• Subscriptions: You can now take out a single subscription that gives you access to all the collections in Lexscien.
• Preferences: You can set default search preferences, including preferred collections/serials, and save them in your personal profile (details).
• Search Range: The main toolbar now has a drop down list to let you easily choose between searching the whole collection, only your preferences, or only the volumes returned by your last search/browse.
• Browse: Browsing the library is more convenient, and new buttons on the browse view give you better control placing volumes on your browse list.
• Extra downloads: If you exceed your download limits, you can buy extra credits to download more.
• Records: You can see what files you have downloaded and any download credits you have purchased.
• Auto-login: If you use a private computer, you can choose to allow a Lexscien cookie to remember your login email and password. It will save you the trouble of typing them in when you login, and it will automatically log you in again if your session expires while you are working.
• Help: There's a new quick start guide on the welcome page, and an improved user guide and FAQ.

Lexscien has been tested with Internet Explorer v6.0, Netscape v7.1, Firefox v1.0, and Opera v7.54. Differences between these browsers mean that the views and behaviour may vary slightly. For example, Firefox does not give download files the descriptive name that Lexscien suggests, and there seems to be no way to force this at present (although we are sure it will improve in future Firefox releases). Opera needs custom configuration to display PDFs in Lexscien successfully (see here). Please let us know about any other browser-related problems you encounter and we will do our best to work around them.

Not directly. C-FAR takes no more than 35% of gross proceeds to cover the cost of running and expanding the library. Half of the remaining 65% is then divided between the organisations in proportion to the number of pages of literature they have put into the library. The other half is divided in proportion to the pages viewed by users. The net proceeds from downloads are passed directly to the organisation that supplied the downloaded material. This means that the supplier of the literature that is used most, benefits most, although everyone gets a share.

When you log in, you see a welcome page with "User Profile Options" at the top. Select "Change personal details". Note that there are separate save buttons for changing your personal details (name etc) and changing your password.

You can change the appearance of the text you are reading by using the text format selector. By default you see 'Formatted Text', in which our computer has done its best to mimic the original page layout. It can be a bit inflexible, because it tries to preserve the original text size and format, but it does do a reasonable job of reproducing tables. In contrast, 'Unformatted Text' is fast, easy to read and more flexible (you can scale it to make it larger) but it can't show you tables, diagrams or photos, and headings aren't as prominent. If you see gobbledygook on a page it's best to flip to 'PDF Image'. This shows you exactly what the original page looked like, although it takes a bit longer to load, and it doesn't highlight your search terms so it's not ideal for everyday searching and reading. If you plan to download an excerpt to read or print (see here), it's best to do this in the 'PDF Image' view. If you are downloading to capture text, you need to do this in the Plain Text format.

Change the format to Unformatted Text using the format selector. You can now use your browser's controls to increase the text size. In Internet Explorer this is on the menu under View / Text Size. For some documents you can also change the size of Formatted Text, although this is not always the case.

First, put the article in your reference notebook, using the buttons on the navigation toolbar as follows. Go to the first page of your article, then press the left one of the three buttons. Then go to the last page of the article (e.g. by pressing the plus sign or entering the page number) and press the middle of the three buttons. You have now told the library where your article starts and ends. Then press the right hand one of the three buttons and you will see the excerpt appear in your reference notebook (the list at the bottom left of the screen). Any items you put here will be kept until you remove them.

Of course you don't need to save a whole article - you can use this method to extract any continuous run of pages from any volume.

Now, click on the item in your reference notebook; you will see only the pages you selected. The navigation toolbar will now contain a new download button that will let you save the excerpt to your own hard disk.

You will be given the option to select whether the download should be in PDF or Plain Text format. For simple reading or printing, 'PDF Image' is best. Only use Plain Text if you need an electronic version of the text e.g. to quote in a document you are writing. Note that downloads are for personal use only; you may not republish this text in any form. There is a limit to how many pages you may download in one go, to protect the copyrighted data.

Save the text to disk as described above. For printing, it is best to save it in PDF Image format (by switching to that format before you save the excerpt). Once it is saved, it will be a single file, which you can then print as normal.

Use the browse facility to select the volume you want to search. You can use the 'Clear Results' button to empty the previous documents from your search results list. Click 'Add to Results' to put your selected volume(s) on the Results list. Now use the Search Range control to select 'Last Results'. If you enter your search term(s) in the box on the main toolbar, only your selected volume(s) will be searched. In this case, if a selected volume does not contain your search terms, it will remain on your Results list with 0 hits reported, so that you can repeat searches on the same volume selection.

Note that there is a separate Search Range control on the Detailed Search page, so that you can fine tune basic and detailed searches separately.

You can restrict your search in various ways. If you frequently search a particular group of publications, or a particular date range, then it is worth setting up your default preferences. Click the Personal Information button to go to the Welcome page, and select "Set search preferences" on the "User Profile Options" menu. Changes you make to these settings will be saved permanently as part of your profile. Now use the Search Range control to select 'Preferences'. If you enter your search term(s) in the box on the main toolbar, your search will be limited according to your saved default preferences.

