This "Library at Your Fingertips" attempts to present in electronic form, the kind of books one might have in the older section of a scholarly personal library, oriented towards theology, history and English literature. It is a collection of reference-works from ancient literature, plus works of history, theology and philosophy, as well as hundreds of the most enduring works of poetry and fiction, that are always worth coming back to, for renewed enjoyment.

All these have been collected into an infobase, which is a text-file rather like a database: capable of carrying huge amounts of data, differentiated into many indexed layers or levels. It is like an enormous folder, holding several hundred thousand pages of text, yet able to be searched as a single, integrated unit. You can also confine your search to any of its many indexed sections. The infobase is therefore highly suited as the "platform" on which to store a whole library of books, in electronic form.

This project was first intended purely for personal use; scanning in -- or downloading from the Internet -- Patristic and Classical works which one needed to check a reference from time to time: plus those (like the Bible) from which one regularly needs a suitable passage or theme. It then expanded, to include some major public-domain reference works in theology, philosophy and history; and finally, at the request of students and colleagues who judged it to be a very student-friendly program, to embrace a wide sweep of English literature: Drama, Poetry and Prose, for general college use.

The present CD combines what were originally designed as ten separate infobases -- each of these is now designated a Stack. A shorter version, omitting the Stacks on bible, patristics, theology and philosophy, is issued under the title Schoolbooks and is intended mainly for high-school students.

A large part of the material has been sourced from the Internet, and some has been scanned in fresh, from the printed page, or even (the introductory essays, passim) newly written for this edition. All of the texts were arranged and formatted, to avail of the awesome search facilities of Folio Views.

 

The modest charge for this CD (and the online subscription) is not for the public-domain material, but for valuable elements added by our editor (P.R.) and publisher (M.F.):

• - collecting the texts into a coherent, interlinked library;

• - new introductions to the authors and to many of their works;

• - the powerful, award-winning software (Folio Views).

The texts forming this collection are in the public domain, apart from the new introductions and linking material. Apart from the substantial material scanned in by the editor, major sources for already scanned texts were: Project Gutenberg, and Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Other more specialised sources are acknowledged later.

Our aim is to use only texts which are in the public domain. If, through error, any text has been included here upon which copyright still remains with any living person or group, our sincere apologies for such error. If we are notified, we will immediately remove such material from our Website, and from the next edition of the CD. Notification please, to ctexts@thefiengroup.com

Copyright status of this CD: These infobases are published and copyright (c) 2002, in Folio Views, by The Fien Group, and the editorial copyright is with Patrick Rogers (c) 2002. Copyright extends only to what has been added to the public domain texts, and their specific organization in this edited version.

Of course we hope you will be highly satisfied with the program, but we must make the standard disclaimer. We do not guarantee that everything on this CD-ROM is accurate, complete or correctly indexed. While a great amount of work has been done in scanning, editing and arranging, it has not been possible to carefully proof-read every individual text, and some may still contain obvious scanning or typographical errors.

We (classictexts.net, The FIEN Group, Patrick Rogers and their respective agents and employees) cannot guarantee that all of the thousands of Jump-links within the documents are operative, or will function on your system. The links are provided as a user-friendly supplement to the Index or Table of Contents, which should remain your basic mechanism when searching for a particular book or chapter, poem, play or short story.

We accept no liability for any loss or damage that may result from the use of this software, or of the Infobase. -- You agree to use this product as-is and accept full responsibility regarding its use.

Introductory notes are provided for almost all of the authors and for some of the more important individual works, contained on the CD. These notes, whether written completely new for this edition, or (what is more commonly the case) simply abridged & adapted from pre-existing sources, will usually be found within a colored panel of this shade. As a rule of thumb, any material which is copyright to the editor of this CD will be within such a panel, although some material even in the panels is in the public domain.

References for these biographical notes included:

• Cross, F.M. (ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (O.U.P., Oxford, 1975)

• Crystal, David, (ed.) Cambridge Paperback Encyclopedia (Cambridge Uni. Press, 3rd edn., 1999)

• Ousby, Ian, (ed.) Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge Uni. Press, 1993)

• Self, Martin, (ed.) The Harver World Encyclopedia (Harver, New York, 1975)

• The Encyclopedia Britannica (2002 edition) ...

(The E.B., consulted in every case, is the outstanding resource for this kind of search.)

Apart from the NRSV Bible, any contents of this infobase which are not set within these colored panels on the CD_Rom are not claimed as copyright, and (so far as this editor is concerned) may be freely reproduced in other media, without need of any permission.

Our plan is to update these introductory panels for each new edition of the CD. Users, and particularly teachers, are welcome to propose any improvements they wish to see made in the introductions, in order to better serve their purposes. padre@classictexts.net

This program was written with "Screen Resolution" set to 1024 x 768 pixels per square inch. If your screen is set to display a smaller number of pixels, the preset Typefonts (Normal: 14-point) may appear too large, until you make a modification:

1. You can change your Screen Resolution setting to 1024 x 768 pixels (right-click on Desktop; select Properties, Settings etc.)

2. The better solution, keeping your current screen-resolution, is: select View, Zoom -- and increase or reduce the magnification, to suit your preferences, then save that new setting (Ctrl_S).

