Searching and Viewing the Washington College of Law Historical Collection

• Find information in the Washington College of Law Historical Collection
• View Scrapbooks
• View PDF documents

Find information in the Washington College of Law Historical Collection

There are 5 ways to find information in this collection:

• browse by Title by clicking the Titles button
• browse by Subject by clicking the Subjects button
• browse by People by clicking the People button
• browse by Date by clicking the Dates button
• search for particular words that appear in the descriptions by clicking the Search button

All browse and search features retrieve information from the item description not the document. You can search the PDFs individually using Adobe Reader's search feature.

Browse by Titles

To browse by titles, click on "Titles" from any search page. They are arranged alphabetically.

Browse by Subjects

To browse by subjects, click on "Subjects" from any search page. They are arranged alphabetically.

Browse by People

To browse by a person's name, click on "People" from any search page. They are arranged alphabetically by last name.

Browse by Dates

To browse by date, click on "Dates" from any search page. Document dates are arranged chronologically from 1845 to 1891. Undated materials are at the bottom of the list.

Keyword Searching

To search by keyword, enter words or phrases in the box and click "begin search."

Example: mussey will pull up documents on Ellen Spencer Mussey, Spencer Mussey, and R.D. Mussey Example: mussey ellen will pull up documents by or about Ellen Spencer Mussey only

Click on "preferences" to refine or expand your searches. "Ignore word endings" broadens your search, and "whole word must match" narrows your search. Choose either option and click "set preferences", then start your search.

The search engine is not case-sensitive, so you don't have to capitalize initials or initial letters. Phrase searching with quotations (" ") is not supported. For Boolean searching (joining terms with AND, OR, and NOT to refine searching), you must select the advanced query mode.

View Scrapbooks

The digital scrapbooks are animated. You can flip the pages as you flip a real book. The animated scrapbooks are best viewed using Mozilla Firefox web browser. Please be advised that some of the scrapbook pages may take longer to load. Flipping pages instead of using to "Go To" button may alleviate this problem.

Flip a page

• click on the corner of a page and drag it to flip. OR
• click "Next" or "Previous" button to flip.

Go to a specific page

• enter the page number in the "Go to page" box and click "GO".
• if an item is highlighted, it has multiple pages - click on the item to see additional pages.

Enlarge a page

• click "Zoom in" to enlarge a page.
• click on the page, drag and move the page to see details.
• click "Zoom out" to go back to the original size.

Close the book

• click the X button on the top right of the window to close the book.

View PDF Documents

There is a known problem when using the Firefox browser to view large PDF files. This issue can be solved by changing your Firefox browser configuration to use Adobe Reader, instead of a PDF plug-in, to view the PDF files. If you receive the message "The file is damaged and could not be repaired", try one of the solutions below based on the version of the Firefox browser you are using.

Firefox 1.5 - 2.0 (Windows)

• In Firefox select 'Tools' -- 'Options...'
• Select 'Downloads' -- 'Download Actions' -- 'View and Edit Actions...'
• Scroll to 'PDF'.
• Select 'Change Action' -- 'Open them with this application'.
• Browse to your Acrobat application (Acrobat.exe) on your local hard drive. Usually it's located here: C:/Program Files/Adobe.
• Click 'Open' -- 'OK' -- 'Close'.

Now when you try to open a link to a PDF file in Firefox, the PDF file will be automatically downloaded to your local machine and then open in Acrobat Reader.

(Thanks to MIT Libraries for these directions.)

Firefox 2.0+ (Windows)

• In Firefox select 'Tools' -- 'Options...'
• Select ‘Content' -- ‘File types' -- ‘Manage…'
• Select 'PDF Adobe Acrobat Document'.
• Select 'Change Action' -- 'Open them with default application', if the default is Adobe Reader.
• If the default is not Adobe Reader, browse to your Acrobat application (Acrobat.exe) on your local hard drive. Usually it's located here: C:/Program Files/Adobe.
• Click 'Open' -- 'OK '-- 'Close'.

Now when you try to open a link to a PDF file in Firefox, the PDF file will be automatically downloaded to your local machine and then open in Acrobat Reader.

Firefox 3.0+ (Windows)

• In Firefox select 'Tools' -- 'Options...'
• Select ‘Applications'.
• Select 'Adobe Acrobat Document'.
• In the Action column, select 'Adobe Reader…'
• Click 'OK'.

Now when you try to open a link to a PDF file in Firefox, the PDF file will be automatically downloaded to your local machine and then open in Acrobat Reader.