The Librarian Interface behaves like other Microsoft Windows programs and draws upon ordinary knowledge of Windows. There are several basic concepts which you must understand before you can proceed.

We call any part of the screen that you can interact with a 'control'. Examples include buttons you can press and text fields into which you can type values. At any time there is one control, called the 'focus', which you can interact with simply by typing on the keyboard. When in focus a button gains a dotted border and a text field has a flashing line (a 'caret') that shows the position in the text. Several controls allow you to select them or parts of them as discussed later. In all cases the control or its contents are highlighted in dark blue. Finally, controls may be enabled or disabled. Enabled controls can be interacted with by clicking or typing. Disabled ones cannot be interacted with and are greyed out.

One method of interacting with a control is by using the keyboard to type into text fields and other text based controls. The keyboard can be used with buttons too -- for example, the [Tab] key cycles through the controls visible on the screen. This help text tells you what keys are available. We put the key's name in square brackets, and use a plus sign to show when other keys must be pressed at the same time. For example, a common command for any text field is [Ctrl] + [C], which copies the currently selected text.

You also interact with the Librarian Interface using the mouse. As you move it, the mouse pointer follows along. You interact with the control under the mouse pointer by clicking on it. There are several different types of click:

Single left mouse-button click. This is what we normally use,

Single right mouse-button click. This is used to open context sensitive menus and is always explicitly noted within these help pages,

Double click. This involves clicking the mouse button twice in quick succession. (It can take practice to get right. You can practice by opening the Microsoft Windows Start Menu, choosing Settings->Control Panel, and opening the 'mouse' icon in this folder. The window that appears will not only let you practice double clicking on the test area at the bottom right of the window, but will let you slow the required clicking down using the double-click speed slider),

Drag'n'drop. 'Dragging' is when you press a mouse button and move the mouse before releasing it; 'dropping' is when you finally release the button. If you begin dragging over certain controls, such as icons on the Windows desktop, the control attaches to the mouse pointer and you can move it elsewhere on the screen and drop it there. However, you can only drop into certain places, called 'drop targets', and they are indicated by highlighting. If you drop something where it can't be dropped it returns immediately to its original position.

To use the Librarian Interface you also need to be able to use menus. The 'menu bar' is at the top of the program's window just below the blue title bar. This contains several drop-down submenus, accessed by clicking their label.

Move the mouse over the label File, and it changes appearance to look like a button. Click once on the label/button File, and the file menu 'drops down' beneath where you clicked.

You can then move to an item, indicated by blue highlighting, and click once on it. This will execute the corresponding command, or perhaps open a further submenu which appears beside the current menu.

To close the menu click anywhere else on the screen (not the submenu), or click again on the File label. These menu actions are the same for all menus within Librarian Interface.

When you have finished working, you can exit the Librarian Interface program at any time either by choosing the Exit item from the File menu, or by clicking the little 'x' button just to the right of the program title (this buttons is called 'Destroy'). If you are working on a collection you will be prompted to save your collection before the program terminates.

In each menu and submenu label one letter is underlined. To quickly access any menu within the menu bar, hold down the [ALT] key and then press the underlined letter corresponding to what you want to do. For example, to access the [F]ile menu press [ALT] + [F]. To choose items from a submenu, press the key matching the indicated letter. Thus once in the File menu, press [S] to [S]ave a collection.