Introductory Note
This online Guide is the complete 'Help' facility for the Electronic Beowulf, version 2.0 (2003), a set of 2 CD-ROMs published by British Library Publications, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, England.
Electronic Beowulf: A Guide
The Electronic Beowulf is an image-based edition of Beowulf, the great Old English poem surviving in the British Library in a composite codex known as Cotton Vitellius A. xv. It won the 2001 Beatrice White Prize awarded by the English Association (United Kingdom) "for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English Literature before 1590."
The main page of Electronic Beowulf is the gateway to everything inside, including this Help. You must have clicked the word OPEN on the spine of the book to start the program and arrive here.
In addition to digital images of the Beowulf Manuscript, Electronic Beowulf includes images of Cotton Vitellius A. xv, indispensable eighteenth-century transcriptions, copies of the 1815 first edition with early nineteenth-century collations of the manuscript, a comprehensive glossarial index, and a new edition and transcript, both with search facilities.
After the program loads, a toolbar appears in the gray area at the top of the screen. Click 'Choose' to open the text selection menu.
Click a title to open any document. When the document opens, a full toolbar appears at the top of the screen.
Click 'Choose' at any time to return to the list and select another text.
Click 'Arrange' to open a menu to set viewing options. See Arrange for details.
Click 'Search', then 'Edition Search' or 'Transcript Search' to open the respective search facility. For guidelines, see Search Facilities.
Help
Click 'Help' to access this Guide or the 'Help Index'. These resources are accessible from every page of Electronic Beowulf.
The second row of the toolbar is for moving sequentially from folio to folio, finding a specific folio, resizing an image, and locating areas enhanced by backlighting, ultraviolet, or explanatory notes.
<< and >>
Move backward or forward one folio or page at a time.
Goto
Locate a specific folio or page. For
detailed instructions see Goto:
Beowulf.
Following 'Goto' on the toolbar, each folio is identified by the manuscript foliation (the number written on the recto of each folio) and by the British Library number.
Resize
Resize images from frame size to 300 percent of image.
The bright blue box at the right of the toolbar indicates that a folio from 'Beowulf' contains areas of special interest, such as backlit images of covered readings or ultraviolet images of scribal erasures and corrections. Click the bright blue box to outline these areas (click it again to hide them). Click the outlined areas and illustrated notes appear in the left frame. See Beowulf Manuscript for details.