East Asian Library Electronic Resources: Database User Guides

To view Apabi eBooks, first install the Apabi Reader from http://www.idoican.com.cn/reader/unicodeReadersetup.exe . Apabi Reader is preinstalled on the public computers in the East Asian Library.

Links to specific Apabi eBooks are listed in Princeton’s online catalog. Alternatively, you can browse and search the currently available items at http://princeton.lib.apabi.com/ . If prompted to do so, install the “Check Module” ActiveX control displayed at the top of the browser window. You can also change the interface language to Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, or English.

After clicking on the title of a book, you will see two buttons. “Online Browse” allows you to take a quick look at the book for 15 minutes. If you want to read it for longer, click “Borrow”. This will check out the book for 2 weeks maximum; other users can then only browse it online, but they can reserve the book for when it is returned.

Navigation is faster in a checked-out book. Also, you can use the annotation tools (highlighter, pen, “sticky” notes) to mark up the text; these annotations can be seen whenever the book is viewed on the same computer.

To view the books you have checked out, open the “File” menu in Apabi Reader and select “Document Manager”. Then select “My Borrowed Books”. Right-click on a specific book to pull up a menu that will allow you to renew or return the book. Books are automatically returned when they are due, unless you renew them.

Printing is not available for most books, due to copyright restrictions. However, you can copy-and-paste excerpts of up to 1000 characters from a book into another program. This copy-and-paste feature may be used a maximum of 50 times per week per computer. To enter copy-and-paste mode, click on the cursor icon next to the hand icon in the toolbar. You can also copy images of pages to the clipboard by clicking on the camera icon.

Note that if you are using Apabi Reader on a library computer, books may only be checked out for 24 hours. Larger books are downloaded as you view them, so they may be viewed immediately, but navigation may be slow for the first few minutes. Note that annotations you make in a book on a library computer may be visible to others who use that computer. Please remember to return the books when you are done with them.

• Duxiu is an index of Chinese books and articles, as well as some video. Many of the articles have full-text available. Princeton has full access to some of the books, and partial access is available for the others.
• There are some restrictions on how the copyrighted documents in Duxiu can be viewed or used. Articles and book previews are viewed in the browser as page images rather than plain text.
• A book preview is available if a 阅读 tab appears on the book's homepage. In the preview, you can view the first 20 pages of the book. However, you can also click 图书馆文献传递 to request that additional pages be emailed to you. For a given book, there is a weekly request limit of 50 pages or 20% of the book (whichever is smaller). Note: Email providers will sometimes marks these document delivery emails as spam. If you are not receiving your documents, you may need to safelist the domain vip.163.com.
• For articles, different degrees of access are available. Some articles have full-text available online directly from Duxiu. Click on 全文检索 above the search box to see these articles. Other articles may have email document delivery available, as described above. These search results are marked with a 文献传递 button. Note that unlike the book excerpts, the articles are not delivered immediately; they may take a day or two to process. However, they will be sent as PDFs, which may be viewed offline.
• When viewing articles, there are a few options that allow you to make use of the text.
  • 文字摘录 allows you to copy and paste text (you must first outline the section of text you are interested in, which is then converted to selectable text).
  • 截取图片 does the same for pictures (after outlining the image, right click on it to save or copy to the clipboard).
  • 保存 allows you to save an individual page as a PNG image file.
  • 收藏 allows you to save up to 6 pages of the article to "My Library" (described below)
  • 打印 allows you to print up to 6 pages.
• In both search results and the document viewer, you will often see the icon 收藏. Clicking this will allow you to add a citation (or up to 6 pages of an article) to 我的图书馆 (My Library). You can also send the document to 我的专题图书馆, which is like a blog or personal research journal that can be shared with others.

