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To print this lesson, click on your Browser's print icon, above on the toolbar. It looks something like this:
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Lesson
6:
BUILD A LIBRARY
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by Candida Martinelli of Candida
Martinelli's Italophile Site
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SIX
LESSONS 1
HELPFUL
COMPUTER SKILLS 2
FREE
E-TEXTS 3
FREE
E-BOOK READER 4
FREE
E-BOOKS 5
BUYING
E-BOOKS 6
BUILD
A LIBRARY
Notice: These lessons in whole or in part, can be printed, reproduced and distributed, but not for profit! Candida Martinelli
Disclaimer: Please understand that you follow these lessons at your own risk. I am not to be blamed for anything and everything that happens with your computer. If that sounds serious, sorry, but it has to, otherwise its not legal! Having said all that, If you follow these lessons you will no longer be a computer novice, and a whole new, wonderful world of books will be opened up to you, your family and friends. Candida Martinelli
Thank you to RadSmart.com for their technical assistance. Check out their Auto Trader Program.
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After following the first 5 lessons, you should now
have:
Your friends and family members will have varying levels of computer skills. The safest bet is to suggest they follow these lessons. That way you can be sure they will have the right software and know-how to send you files and books, and to understand what to do with files and books you send them. The fastest way to tell people about these lessons is to use the TELL FRIENDS icon at the top left of this page and all the other lesson pages. When you CLICK on the TELL FRIENDS icon, your e-mail program starts-up and enters a link to the Lesson Introduction Page and a short message. You just add an address from your address book, modify the message if you want, then send the e-mail off. If you want to send a longer or more personal message, the safest and easiest way to enter the correct link to these lesson pages is to copy it from your Browser's ADDRESS line, and paste it in your e-mail message. If you type it out, there is a high chance that one or more of the strange symbols will go missing and the link will be invalid. To copy the address:
The greatest difficulty I had in creating these lessons is that I can't see exactly what is happening with your computer system as you work through the lesson steps. If you've made it through the lessons in one piece, perhaps you can offer your assistance to your friends and family, in case they have difficulties while following the lessons. It may make all the difference in the world to them knowing you are on-call.
If you use the Microsoft Internet Browser, you can store your favorite Internet locations in a folder called FAVORITES. Just like the MY DOCUMENTS folder, it can be divided into various categories to help you find things back more easily. It's a good idea to store the Internet locations I provide in these lessons in your FAVORITES folder so when you want to locate e-texts or e-books, you can do so without having to relocate these pages, and then find the links that you want. It's not difficult to make a CATEGORY in the FAVORITES folder, or to store a link there. The Browser has included a small program to assist you in keeping the folder organized. Before I walk you through the program, it's a good idea to become familiar with the FAVORITES folder and how it is accessed. If you are reading this lesson from a printout of the lesson, start-up your Internet Browser. If you are reading this lesson from your computer screen with your Internet Browser, you are just fine. Now, just look at the pull-down menu bar at the top of the screen. There is one item called FAVORITES. CLICK on that to pull-down the menu.
The arrows pointing off to the right show that there are contents in a folder. When you let the cursor rest on a folder name, the contents of the folder appear. Like this example with a CARDS AND GIFTS folder.
If there are sub-folders, they appear.
You can rest the cursor over them to see their contents.
There is another way to view the contents of your FAVORITES folder. CLICK on the FAVORITES ICON on the TOOLBAR. It looks like this:
This icon opens and closes a box on the left-hand of your screen that shows the FAVORITES folder contents. Here is a small piece of a sample box.
When you click on a folder, it open and shows its contents.
You can scroll up and down the folders with the scroll bar on the right side of the box. Practice a moment opening up folders and looking at the contents. And you can adjust the width of the box by by positioning the cursor on the right side of the box so that a line with an arrow point on either end appears. This lets you drag the right edge of the box either right or left to make the box wider or narrower. Practice a moment with this until you feel comfortable with the width of the box.