There is a similar list of preferences on the Detailed Search page. These can be used to override your saved preferences for the length of the current session only, i.e. until you log out. This means that you can temporarily change your preferences without losing your saved defaults. If you wish, you can later save your temporary changes as your new defaults.

There are a few things that can cause this problem. Firstly, you may have accidentally mis-typed your email address when registering. Try to get a 'lost password reminder'. If Lexscien confirms that it has sent one, you know that your email address did register correctly. If instead it tells you that it can't find your email address, then please re-register. Secondly, make sure any spam filters you use are set to accept email from . A third problem that can occur is that your ISP may be mistaking Lexscien email for spam and blocking it. If you've checked all the above and still haven't received your password within a few hours, please email us at .

Most often, this means that your password contains a number you are mistaking for a letter, or vice-versa. Zero and O or One and L are easy to confuse in certain email display fonts. Copy the password to the clipboard (ctrl-C) and paste (ctrl-V) it into a document where you can change the font until the differences are clear. Alternatively paste your password directly into the password entry box on the login page.

The organisation that owns the private collection may have the wrong email address for you, so the library doesn't recognise you as a subscriber. Alternatively, your access may have expired. In either case, please contact the organisation directly to update your private subscription details. For example, SPR members can call the SPR Office on +44 (0)207-9378984. (If you have subscribed additionally to the full Lexscien collection but are having problems with access, please contact us at .)

Your screen should look like this. If not, try maximising your browser window. If that doesn't help, hold the shift key on your keyboard down while you click on your browser's refresh button. If that helped, it means you have the refresh problem described here: "I keep doing different searches but the results stay the same"; please follow those instructions to fix it. If that didn't solve the problem, please email us about it and send us a screenshot if possible. In the meantime you can use the scrollbar at the right edge of the toolbar to scroll down until the buttons are visible.

Please check your browser settings. You must have Javascript enabled, although you don't need Java enabled.

The text was generated automatically by character recognition software. It generally does a pretty good job, but can struggle with diagrams, tables, foreign character sets, unusual layout or deteriorating documents. If you switch to the PDF Image view, you can see an exact reproduction of the original page (more info).

While most of the PDF files are small so download relatively quickly, pages that have photographs or diagrams on them can be much larger. We have tried to keep them as small as possible without losing quality, but it can happen that a PDF may take a while to download, especially if you are on a dial-up connection. This can look as though there is nothing happening. Alternatively, you may need to adjust your browser settings as described in the next question.

Please check your browser settings. In Lexscien, PDFs are displayed using Adobe's Acrobat Reader embedded inside your browser (this is called a 'plug-in'). You must set your browser to allow plug-in appplications to display 'in-line', i.e. embedded inside another page. Some browsers (e.g. Opera) may need to be told specifically to allow Acrobat plug-ins.

The library is only showing you one PDF page at a time. You can use Lexscien's forward and backward controls to page through the document, and the hit list will take you directly to significant pages. However, in each case the PDF you see consists of only one page, so Adobe's own menu navigation (the lower menu bar) will not work. Ideally we'd like to surpress Adobe's built-in PDF menu completely, but we haven't figured out how to do that yet. If you want a complete, multi-page PDF of an article, make an excerpt and download it as described here.

It is likely that the system is not searching the entire collection. Check the list on your welcome page (press the 'personal information' button) to see whether you have access to all the collections you shoudl be entitled to view. If not, see the answer to the question I can log in but can't see the collections I should see"

Your browser is not refreshing. You need to set it to update pages it has viewed before. In Internet Explorer go to Tools ... Internet Options then on the first tab (General) click the Settings button (in the middle section marked Temporary Internet Files). Set "Check for newer versions of stored pages:" to "Automatically".

There may well be discrepancies between these numbers, especially for older volumes. The page number displayed on the toolbar reflects where this page is in the full sequence of pages in the volume. However, many volumes have the first few pages numbered in roman numerals, so they only start numbering properly after three or four pages. Sometimes there are un-numbered pages with photo inserts. Also, there are occasional mistakes in a long publication history, resulting in gaps or even overlaps in page numbers within a volume. All litbase can do is number the pages in sequence. If you're looking for a particular page number and you enter that number in the toolbar, you may not get to that page immediately, but chances are you won't be far off.

Check out our search tips page.

That's true, it is different to other libraries. It has many unusual features designed to make it cheap to implement, so it is practical for small organisations with limited funds to publish their documents. This also means that you as end user don't have to pay a lot to get access. If you're used to the conventional (expensive) library databases, you may find this one takes a bit of getting used to. It's worth the effort though - it has a number of extra, unusual features that you will enjoy. The overview explains the general differences and strategy for using the system.

There is more detailed information in the User Guide and the Features Overview. If you can't find the answers you are looking for, contact the Lexscien support team at .