Introduction

• Publishers: Chinese University of Hong Kong & Digital Heritage Publishing Ltd., 1999-. At least 183 CD-ROMs.
• Coverage: Complete contents of the Wenyuange copy (1782) plus a few useful tools. 800 million characters, almost 2 million piece title
• The Si ku quan shu includes such titles as the Quan Tang shi, Zi zhi tong jian, Xu Zi zhi tong jian chang bian, Wen xuan, Pei wen yun fu, Tai ping yu lan, the 25 Histories, etc., but not always in the best, or even complete editions
• Princeton University has 3 simultaneous users.
• The Electronic Si ku quan shu ("e-SKQS") is useful not only for searching, but also for studying: linked dictionaries, notebooks

Logging in

• If available, set Microsoft and other input methods (ChinaStar, UnionWay) after starting the program, after seeing the "Chinese University Press" logo, but before logging in. You can use simplified input methods; variant characters are linked according to specific settings (usually there is no need to change)
• Enter the search program by clicking Content Search (内容檢索)
• The Top Tool Bar remains always the same; the right Side Tool Bar changes according to the activities performed
• Use the Horse icon to exit, or to minimize the screen (so that you can reset input methods if necessary)

Tool Bars Overview

• Top Tool Bar (from left to right):

Open book with magnifying glass [Search and Browse] ● Left Arrow [Previous Search Result/Screen] ● Right Arrow [Next Search Result/Screen] ● Toolbox [Accessory Programs] ● Seal [Print] ● Compass [Settings] ● Question mark [Help] ● Horse [Exit] ● Closed book with magnifying glass [Abort search]

• Right Tool Bar in Results Set Display:

Pen [Save results] ● Menu box [Minor display settings] ● Scrolls [Display modes] ● Character [Font size] ● Arrows [Navigating within result sets]

• Right Tool Bar in Individual Result Display:

Double Book [Select and manipulate] ● Magnifying glass [Zoom] ● Notebook [Make annotations] ● Closed Book [Dictionary] ● Open Book [Toggle Number of Pages] ● Enlargement [Full screen] ● Left Arrow [Previous Page] with down arrow [previous chapter, page, book, hit] ● Right Arrow [Next Page] with down arrow [next chapter, page, book, hit] 

Searching Phrases and Input

• Full text searching: one can use various third-party Unicode-based input systems (Microsoft’s IMEs, Unionway’s AsianSuite, ChinaStar), the stroke-and-radical based e-SKQS input system (輔助輸入). Make sure you enter phrases fully into the bottom input box, before you transfer them to the search box.
• Boolean "Advanced" Searching is available (高級檢索); the range of its searches is within the same chapter.
• For proximity searches, use X%nY, where X and Y are characters, and n is the maximum number of intervening characters
• Searches are valid either for the main text (正文文字) or for annotations (注釋文字
• Limits available are by siku/sibu category (四庫分類), title (書名條件) or author (著者條件). To set them, one can browse through the hierarchy of the Siku/Sibu classification system, or use the e-SKQS input system, including an additional choose-and-click pinyin system (按拼音排序). One can select more than one author by holding down the control key. Deselect your limits by clicking on the relevant browsing icons
• One can modify searches by going back to previous searches (開啓當前檢索條件)
• Searches can be aborted by double-clicking on the upper right icon

Browsing texts and information on texts and authors

• One can search (檢索) or browse (瀏覽) the siku/sibu categories (分類), titles (書名) or authors/names (著者姓氏). For titles and authors, the easiest browsing order to navigate in is a choose-and-click pinyin system (按拼音排序), others are stroke-based systems 傳統筆形) or a zhuyin (注音>) system. In addition, one can also browse authors by dynasty (按朝代瀏覽)
• With title and author result sets, one can set the display to simple (簡單, title only), basic (具體, title, author, classification), and detailed (詳細, with links to the Si ku da ci dian).
• Within the detailed display, click on the author’s name to get a list of books published by that author; click on the title to go directly to that text; click on the book icon (if present) to get information on a title from the Si ku da ci dian; and click on the red icon to view a table of contents (内容提要). Note: the last are often provided by this e-SKQS project, and are not original  

Interpreting and Manipulating Results Sets

• One can choose to display 10, 20 or 50 results (條) at a time, and set their font size
• Numbers are given for the number of individual matches (匹配), and the number of chapters (卷) with matches in them>
• Use the different arrows in the Top and Side Tool Bars to move between pages of display and/or individual matches
• One can save searches/results sets (儲存檢索條件) . These may be retrieved from the "Content Manager" under the Toolbox menu(资料管理员<)