The usual cursor keystrokes in Windows programs also operate here:

PgDn = Page Down
PgUp = Page Up   

Home = Start of Line
End = End of Line

Ctrl-Home = Top of File (main table of Links)
Ctrl-End = End of File

Click any heading within the Reference Window (section above the bar, at top of the Screen), to access that item, with any sub-menu it contains.

"Back": The left-pointing thick black arrow on the icons-line will return you to the previous screen from which you have just come, via a jump-link, as when browsing the Web. The function-key F6 does the same thing.

In Browse-mode, at level 1, the names of only the Stacks (Categories) are on display. Click the + (plus-sign) alongside the relevant Stack to expand it to the next index-level. Or, with the cursor in the Browser portion of the screen, pressing the numbers 2 or higher will expand the index to that index-level. The key "A" expands "all levels".

Jump-Links: Along with the indexed Table of Contents, another way to jump to the text you want is via the Links that I've added to many of these texts. Some larger and more complex, significant texts (like the Bible, Easton's Biblical Dictionary, the Lectionary; Eusebius' Church History; Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews; Augustine's Confessions, and City of God; Aquinas' Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles; Schaff's Church History; Gibbon's Decline and Fall, the Code of Canon Law; the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Anthology of Poetry, the Plays of Shakespeare, etc.) are provided with very detailed linkage, for quickness of access to their many sub-sections. Why not try one and see?

Links look like this; when you bring it over a link text, the cursor changes shape to look like a pointing figer, and when you left-click, it should bring you to the Link Destination.

A very useful key is F6, (same function as the thick, left-facing arrow, on menu-bar) that brings you back to the last Jump-Link you've pressed.

Footprints: As with the Internet, this program allows you to re-trace your steps over the various jump-moves you have made during the current session, within the Infobase.

You may access this function under "Search"_"Show History", or by clicking the Footprints icon on the toolbar (above). You will see a list of places from which you have moved via jump-links. Click on any of them, to return to that place.

Different ways to display the document or table of contents, or a combination of the two. Click on tabs at bottom of screen, to see the function of each.

Document Window devotes the full width of the screen to the document you are reading. Click on the Document tab at bottom left of the screen.

Contents Window displays the Table of Contents (ToC), which may be expanded to any of its multiple levels. "1" contracts ToC to lowest level (only the Bookstacks); "2" expands it by one level (showing Authors), and so on. The key "a" expands the ToC to "all", i.e. its fullest extent, showing every indexed heading in the Infobase. This can be very useful, when in Browse mode.

Browse Window combines both previous modes: ToC is open in the left column, with Document open on the right. If ToC is set to show all indexed levels, it allows you to see what comes next within any given text or group of texts. E.g., Poetry: with the ToC window open to All indexed levels, you see the titles of the poems immediately following the one that is open in the document screen).

Reference Window above the horizontal bar on the document window, shows indexed levels in outline form, so you can see at a glance exactly where you are located within the infobase, at any point.

Hit-List Window will contain a list of all instances found, when you have done a Search for a particular word of phrase. It is an instant concordance.

With the mouse, (or using Page-Down and Shift key, together) select the passage you wish to export.

Copy it into memory (Ctrl-C); and paste it to your word-processor (Ctrl-V). You can then apply whatever formatting features you wish, and save the file.

You DO NOT have permission to export complete texts and use them in any other context. -- You may use them for quotation in another document however, you may not republish or reverse engineer this infobase.

Printing Selected Texts

With mouse, select the passage you wish to print (highlight the relevant passage).

To print the selected passage, press "File", "Print" on the Menu-bar (top), or use the short-cut combination Ctrl-P.

Note: If you want to use a smaller type-font than that used in the infobase, first export the relevant text to your word-processor, and make whatever format changes you desire, before printing.

Query function-key
The programme has a magnificent range of searches, that may be quickly done with the Query function-key (F2).

Simple Word-search:
In the search panel, type the word you want and click OK. The first instance of your word is highlighted; click the "Next" icon (or F4), to bring you the next occurrence of your word, and so on.

Phrase-search:
To find words in a particular sequence, place them within parentheses (e.g. "to be or not to be")

Thesaurical search:
Put the dollar-sign ($) after your search-word, to find cognate words as listed in the inbuilt thesaurus (e.g., the search-string spouse$ brings up "Husband", "Wife", "Partner", "Concubine" etc.)

Proximity search:
"lovely girl" @5 finds "lovely" and "girl" within 5 words of each other. To join this with the thesaurical function, try "lovely$ girl" @5, (for wider range of adjectives) or "lovely girl$" @5 (wider range of nouns), or "lovely girl" @10 (wider range of hits, because allowing for more intervening words)

Search limiting:
To limit your search to a particular segment of the infobase (Stack, author, work or volume), place a tick in the relevant 3check-box in the Table of Contents. For example, if you want to search for the term "law" in Plato, 4expand the Classics Stack and click the Plato check-box before doing the search.

Boolean "and/or/either" searches are also supported. Full options are explained in the Help menu.

Hit-List:
To see all instances of your word in a single list, click the 1Hit List tab, for an instant Concordance of where (Author, Book, Chapter) each "hit" occurs.

Suggestion:
Experiment with the various kinds of searches; they are great fun.... and practice makes perfect!