How to Use Epistolæ

System Requirements and Support

  1. Monitor: Minimum 1024x768 required. Higher resolution is recommended.
  2. Browsers:
    1. Windows: Firefox 1.5 or later, Internet Explorer 6 or later
    2. MacOS: Firefox 1.5 or later, Safari, Mozilla 1.7 or later
    3. Linux: Firefox 1.5 or later, Mozilla 1.7 or later
  3. JavaScript: Your browser must have JavaScript enabled

We do not support America Online (AOL) browsers.

For technical help on Epistolæ please e-mail ccnmtl@columbia.edu.

Improving your search

The search terms in lowercase will match words in any case. When search with capitalization is made, the returned results will be more specific. For example, archbishop will yield results for archbishop and Archbishop, whereas a query for Archbishop will only match Archbishop.

You can also search specific phrases by using double quotation marks:
"queen of England" or "Queen of England"

Results returned are documents that contain those words which appear adjacent to each other. You can separate multiple phrases or proper names with a comma: e.g. archbishop, "queen of England"

Search syntax

Operator: term1 term2
Action: Search for all chapters or annotation and references containing either term1 or term2 or both.
Search example: duchess England

Operator: "term1 term2"
Action: Search for entries that contain those terms which appear adjacent to each other.
Search example: "Queen of England"

Operator: +term
Action: Search for this required term. +term1 +term2 means both terms must appear anywhere within a searched document.
Search example: +duchess +England

Operator: -term
Action: Exclude chapters or annotation and references that contain this term.
Search example: queen -duchess will return references that contain only queen. The excluded results may contain queen, but this search syntax requires all documents containing duchess to be excluded.

Operator: query1 OR query2
Action: Searches the results of query1 with query2, ranking results by relevance to both query1 and query2.
Search example: "queen of England" OR countess. The search engine will first look for documents containing "queen of England". Then it will also search for documents containing countess. The final results returned will be ranked by relevance to both "queen of England" and countess.

See even more advanced searching techniques.