Add To Favorites Folder You may have noticed that whether you look through your FAVORITES folder from the pull-down menu option, or using the box on the left of the screen, there is always the options to ADD TO and to ORGANIZE the folder. This is the organization program I mentioned earlier. Let's say you are looking at a site, like this one now, or any site you have open in your Browser at this moment. You decide you like it and want to be able to easily find it again. You can either:
Choose one of these two ways to ADD TO FAVORITES. I will walk you through the process that follows. Don't worry. You can delete later anything you create now. Whichever way you chose to ADD A FAVORITE, you are presented with an ADD FAVORITE box that shows the internal title of the page in the NAME field, like this:
If you click on the OK button now, the site is added to the FAVORITES folder. But you can't go on for very long just adding sites to the FAVORITES folder before getting hundreds of sites listed in the order you added them, making no sense whatsoever! You should get in the habit of adding a site to a CATEGORY in the FAVORITES folder. To do this, you need the bottom half of the ADD FAVORITE box, which is shown only if you CLICK on the CREATE IN>> button.
Once you click on this button, the ADD FAVORITE box should from them on show the bottom half automatically. Here is an idea of what the full box looks like. Remember, what you see is not the contents of your FAVORITES folder. This is just to give you an idea of how the box looks.
All the categories in the FAVORITES folder appear. You can use the scroll bar to view them all. You may already have an appropriate CATEGORY for the new site you want to store. If you do, just CLICK once on the folder to open it up, then CLICK on the OK button to save it there. The site is added and the ADD FAVORITE box disappears. If an appropriate category does not exist, you can create one with the NEW FOLDER button.
By default, the new folder will be created in the FAVORITES folder. (You can also create a sub-category in an existing category by clicking on the category and creating the new folder in it.) Just fill in the FOLDER NAME in the CREATE NEW FOLDER box that appears, then CLICK on the OK button. For this example I've used NEW FOLDER as the FOLDER NAME. You can, too, to make it easier to follow this part of the lesson.
The new folder is created and the CREATE NEW FOLDER box disappears. You can see immediately that the new folder has been added to your list of categories in the FAVORITES folder.
Make sure it is highlighted, then CLICK on the OK button to save current site in this new folder.
The site is added to the new folder, and the ADD FAVORITE box disappears. You can check that the site was added to the new folder by opening up the FAVORITES folder and checking the contents. I added my ITALOPHILE site. The site you added will have a different title.
Organizing the Favorites Folder Try to imagine the categories you might want to help you find new e-texts and new e-books. They would probably follow along the lines of these lessons. For example:
To make life easier, you can always use the ORGANIZE FAVORITES option to create these categories all in one go. That way, when you are adding new sites, either those mentioned in these lessons, or ones you come across on your own, the category will already be there when you want to add the site, and you won't have to create it. To ORGANIZE your FAVORITES folder, you can either:
Choose one of these two ways now, to ORGANIZE your FAVORITES. Either way, the ORGANIZE FAVORITES box appears. The sample below shows folders you may not have. Don't worry. This is just to show you what the box looks like.
All the folders / categories that exist within the FAVORITES folder appear on the right. The buttons explain what you can do.
You can use the terms ' folder' and ' category' interchangeably. For clarity, I'll use ' folder' from now on so it matches the terms used in the box. Right now you should CREATE the CATEGORIES I listed above, that corresponded to the site locations I've provided during these lessons. They should all appear as folders under FAVORITES. To do this, just CLICK on the CREATE FOLDER button.
Immediately a new folder appears at the bottom of the list and you have to TYPE in the NEW FOLDER NAME. For example E-Texts, then press ENTER to accept the new name.
Continue until you've made all the folders listed above. If you make any mistakes, just CLICK on the folder and then CLICK on the RENAME or DELETE button. If you CLICK on RENAME, you can just TYPE in the NEW FOLDER NAME and press ENTER to save it. If you CLICK on DELETE, this box appears prompting you to confirm the deletion.
