About

The navigation on the top of the homepage provides a variety of options to access content on the site, including Browse Library, Explore Collections and Commentary Article functions.

The basic search bar appears below the main navigation for quick and easy searching across the site.

Below the search bar is a banner image with a link to the featured content on Arcadian Library Online, followed by a brief description of the platform. On the left-hand side there are also buttons with topics through which you can explore the site, and tile links to explore images on the right-hand side.

Keep scrolling to access more featured themes.

At the bottom of the page there is a scrolling highlights bar giving links to key documents across the collection.

Browse Library in the top navigation menu provides options to access the content by Topic, Place, Period, People and Organizations, Document Type, Special Features and Language.

Clicking on any option leads to an alphabetical list for browsing. The numbers in brackets next to each term show the amount of content aggregated under each term. Clicking on any term will lead to a results page for all the content on the site that has been tagged with the term. 

The results page offers further filter options in the left-hand column.

Explore Collections in the top navigation menu provides options to access the different collections on the site and the featured content. Click into a collection to be brought to a summary page, with options to start your search by subject, author, place, period, or language. Featured content leads to documents currently being highlighted on the site.

To search, type your search term in the Search bar at the top of each page. Clicking the keyboard icon brings up a virtual keyboard that can be switched between English or Arabic letter sets. Clicking the magnifying glass button or pressing return will take you to the results page.

The search page will show image results and text results in order of the most relevant and can be reordered by title or date, ascending or descending. The standard text results page shows 10 results and can be adjusted to 5 or 20 results. The search results will show the article or volume title, author (s), and content type, with a preview snippet of text that includes the search term appearing in bold.

Search results can be refined by Collection, Content Type, Document Type, Language, People, Period, Place, Special Features (e.g. marginalia, illustration), and Topic via the left-hand column.

Navigate to the desired results by clicking on the item title at the top of each result.

To the right of the search bar, click on the Advanced Search button.

Enter your search term in the search bar with the option to refine by Title, Author/Editor/Creator, Summary/Abstract, Category, or Identifier. Enter additional search terms using ‘Add Field’ with search functions of ‘AND,’ ‘OR,’ and ‘NOT’ and the same options listed above.

Further refine results by Date range by year and Content Type (Archive – primary source documents or Commentary for Articles).

Use the same search results functions on the search page to refine results further and access results.

Navigate to a specific document by browsing the library through a specific category or collection. Document pages show the title, shelfmark, DOI, printer / publisher, author(s). alternative author(s), date, place, and keywords. 

To the right of this information is an image from the document. Click on this to view the full document in the image viewer. 

Below, one can find information about the description, the full catalogue record, bindings and provenance, table of contents and any special features. 

Specific sections of the document will show in the image viewer box. On the right-side of the viewer one can find different buttons that increase or decrease the size, make full screen, or rotate the image. There is also a button for single page view. 

Below the image viewer are images of other pages in the document. Click on a specific page to bring up in the image  viewer.

The rest of the page includes information about the description, the full catalogue record, bindings and provenance, table of contents and any special features of the record. 

On the left-hand side, under TABLE OF CONTENTS, enter a page number in the search bar to jump to that page in the document. Click on hyperlinked text below search bar to also jump to certain sections of the document. 

On each content page, including book chapters, the left-hand column of the page will show Subject information, including Document Type, Language, People, Period, Place, and Topic. All content on the site is tagged using these terms and clicking on any of the listed links will lead to all content tagged with that term.

Under the Subject section, a Related Content section will appear. All content on Arcadian Library Online is organized as part of a powerful taxonomy. The taxonomy informs the links that appear in this section, showing content that is similar, allowing users to discover new and related content organically while using the platform.

Navigate to the list of commentary articles by clicking on the Commentary Articles title in the navigation header. This will bring up a list of commentary articles on the site. 

Article pages include the title, author, DOI, subtitle, keywords, and identifier. Below this information is the table of contents, description, and the full article. Articles are text-based, but will have links to documents that they are highlighting.

Create a personal account using the Sign Up function to save content and searches in folders. Create an account by clicking ‘Log in’ in the top right-hand corner of the site above ‘Librarians.’ At the bottom of the pop-up window, click ‘Sign up now.’

After signing up or logging in to your personal account, you can save searches and content to folders. To save a search, click the ‘Save this Search’ button from any search results page, which appears on the top right side of the page.

To save content, locate the ‘Save’ icon in the top right-hand corner of any page of the content (directly under ‘Advanced Search’) that you wish to save. Clicking on ‘Save’ will enable you to save the URL of the relevant page into a folder. You can create multiple folders and save different content into each.

Access folders from ‘My Content’ under the welcome message in the top right corner of the site.

APA, MLA, and Chicago citations are available for all content on the platform. Click the ‘Citation’ button next to the Save and Print links. This will bring up a pop-up window with citation information that you can copy to clipboard or export as an RIS file.

Clicking the ‘Share’ button on any content page will bring up a form with options to share content via email, Google plus, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, with options to personalize the message before posting or emailing.

Access the Librarians section of Arcadian Library Online using the ‘Librarians’ navigation in the top navigation bar. The Librarian section provides useful information on MARC Records, Promotional Materials for the platform, as well as Help and Contact Us information.