Luther’s Works on CD-ROM

Location: computer in the southwest (back right) corner of the Information Commons on the 1 st floor of Ellis Library. There is a sign next to the computer that lists Luther’s Works as one of the programs installed. For the sake of your eyesight, avoid this workstation in the mid- to late afternoon, as the sun is rather oppressive.

Keep in Mind:

1) The CD-ROM sometimes moves slowly . Give it time to display all results.

2) The CD-ROM is not hooked up to the Internet, so you cannot email results.

Starting: Double-click on the red and white icon on the computer’s desktop. This will pull up an empty-desktop page. Across the top of it are several important buttons.

My Library button: Use this to browse through the contents of the CD — if you know there is a specific part of Luther’s works you want to read straight through. The contents of the CD may be listed by either title or by extremely broad subject descriptions. The “Find” button here merely helps you find section titles; to search within sections, use Search or the Topic Browser.

Search button: To refine your search, check your options under the Help section. You can do “and,” “or” and some other kinds of searches. You can narrow your search to passages deemed by the editors to include a given topic by doing a search in the form topic (plague) where the word in parentheses is the word you want for a topic. This will only work if the word you put in the parentheses is considered a “topic word” by the search engine. If your topic search isn’t working, try using the Topic Browser (see below).

To search a particular part of Luther’s works , you must build a “Collection.” From the Tools menu, choose Define Collections. Choose “new,” and give the collection a title (right side). Choose parts of the CD from the list on the left side of the window until you are finished, and then click OK. The collection will then be included in the pulldown menu of collections that can be searched when you enter the Search window.

Topic Browser : this button is not labeled, but it is the one to the immediate right of the Search button. You type in a word, and “topics” used to organize the material appear in the window below. (Give it time.) Then choose a topic. Passages from Luther’s Works will appear. If they do not seem to appear, you may have one window obscuring another, so try moving the windows around.

To Print: Once you have pulled up a section of text, drag the mouse over the portion you wish to print. Then right-click and choose print selection.

To Save to A Disk or other external drive : Select your text as above. Then right-click and choose copy. Then go to the Start menu, open up Notepad (Programs>Accessories>Notepad), right-click, choose paste, and save the new document to the A:/ drive or other appropriate external drive (Zip 750 or USB drive).