Just CLICK on the YES button to confirm the deletion, then the folder is deleted and the box disappears. When you have finished creating the folders, continue with the lesson from this point.
Organizing Sites in the Folders Up to now we have only added one site. But you can use the buttons in the ORGANIZE box to delete, rename and move sites around the FAVORITES' folders. When you click on a folder in the ORGANIZE box list, it opens up and shows its contents. Those contents can be more folders or sites you have saved there.
It is like the other BROWSE boxes you've been using. The PLUS and MINUS signs can be used to open up the folders to locate the location to where you want to move the site. As with the other BROWSE boxes, you can also DOUBLE-CLICK on a folder to open it up and show its contents. Once you locate the destination folder and highlight it, CLICK on the OK button to make the move. The ORGANIZE program moves the site, closes the BROWSE FOR FOLDER box, and returns to the main ORGANIZE FOLDERS box. The best practice at this point is to open up the lessons, one by one, and click on the links provided, one by one. When you have a link open in your Browser, ADD it to the FAVORITES using one of the two ways described above. Put it in the appropriate category, one of the ones you just created, or one you choose to create. You can then use the Browser's BACK button to return to the lesson page and click on the next link. The site links appear as blue, underlined text, and in the later lessons they are also available by clicking on the graphic image of the site's logo. When you are done, you will have a comprehensive selection in each category, and you'll definitely have the hang of adding to and organizing your FAVORITES folder!
Organizing using Drag-and-Drop and the Right-Click Menu If you are comfortable with the drag-and-drop method, highlighting objects, and using the menu that appears when you right-click on the mouse, you can organize your FAVORITES folder in a different way. To use these features, you should open up the left-hand box that contains the FAVORITES folder contents. CLICK on the FAVORITE ICON to open up the FAVORITES box on the left-hand of the screen. You can highlight a site or folder, and drag-and-drop it into another folder. It takes some practice, but it is a quick way to move sites and folders around. Note: This is the best way to order your folders alphabetically. When they are created, new folders go automatically to the bottom of the list. If you want them ordered alphabetically, you have to place them that way on your own. If you CLICK on a SITE or FOLDER in the left-hand box to highlight it, you can RIGHT-CLICK the mouse to access a menu.
From this menu you can:
Note: From this point in the Lesson onward, you are advised to work from a printout of this lesson. It will make things easier for you. The WinZip program you installed in Lesson 1 will save you time and money by:
Whether you want to distribute your e-texts and e-books over the Internet attached to e-mail messages, or on diskettes or CD-ROMS, you will same time and money using zipped files. The compressed files transmit faster over the Internet, and compressed files take up less space so you can store an e-book on one diskette, or many e-books on one CD-ROM. You've learned in these lessons how to unzip a file. Now I'll show you how to use WinZip to compress a file for backup or for distribution. The easiest way is to use the WINDOWS EXPLORER program. I'll walk you through this. Start-up the program by DOUBLE-CLICKING on the WINDOWS EXPLORER Shortcut on your main Desktop.
Open up the MYSTERY sub-folder in your LIBRARY folder. You may have added files since the early lessons, but you should have at least these files in this folder:
If you recall, you downloaded the zip file you see in this folder.
When you unzipped it, you had the text file.
Then you created an MS-Word file of the e-text.
Later you copied an e-text directly into an MS-Word file.
The nicest format to give you others is the MS-Word file. The file can be searched, and the text size and type can be modified for eye comfort. Anyone who has a standard Microsoft installation has MS-Word. Let's say you want to send or give someone copies of the CHRISTIE and DOYLE books. You will want to compress the files into a zip file using WinZip. CLICK on the CHRISTIE MS-Word file to select it, then RIGHT-CLICK the mouse. On the menu that appears, you should see the WinZip option. Let your mouse cursor rest on that option on the menu to open the sub-menu. It should look something like this:
Because you have WinZip installed on your PC, these options appear automatically on this menu. These options are common things people like to do with WinZip. I'll describe them below. It's a good idea to follow along doing the steps on your computer. Option 1 - Add the highlighted file to a Zip file, either a new one or an existing one When you select this option, WinZip starts-up. The reminder box appears. Just CLICK on the USE EVALUATION VERSION button to continue.
