Instructions : Library - Chinese Text Project

Chinese Text Project	Chinese Text Project
	Simplified Chinese version

Library

The library section of the site provides photographic representations of preserved texts which can be freely downloaded as well as viewed online and cross-referenced with texts in the ancient text database.

Browsing texts

You can search for a resource by title using the search box on the library page. Alternatively, from the "Texts" section of the site, you can access a list of all related resources by clicking the "Library Resources" link beside the title of a text or section. Click on the title of a file to start browsing.

Use the blue arrows to move between pages, or enter a page number in the box at the top of the page and press return to jump to a specific page. Clicking on the scan of the text switches between small and large sizes.

Please note that not all resources are yet viewable online. Creating the online versions is extremely computationally intensive, and will require several more weeks to complete with our present hardware. The remaining resources (which almost all correspond to texts not contained on the site) will be added when possible.

Marking chapters

One difficulty presented by transmitted texts is locating a desired section of text. Different editions usually result in different pagination, and where contents tables are provided, they do not include page numbers but merely a list of chapters.

For texts which appear in the CTP textual database, the site is able to generate contents pages with links to the beginning of each chapter (see the 摛澡堂四库全书荟要 edition of the Mozi for a completed example), but to do so, the site needs to know on which page of the scanned version each chapter begins.

When you are logged in and browse a scanned edition online, the site will display the option to "Mark this page as the start of" followed by a list of chapters. When you come across the first page of a chapter, simply select the correct chapter title from the list and click "Submit" - this information will immediately be used to make the edition in question more navigable for both you and all other users. If you make a mistake, please click the red X to remove the assignment to avoid confusion.

Downloading files

To download a file, simply click on one of the links in the "Download" column.

Files downloaded from the site will be in one of the following two formats (if you place the mouse cursor over the download link, you can see which format a file is in before downloading it):

PDF format - Many systems will already have support for opening PDF files, so you just need to download the file and open it. If your system is not able to open the file, you may wish to install the free Adobe Reader software.
DjVu format - Unless you have used DjVu files before, you may need to install additional software on your computer in order to view them. Various readers are available - one possibility is DjVuLibre.

Please exercise caution when downloading files from the Internet, and make sure that relevant software on your computer (including operating system and anti-virus software) is up to date. If you are unsure or concerned about security, you may prefer to simply use the resources online without downloading.

Uploading files

Please note that at this time, only PDF and DjVu format files can be uploaded. Please also note that this section of the site is currently intended for uploading photographic representations of transmitted texts which are not in copyright.

To upload one or more files, you must first provide some information about the resource you are uploading. To begin the process, log in to the site if you have not yet done so, go to the main library page, then click on "click here to upload". Once you have filled in the relevant details, the site will display a form asking you to upload files.

When uploading a file, please be sure to leave the page open until the upload completes. After your file has been uploaded, it will take the system some time (usually less than ten minutes) to create an online version of the file. You can continue uploading files while this process continues.

Thanks for your support

Thanks to all those who have kindly donated to the project - your donations make features like this possible. The library section of the site requires considerable infrastructure to support and maintain - further donations to support this would be greatly appreciated.