Browsing
The Digital Library presents different digital collections. The 'History
of science and scholarship in the Netherlands' and the 'Proceedings
of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences'. These collections
all have the same presentation format, images of the work offering
faithful reproductions of the original sources and automatically generated
text files (via OCR = optical character recognition) to enable searching
and copying. You can switch between the 'image' and 'OCR-text' by
clicking on this image 
.
In order to enable quick browsing, the images have been cropped and
compressed. The quality of the images should be sufficient for browsing
for most users on most standard screens. However, should you have problems
with legibility, we recommend creating a PDF file of the pages you
would like to read so that you can enlarge the pages in your PDF reader
or print them out.
Please note that the OCR-text files have not been corrected and will contain errors. As the OCR-text files do not always accurately reflect the original sources and may show problems of presentation, especially for formulas, tables, and mathematical symbols, please refer to the images (of the publication) as the authoritative versions.
In the Proceedings are large fold-out pages which are
displayed the same size as the othere pages. By clicking on the
zoom image 
, an
enlargement of the page will be displayed in FlashPaper.
To view these FlashPaper documents,
you need to have the Macromedia
Flash Player browser plug-in installed
and working on your computer.
Copying
You can copy a section of the OCR-text with Ctrl-C and paste it for instance into a Word file. You can only use the OCR-text for copying (not the images). Be aware that these may include errors due to misinterpretation in the OCR-process.
Downloading and printing
For downloading and optimal legibility you can create your own PDF-
file. By using the ‘download /print’ option in the page presentation screen,
you can specify the pages you would like to include. When you print
the page, you print the image of the text, which is a faithful representation
of the text. You
will be informed about the size and the estimated download time before
the PDF is created. Two options are offered: a high-resolution PDF (better
print quality but larger file) and a low-resolution PDF (smaller file
but lower print quality). By pressing ‘Continue’ a
PDF-file will be generated which you can save (
)
or print (
)
using your Acrobat Reader menu bar.
We strongly recommend using the PDF option for printing.
Using the ‘print’ command
of your browser (Ctrl- P) will result in a relatively low quality print as
the screen images have been highly compressed for quick browsing.
Please note that if you download the PDF it is not possible
to use the search option because the PDF is an image and not text.
Searching
You can search full-text
or by author, word(s) in the title, year of publication or in the case of
the Proceedings, by volume number. Due to performance restrictions you are not allowed to use searchterms that consist of less than 4 characters
Using 'Wildcards'
You can use wildcards to refine your search. Wildcards enable you to use
an * to replace characters. For example,
a search for work* will retrieve
items with words such as workers, workplace, etc. Using a ? specifies
a single alphanumeric character, although you can use more than one ? to indicate multiple characters. For example, ?at finds
documents that contain cat and hat, while ??at finds
documents that contain that and chat. You can also combine * and ? (e.g. ??si* will
find basic, assign, assimilate etc.)
Using 'Search Operators'
Search operators are special words that enable you to refine or expand
the scope of your search:
- To find pages that include multiple search terms, add an AND between
the terms.
- To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an OR between
the terms.
- To find pages that include all the terms, add an ALL between the terms.