There are two sources available so far, the book catalogue (ELK) and the index to periodical articles (PERIDAT). There will be others later: this is what the link 'More' is for.

There is a choice of indexes on the drop-down menu WHICH INDEX? Others could be added if anyone suggests them. The system has been made as close to the previous one in behaviour and appearance, so there should not be much difficulty in adapting to it.

The difference is that the new system is faster, more able to expand - accession numbers are approaching 100,000, although that is larger than the number of volumes because many lower numbers are unused - and the live, up-to-date lists are available to anyone anywhere. That is not true of borrowing and other details, which are restricted to registered users, ie the Community and any externs allowed to use the library.

There are advantages for small religious libraries anywhere to be able to see our catalogue, and any student of theology or monastic studies could find the PERIDAT periodical articles list very useful: there are nearly 17,000 references, and many of the periodicals mentioned are to be found in many libraries, from Aarhus to Zulia (Venezuela).

If you want to borrow books you need to Log in. The User name for all the Community is what is has been up to now. For the time being you cannot change this yourself, but the Library Assistant can do it for you.

First you must log in at READER LOG IN. Then click on BORROWING and enter the accession number of the book (It is on the top left-hand corner of the front cover)

Click on IS THIS THE BOOK, and see whether what comes up to the screen is the same book. If it isn't, click on NO (the default) and then on NEXT, and try again. It is easy to type digits wrong. (Note that soon some books will have six-digit accession numbers.) If it is the right book, click on YES, NEXT and pass to yor next activity.

Please leave cancelling the borrowing record to the Librarians.

Under 'Keyword' it is possible to search for two words or phrases, using the special operators ++ and --.   e.g.

"Gilling" and "castle" (more results): enter gilling++castle

"Gilling" not "castle" (fewer results) enter gilling--castle

"Canon Law" but not "moral theology" enter canon law--moral theology

We can't do OR searches yet (so just search twice)

FARM or FARMING ?

At present the search routines are a little uncertain about the difference between "farm" giving "farm" only or "farming" as well. But we will sort this out in time.
    However, the system as it is seems happy to accept 'farm ' (with an a trailing space) and produce results without including 'farming' or 'farmer'. Try it with the Keyword search.

It will be helpful to tell us what further Help information we should give. And there will probably be some faults in the programming (or in the data) which we have not yet noticed. You can contact us through the links on the Home page (to the Library about the data, or the Archivist about the program)

If you do not have a printer or in any case want to save your results as a file, you can save them in any folder to which you have access, either on the Abbey network, or on a local disk. It is best to click on SAVE AS, and opt for "Web Page, HTML only". Remember to choose a suitable name for the file. When saved, you can read it at any time with a browser (just OPEN it). If you only want small bits of it, for example to put book details into an email, just use Cut & Paste in the usual way. For larger chunks (or the whole file) this can work, but a bit erratically because of the columns.

   If you can reach a printer, you can print in the usual way. Printing is usually black and white, of course, but it needn't be. Usually any background colour is ignored.

On the Abbey network you have to log in to the Network, which is based on Windows. It is not possible for the Catalogue programs, which are based on a different server using a quite different operating system, namely Unix, to pick up or use that User information. And in any case the second login, only needed by Library Readers who want to use borrowing or other facilities, makes some of these processes easier to arrange. We have to do it: so we have taken advantage of it.