation marks to your keywords you can search for exact phrases. Words enclosed in quotation marks ("Edinburgh Review") will only return results in which the words appear next to each other. Please note that if you phrase search, your number of hits displayed will still appear as individual words (e.g. if the phrase "Edinburgh Review" appears on a page twice, the results will show four hits).

Wildcards

Wildcards allow you to search for parts of words, enabling you to widen your search criteria. The search engine supports two types of wildcards; " ? " represents one character, and " * " represents any number of characters. For example, a search for "edit" might retrieve "editor", "edited" etc. You can also use wildcards to search for words as part of a phrase.

Plurals

The search engine does not automatically find plurals of search terms. If you want to look for both "poem" and "poems", use the 'Word Stemming' option under the 'Advanced Search' or the " * " wildcard.

Using Word Proximity Searches

The search engine will let you look for words or phrases that occur within a specified number of words of each other. This is a useful way of specifying the context in which words should occur. For example, a search for "advice for travellers" may be a more accurate way of finding references to specific details than using a simple "AND" operator, but offers a broader net than that of a phrase search.

Word Stemming

By ticking the 'Word Stemming' option on the 'Advanced Search' page, you can command the search engine to return results on all derivations of your search word(s). Thus a stemming-enabled keyword search for "book" will return book, books, booked, etc. However, it will not return different words that simply begin with book (e.g. bookseller, bookkeeper). For this, you need to use a wildcard.

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search page enables you to search for several keywords or phrases using the AND, OR and NOT Boolean operators.

Extra fields can be added using the button.

TIP: Use of these drop-down operators still follows the Boolean rules of precedence. Searches can be filtered by 'Date', 'Theme', 'Document Type' or ‘Key Figures’ by choosing an option from the drop-down lists. Searches can also be refined by restricting the search to Secondary Resources.

 Screenshot showing the 'Advanced Search' tool

Search Results

At the side of the search results page, you can select to filter results by 'Documents’ or 'Secondary Resources' only, or refine by 'Date', 'Theme', 'Document Type' or 'Key Figures'. You can export results as an email. When you select a document from the search results list, you will be taken to the document details page, where further details of the result will be displayed. Full text and HTR search results will be displayed with a list of the relevant sections from the original image, with additional details of the image/page number, chapter number and number of hits where relevant. Thumbnails that contain hits will be displayed with a red border in the slideshow at the top of the page and snippets will also appear at the bottom of the page. These results can be reordered on the bases of relevance, pages or number of hits.

To view the full document metadata click on the 'Show details' button at the top of the page. If there is a hit from the document-level metadata, then this will be highlighted.

TIP: If the document is returned in the search results with no full text hits, the metadata will be opened automatically.

Viewing Search Results

You can view the relevant image from the full text search results by selecting the link above the original image snippet. You can view the document from the beginning by clicking on the thumbnail image.

Full text and HTR hits are highlighted in yellow on the original image. Use the 'prev hit' and 'next hit' buttons above the image to browse other hits within the document. Selecting to view search results will open the relevant document in the relevant collection in a new window.

Research Tools

The Research Tools tab gives you additional editorial content, highlighting new ways to approach the material in Nineteenth Century Literary Society.

Video: An Introduction to the John Murray Archive

Nineteenth Century Literary Society features a video introduction to the John Murray Archive, filmed at the historic home of the publishers in Mayfair’s Albemarle Street. This interview with David McClay, former Senior Curator of the John Murray Archive, provides contextual information on the Murrays, their authors, and the main themes associated with the primary sources collected in this resource.

Essays

This section provides you with a selection of essays written by leading academics. Many of the essays will include hypertext links to the original documents. Clicking on a link will open a new window and if the link relates to a complete document the user will be taken to the Document Details page from where you can browse the images. To return to the essay simply close or minimise the new window. A menu on the left-hand side allows you to browse by author.

TIP: The  icon will generate a printable version of the essay.

TIP: The  icon will generate a PDF version.

The Life Cycle of the Book

Learn more about the evolution of key Murray texts in this exhibition. The Life Cycle of the Book includes five case studies that use five archival documents to tell the unique stories of each title. From the landing page, choose one title and then navigate through the five stages of the book’s life cycle by clicking headings at the top of the page or the arrows at the bottom of the page. Click the illustrative image to see the document in full. Beneath the text you will find linked search terms to explore the materials further. To navigate to another case study title, use the menu on the left of the screen.

Screenshot of 'The Life Cycle of the Book' content

Screenshot of 'The Life Cycle of the Book' content

Chronology

The interactive chronology highlights key events in culture and society within the long nineteenth century, whilst charting the evolution of the Murray publishing house. Each entry is tagged by a theme and all entries are searchable. Many entries have related images; click on the image to expand the text or image, and reveal the option to add the entry to a curated list view. To view your list view, click the link at the top of the screen.

Screenshot of the interactive chronology

Search Directories

The Search Directories are lists of Kewords, People and Library Collections which occur in Nineteenth Century Literary Society. All of this information has been captured where possible, though it is not necessarily a comprehensive list. To return a list of documents associated with a keyword, simply click on the term you are interested in. You can make multiple selections within one directory. Click 'Search' when you are ready, or 'Clear' to remove your selected terms.

Key Figures

Though the search directory provides an exhaustive list of people found in the Nineteenth Century Literary Society materials, the Key Figures tab highlights the many luminaries that are connected to the Murrays in these resources, from poets and scientists to travellers and politicians. Biographies outline the relationships between these noteable characters, and clickable links identify related figures and documents. Click a portrait on the landing page to jump directly to their biography.

Screenshot of the 'Key Figures' landing page


Further resources

AMExplorer

AMExplorer is a federated searching tool that gives you a quick and convenient way to search across all Adam Matthew collections. You will only be able to access document collections to which your library is subscribed. A link to Archive Explorer is available on the footer of all pages and the Advanced Search page.

RefWorks/EndNote

You can export the bibliographic details of each document to RefWorks and EndNote if you have user rights to these systems. These options are available to you on the document's listing or on the Document Details page of each individual item. Just click the RefWorks or EndNote logos, and a pop-up window with instructions will appear.

OpenURLs

OpenURLs connect you directly to your library catalogue, allowing you to easily access material recommended on this site. You'll find OpenURLs on the essay pages, or anywhere we suggest you continue your research using library materials. Click on the reference to send this item to your institution's link resolver and establish the easiest way to access this material that is not directly available on this site. Please note that your institution must have registered their link-resolver details with Adam Matthew Digital for the OpenURL links to be visible and active.