SEARCHING WIKISOURCETHE FREE CONTENT LIBRARY

SEARCHING THE WIKISOURCELIBRARY

• Searching can be done with special pages, mostly the Special:Search page, or by an external search engine like Google.

• The search box available at the top right of every page uses Special:Search.

SEARCHING WIKISOURCE

• If you have the start of the title of the page, you can use Special:PrefixIndex instead to search for all works that begin in a certain way. This is limited by namespace but, again, all works in the library are in the "Main" namespace.

• If you want to use an external search engine, remember to limit the results to Wikisource. For example, if using Google, add the text "site:en.wikisource.org" to your search.

• External search engines work differently and may display different results than using Wikisource's own search engine.

BROWSING WIKISOURCE – AUTHORS

All authors on Wikisource have an "author page" in the "Author:" namespace. • Author pages provide links to all works by or about that author. These will be in

a list on the page. Sometimes there will be extra information about each work such as the year in which it was published. You can browse our Authors at Wikisource:Authors or Category:Authors.

• You can go to an author page by entering the page name into the search box at the top right of every page. For example, the author "John Smith" will have the author page "Author:John Smith". Author pages can be found by searching; use the method described above and choose the author namespace. Authors are also linked to in header of every work by them on Wikisource; clicking on their name will take you to the author page.

BROWSING WIKISOURCE - SUBJECTSSubjects can be found and browsed in two ways:1. Categories2. PortalsSubject includes medium, genre, era and any other group of works. Think of them as different rooms or sections in a physical library.• Categories are listed at the bottom of each page. These link to a category page, which will show

an automatically-generated list of all of the pages on Wikisource in that subject. At the bottom of the category page will be links to other categories. This list will be in alphabetical order. For example, Category:Physics shows all the pages in the Physics category.

• Portals are listed in the header of a work. These link to a portal page, which is a user-written list of all works on Wikisource on that subject. The portal may also link to other portals on similar subjects and it will be categorised like any other page. The list of works in a portal can be in whatever order the creator of the portal, or future editors, thought would be best to display those works. For example, Portal:Physics shows all the pages on the subject of Physics.

• Portals have more information than categories and may be written in a more user-friendly way. Categories can be more complete than portals and are written in a standard format.

BROWSING – RANDOM SEARCH

Namespace Random page Notes

Main Random workThe main namespace holds all of the works on Wikisource.

Author Random author Each author on Wikisource has an author page.

Category Random category Categories automatically list works by subject.

Portal Random portal Categories manually list works by subject.

Index Random index Indexes are used for each book being proofread.

Page Random page Pages are used for proofreading.

It is also possible to jump to a random item by using the special page Special:Random. This will link to any page on Wikisource, not just works in the library. Special:Randomrootpage will exclude subpages.This can be changed to pick random pages from specific namespaces, such as Special:Random/Author or Special:Random/Category.