If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out the Northfield History Collaborative’s newest addition, the full-text searchable “Early Northfield History” scrapbook from the Northfield Public Library.
The 211-page scrapbook is even more useful when you know how to navigate the software, called ContentDM.
To reach the scrapbook, you can either browse the Northfield Public Library’s virtual collection for it, or you can follow this link.
· In the upper left corner of an object in ContentDM, you can type in the box to search inside the item — in this case the scrapbook. In the list of pages below, pages that include “hits” for your search will be marked in red. You can also go through your hits one by one by clicking on “previous hit” and “next hit” below the search box.
· At the left side of the screen, the pages of the scrapbook are listed, including the titles of the articles. Note that several articles spill onto the next two or three pages.
· To move forward or backward among the pages, you can also choose “previous page” and “next page” above the list of page names.
· Just above the actual image viewer, you can see that there are tools to zoom in and out in the upper left.
· Further to the right, you can see three page icons. The first allows you to see the image at its highest resolution – the largest the image can be viewed. The second icon will fit the image into the window – although you still may be required to scroll down. The third icon will fit the image to the width of the viewer.
· The icons after that allow you to rotate the image left or right.
· The icon after that will cause a thumbnail version of the image to appear in the lower left corner of your browser.
· The last icon will cause your image to appear in a new window.
· Back at the drop-down menu under the search box, you have a number of options for seeing more information about the page. Choosing “document description” and then pressing “go” will produce the cataloging information about the entire scrapbook. “Page description” will produce cataloging information about just the page you have selected. “Page and text” will open a new window with the image at left and any transcriptions available at right. The last two options are for producing a PDF version of the scrapbook that you can print. The first allows you to just print some of the pages; the second allows you to print the entire book.
· At the top of the browser, using the “Advanced Search” option will you to search inside the entire Collaborative or inside just one institution’s collection.