CSeARCH: the Cultural Studies e-Archive: HELP

Each page in the Cultural Studies archive gives you a range of functions including:

• About: tells you a little about the background to CSeARCH and the culture of the archive.
• Search: is the primary search page for finding resources in the archive.
• Browse: is the page where you can browse through articles by categories (author, year, etc.).
• Submit: is where you can submit your own articles. (You must Register from this page first.)
  There is also a link to the File manager on the submit page.
• Help: (this page) gives some pointers on how to use CSeARCH functions.

At the end of this help page are some E-mail addresses for your comments and further Links

About

This page tells you about the background to CSeARCH, the reasons that CSeARCH was developed and the culture of open access archives.

Search

Use this page to search the archive. If you do a simple search you will be simply asked to enter something in the search field. The archive will be searched for authors, titles or keywords which match the search phrase. For a more complex search use the advanced search option. Here you can specify a combination of title, author, keyword, publication, subject and year. Fill in those details you know and leave the others blank. Eventually even more advanced search facilities will be provided if they are thought to be generally useful.

Browse

Use this page to browse the archive based on categories of author, year, publication or subject. Currently only the first letter of the first named author or year of publication can be selected directly. Other categories have to be typed in rather than selected. However ultimately you will be able to select the publication, subject, listed author name and other details directly from this page. Currently you can also select those articles you have personally uploaded. This is useful because you may wish to use the edit details option to correct or expand the entry in the archive's database.

Submit

This page is used to upload an article or document. Only certain document types are permitted, including MS Word documents (.doc) or text files (.txt, .text), Adobe PDF (.pdf), webpages (.htm or .html) and associated web resources (.gif, .jpg, .jpeg), and certain media files (.wav, .mov and .avi). Ultimately we expect to be able to upload file collections as zip file (.zip) but currently the main resource is uploaded and the other files are associated with it later. You will be given an error message if the file type is not currently supported. Once a document is uploaded (or an external URL identified), you are then asked to fill in details about this article including at a minimum title, author and year. The help buttons will give you an idea of the required format for authors etc.

Register

Should you choose the submit option when you are not logged in as a registered user you will be given the option to login as an 'Existing User' or to register if you haven't already done so. To login choose 'Existing User' and type your supplied user name and password. To register give your first and last names and your e-mail in the registration form at the bottom of the page. You will then be sent your account details by e-mail. If there already is an account with this e-mail address because you have already registered you can use this to ask for an account name and password reminder.

File Manager

More experienced users may wish to use the file manager to upload files to their personal area and publish at a later date. The file manager is accessed as a link from the submit page. Currently the only functions available are to select a document or resource to upload or to select a previously uploaded document to publish in the archive. Other functions will be added later. Currently the file manager is the only easy way of performing a resource upload before it is associated with a published file.

Help

Use this page for a basic description of what you can do on each page. It is our ultimate intention to provide contextual help on each page through a help button and the help option on the left-hand menu.

Your comments

The archive presented here is an early working version intended to provide access to the main archive functions. Comments and feedback are greatfully received on the archive itself or any technical issues encountered. Please forward to

• Gary Hall, Academic Director
• Steve Green, Technical Director

Links

Additionally you can use this page to go to a number of related sites including

• Culture Machine
• Directory of Open Access Journals