The ADD box appears with your file ready to be compressed into a file with the same name followed by .ZIP.
If you CLICK on the ADD button, the file will be zipped into this file. You can also at this point use the NEW button to create a new .ZIP file in which to store the compressed Christie book. The NEW ARCHIVE box appears showing you all the zip files that are in the current folder, in this case the MYSTERY folder. You have only the original one we downloaded.
TYPE in a FILE NAME for the new zip file, then CLICK on the OK button. The new zip file is created and the NEW ARCHIVE box disappears. You are returned to the ADD box, where you just need to CLICK on the ADD button to compress the file into the new zip file. The ADD box disappears and the new zip file appears open in the WinZip window and the contents show our CHRISTIE MS-Word file.
CLOSE WinZip with the CLOSE X in the top right corner. You are returned to WINDOWS EXPLORER and are shown the contents of the MYSTERY folder, with the new zip file you just created.
Or you can use the OPEN button, in the ADD box, to open up an existing zip file in which to add the compressed Christie book. The OPEN ARCHIVE box appears and shows you all the zip files in the current folder, in this case the MYSTERY folder.
If you wanted to use this option, you would DOUBLE-CLICK on one of the zip files to open it up. It would open in the WinZip window and show all its contents. Then you would CLICK on the ADD button in the ADD box to compress the file. It would appear in the WinZip window. You could then CLOSE WinZip and return to the WINDOWS EXPLORER screen and your folder contents. The other fields in this box are automatically set to the standard settings which are suitable for your needs. Option 2 - Add the highlighted file to a zip file with that same name, or to any zip file that already exists with that same name In this case, you have a zip file in your folder with the same name as your file. It is the zip file that contains the original e-text you downloaded from the Internet. But you will want to store the MS-Word version of the e-text in a new zip file. Usually this option is used if you want to overwrite an old version of a file with a newer version. When you select this option, the warning box appears and you should CLICK on the USE EVALUATION button to continue.
The program then zips the file and automatically stores it in the existing zip file, overwriting any old file there with the same name. WinZip closes automatically and you return to the WINDOWS EXPLORER window. Options 3 - Add the highlighted file to one of the zip files you created recently (you can have more than one file stored in a zip file) If you hold the mouse cursor over this option, a list of recently used zip files appears. All you have to do is CLICK on one to select it. The WinZip warning box appears and you should CLICK on the USE EVALUATION button to continue.
The program then compresses the file and automatically stores it in the zip file you selected, overwriting any old file there with the same name. WinZip closes automatically and you return to the WINDOWS EXPLORER window. Option 4 - Zip the highlighted file and send it immediately as an attachment to an e-mail message If you select this option, the WinZip warning box appears and you should CLICK on the USE EVALUATION button to continue.
Then the file is compressed into a zip file with the same name as the file name, and your e-mail program is started-up. A NEW MESSAGE is activated. The new zip file is automatically attached to the new e-mail message, ready for you to enter an address, subject and message.
Once you have entered the address, subject, and any message you want to send, you CLICK on the SEND button as usual and the message together with the zip file is mailed to your addressee. Then you are returned to WINDOWS EXPLORER. Option 5 - Zip the highlighted file, allows you to assign the zip file a name other than the file name, and password protect the zip file This option lets you do the same thing as the previous option with some differences. You are presented a box that lets you alter the name of the zip file that will be created.