Manipulating Individual Matches

• One toggles between the editable text display (全文文本), and image display (原文圖像) for an individual match and between either of those and the results set display (檢索結果), using the bottom tags. The image display will be useful to display the page number of the printed edition, and to display rare characters not in the font (and hence, not displayed on the editable text display)
• One can select characters (選擇) for copy-and-paste (拷貝) into Notepad or WordPad (寫字板, depending on operating system) or into another search (用選擇字串檢索)
• One can navigate (翻頁) between pages (頁), chapters (卷), books (書) and individual matches (匹配), using the Side Tool Bar Arrows; the Top Tool Bar arrows move between already displayed results
• One can toggle the display from one page to four pages at a time (單頁多頁切換), use the magnifying glass to enlarge a small area of the screen (放大鏡), or change the page display into full screen without bars (全屏顯示)
• One can personalize one’s results in notebooks (筆記), by adding (and undo, 取消) punctuation (添加標點), adding one’s own annotations (拷貝並打開記事簿), etc. This takes place in Notepad or WordPad files, depending on the operating system; such files are managed in the File Manager (資料管理員)
• To save any Notepad or WordPad file from Windows2000 Library computers onto a floppy disk, make sure to put a floppy disk into its drive, and type a:\ in front of the file name you want to save it under (e.g, a:\skqstest.txt). There is no other way of accessing the floppy disk under the library security profiles.
• Printing (列印) is self-explanatory

• Choose the dictionary icon from the Right Tool Bar, and then select a character in the text (聯機字典) to look up its pronunciation and meaning in the Zhonghua gu han yu zi dian). This dictionary is also available for direct searching (單字字義查詢) from the "Accessory Programs" menu (輔助工具)
• Two different calendar conversion programs enable conversion between Chinese and Western style dating (古今紀年換算), and the ganzhi system and Gregorian calendar (干支/公元年換算)
• One can look up the explanations of hexagrams (八卦·六十四卦表)
• The File Manager (資料管理員) controls the notebooks and searches you may create while using the e-SKQS
• From the "Accessory Programs" menu, one can also open WordPad (寫字版) if enabled (depending on the operating system). Note that the font used in the program is FZKai-Z03

Exit

• Be sure to exit properly, using the Horse icon, otherwise the server does not know that one has exited: one has to click exit (退出) on two screens

Sample Searches

A

1. Search for lijia 里甲using e-SKQS input help (7/里; 5/田 in main text. [1161 matches]
2. Repeat the same search, but limit it to the history section 史部 [681 matches]
3. Limit the search to the title Xu Zi zhi tong jian chang bian續資治通鑑長編, using the built-in pinyin browse [3 matches]
4. Repeat the same search for annotations only (by clicking the 注意文字 radio button in the search box) [205 matches]
5. Save the last search

B

1. Search for Wang Yangming 王陽明 or Wang Shouren 王守仁 (using e-SKQS input: 4/玉; 12/阜; 8/日; 6/宀; 4/人) and limit by Ming individual literary collections (biejilei Ming 集 -> 別集類 -> 別集五：明...) [274 matches]

C

1. Do a proximity search for zhou 舟and xin 心, maximum 2 characters in between [420 matches]
2. Same, with exactly two characters in between (in advanced search, add NOT 舟%1心) [182 matches]

D

1. Search for information on the book Yanshan tang bie ji 弇山堂別集, using the "click pinyin" input system
2. Search for other books by its author (Wang Shizhen 王世貞, set display to detailed)

This can be accessed from the public computers in the East Asian Library.  Open the folder "EAL Applications" on the Desktop, then launch the program "Wenwubao 1985-2019".  The program should be mostly self-explanatory, but please keep the following in mind:

An article can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking the "下载本页" button at the bottom of the window.  Please note that for articles published prior to 2015, the PDF will be protected by the following password:

Coood^09~2015.08.15

When performing searches under the 搜索 tab, the program may appear to freeze, with the text "(Not Responding)" appearing in the title bar. However, if you wait long enough (up to several minutes), the search will eventually complete.  The running time can improve substantially if you limit the search in one or both of the following ways:

- Uncheck 全部时间 and select a specific date range.  A smaller date range will result in faster search time.  Note that searches in the range 1985-2001 will run much faster than those in 2002-2019, since the files in those two ranges are in a different format.  However, even for more recent issues, restricting the date range to a year or two should return results fairly quickly.

- Uncheck 正文, which will turn off fulltext searching. Instead, check 标题 and/or 作者, which will limit the search to headings and/or authors, respectively.  If fulltext searching is turned off, you should get quick results even if 全部时间 is checked.