If you want to use a name for the zip file other than the one that appears in this box, just TYPE it in the USE THIS NAME field. You need to decide at this point if you want the zip file protected by a PASSWORD. If you do, CLICK on the PASSWORD PROTECT ZIP FILE option. Then CLICK on the OK button to proceed. If you choose not to create a password to protect the file, you will skip this next box.
You must TYPE in the PASSWORD exactly the same way in both fields in this box. Then CLICK on the OK button. Remember that your addressee will need the password to open the zip file. Note: It is customary to send a password in a different e-mail message than the one that has the file attached to it, for security reasons. When you CLICK on the OK button, the new e-mail message appears, with the zip file as an attachment.
Once you have entered the address, subject, and any message you want to send, you CLICK on the SEND button as usual and the message together with the password-protected zip file is mailed to your addressee. Then you are returned to WINDOWS EXPLORER. Option 6 - Lets you modify the WinZip options that appear on the menus in WINDOWS EXPLORER I won't reproduce the box that appears when you select this item, as you will probably be working with the default settings, which include all menu options. If for some reason you want to limit these menu options, just know that this is the place to do that.
Distributing E-Texts and E-Books Please remember that you are free to distribute any non-copyrighted materials. But if you've purchased a copyrighted e-book, you should not be making copies of it and sending it to others. E-books are generally much less expensive than printed books, which means the author earns much less for their creative work. Why not just recommend the e-book to your friends and have them shell out the few bucks to buy their own copy. Be a sport! There are many ways to distribute (and receive) e-texts and e-books.
I'll cover these items now, one by one. Option 1 - Create a zip file as explained above and automatically attach it to an outgoing e-mail message You just learned in the previous part of this lesson, how to make a zip file and send it to someone automatically attached to an e-mail message. Option 2 - Create an e-mail message and attach a zip file to it There are times, however, when you may want to send a zip file to someone else at a later date. There is no need to create a new zip file. The old one still exists in your LIBRARY sub-folder, in this case the MYSTERY folder. All you have to do is attach it to your new e-mail message. This is done in your e-mail program. Once you have created a new e-mail message, you use the e-mail program's option ATTACHMENT (either from the menu or an icon on the toolbar) to search through your folders, locate the zip file, then DOUBLE-CLICK on it to attach it to your e-mail message. Option 3 - Create an e-mail message and attach an unzipped file to it (an MS-Word file, or a PDF, for example) Once you have created a new e-mail message, you use the option ATTACHMENT (either from the menu or an icon on the toolbar) to search through your folders, locate the file, then DOUBLE-CLICK on it to attach it to your e-mail message. Option 4 - Put a file or a zip file on a diskette or CD-ROM and give it to someone either by hand or in the post You can do this using WINDOWS EXPLORER. You locate in the right box the file or zip file you want to put on a diskette or CD-ROM. Then you can use the RIGHT-CLICK menu to copy it, then paste it in the drive where you want to store it. Option 5 - If you maintain a website on the Internet, you can load the file or zip file to that website and link it to text on your homepage People can click on the link and they can download the file, or if it is a PDF it will open in their E-Book Reader in their Internet Browser window and they can save it to their PC. I'm assuming that if you maintain a website, you know how to load files to it, and to create links on your pages.
Congratulations, Happy Collecting, Good Reading This is the end of the lessons. You are, officially, no longer a computer novice. You are now, officially, an e-text / e-book collector and connoisseur. I hope my presentation was neither condescending nor convoluted. And I hope you have the beginnings of an electronic library on your PC. I've written these lessons and provide them for free, because I was amazed to learn how many people use their Internet connections solely for e-mail and to read a headline or two. There is a wealth of entertainment and culture out there in cyberland, and with just a few clicks of your mouse, much of it can be yours. Please encourage others to follow in your footsteps. I have people testing these lessons and providing me with feedback so I can improve the lessons over time. Feel free to provide your feedback. You can enter it in my website's guestbook (link below). I'll read your message and then delete it (from the guestbook, not my mind!) and try to incorporate your comments if possible. All the best, Candida Martinelli
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