Direction journal is published in hard copy twice annually, in spring and in fall. The table of contents of the current issue is posted immediately on this web site, at which time full-text articles of the previous issue are made available on the site. Full-text articles are available for many of our back issues and tables of contents for the rest. You may access a complete set of indexes from 1972 to the present, and do searches on titles and full-text of articles and book reviews.

Recommendations for viewing our site

Reading issues online

Locating articles

Using the indexes

Using the search feature

Downloading and printing articles

Browser. No matter what browser you use, you should be able to use our site effectively. However, the site uses some features which, although not new, are not implemented properly in all browsers. If you use Netscape version 4.x or earlier, the main text will appear more plain than if you use Internet Explorer 4 or later, Mozilla 5, or Netscape 6. Although all text is readable under old versions of Netscape (we tested from version 2 and up), we highly recommend upgrading to a more standards-compliant browser.

• Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows
• Internet Explorer 5 for Mac
• Mozilla (Netscape) 5 for all platforms (the bare-bones version of Netscape; more stable than the AOL branded version of Netscape)
• Netscape 6 (the AOL branded version of Netscape)

Font. We use a font called Georgia on our site. If you do not have this font, the text will still display although there may be a few difficulties (such as quotation marks which do not display). In order to make the articles more readable online, we suggest downloading this font. Here are versions for Windows 95 or later, Windows 3.1x, and Macintosh. For more information, visit Microsoft Typography.

Color settings. Like almost all web sites, this one looks best if you set your color settings to at least High Color (65,000 colors, sometimes called thousands of colors) or even True Color (16,700,000 colors, sometimes called millions of colors). Although you should have no problem reading articles even with a small screen resolution, we recommend 800x600. If you do not know how to change these settings, please consult your operating system manual.

If you do not have a subscription to Direction journal, you can still use our site to read archived issues. The easiest way to do this is by clicking Back Issues and choosing the issue you would like to read. Many issues have a theme; these are displayed on the Back Issues page along with the year and volume information.

Once you click on a back issue, you will see the table of contents for that issue. If the full text of articles for this issue are online, there will be a small cover graphic at the top of the page. If so, you can read the entire issue by clicking on the first article, and then using the Next and Previous buttons on each article page to navigate. Of course, you can also selectively view articles. If an article has endnotes, you can click on the note numbers in the article text to jump to the respective endnote.

If you cannot click on an article, it is because that article has not yet been added to our web site. We are in the process of adding back issues, so the article you want may be available soon. As described above, the most recent issue of the journal does not have the articles online.

There are three primary ways to find articles on the Direction journal web site. If you know which issue the article was in, use the Back Issues page. If you know the subject, beginning word or words of the title, or author’s last name, use one of the Indexes. If you want to look for articles containing certain words, or with certain names in the author field, use the Search feature.

To use the Back Issues page, see the previous section of this Guide. In what follows are some tips for the other methods.

When using the Indexes, first narrow your search to either book reviews or other articles. Then, click the appropriate type of index, such as By Title or By Author. For the index By Subject, you need to first select a category from the list shown.

For the author, title, or reviewer indexes, the results will start by showing the letter A. You can select another letter to move to those results. Please note that for the author and reviewer results, only the primary name is listed. If two people cowrote an article or book, the index will only sort by the first person’s name. To find all articles or reviewed books written or cowritten by a person, use the Search feature.

Once you have found the article you are looking for, you can click on it. If the article is online, this will take you to the article text. Otherwise, it will take you to the table of contents for the issue containing that article. Please note that in time we will add the full text of all back issues to the site.

The most powerful way to find an article is through our Search engine. You can enter a simple search or a more complex search.

For a simple search, just type in the word or words you are looking for, and click Search. This will use the default options: all articles and book reviews will be searched; only the title, author and notes will be searched; only articles which contain all of the words you entered will be located. Up to fifty matching articles/book reviews will be returned, always sorted with newest matches first.

If you need more control, try setting some of the other search options. First, you can choose regarding words or phrases:

• All words (the default). To be a match, an article or book review must contain all the words you entered. Sequence and proximity are disregarded. This is the best way to search for all articles and/or book reviews written by a particular person, including both those individually written and those cowritten (do not select the “Article text” option for such searches).
• Any words. An article/book review will be identified if it contains any of the words you entered. Note that no preference is given to articles that match more than one word. For this reason, make sure you enter only necessary words, and avoid common words that would be found in many articles.
• Phrase. This option allows you to choose a two-word (or longer) string, for example, “Anabaptist theology”. The words must be entered in the correct sequence. This feature is especially valuable for Bible references. You might search for all references to “Matthew 5” (“Matt. 5”, if in notes or parentheses), or “John 3:16”. See the list of Bible book abbreviations used in the journal. A period must be included at the end of the abbreviation: one must search for “Matt. 5” not “Matt 5”. Note that authors of articles, authors of reviewed books, and book reviewers are listed in Direction’s database last name first, unless they are a co-author or co-editor. To locate such persons as authors (or primary authors) using a phrase search, list as follows: “Toews, J. B.” But to find that person’s name in the text of an article or book review, or as a secondary author or editor, list in normal order: “J. B. Toews”.

Next, you can select what type of article information to search. By default, only the title and author will be searched (as well as the publication notes and publisher information for book reviews). You can also check the box beside Article text to search the full text of all articles that match the rest of the criteria and are online. If you are looking for a specific author, clear all the check boxes in this section except for Author(s).

In the next box, you can limit your search to certain types of articles. If you are looking for a book review, or a Hearing the Word article, choose the appropriate options here. Similarly, the next-to-last box allows you to limit your search to articles assigned to a certain subject category. Keep in mind that book reviews are not assigned to any category. The last box allows you to limit your search to a specific date range according to date of publication. Note: If the Search for box is left blank, a search will locate all articles of the type, subject category, or date range selected (up to the limit of 50).

After you have set all the options, click the Search button near the top of the page to find the results. As with the indexes, clicking an article in the results will take you to the full text of the article if it is online, and otherwise to the table of contents for the issue containing that article. When you have accessed a full-text article, you may jump to the word or words you were searching for by pressing Ctrl+F, typing the word(s), and pressing Enter.

Hopefully you will find what you are looking for! If not, you may want to Contact Us. We will do our best to help you find what you need.

Sometimes, you may want to store an article on your computer so it is accessible without an Internet connection. Or, you may want to print an article so you can read it from paper. Here are some tips for doing both from Internet Explorer 5 or later. In Netscape or earlier versions of IE, you can use similar procedures, although the menu items and functionality may be slightly different.

Note: Articles may be printed or downloaded for personal use only. No articles may be additionally reprinted in any form without permission of the Managing Editor, kindred@mbconf.ca.

If you are planning on downloading a few articles, we recommend creating a special folder for them somewhere on your computer so they are easy to find. Then, bring the article up in your web browser, and make sure you wait for it to load completely. Go to the File menu and choose Save As, and then change the Save as type box to Web Archive. Make sure the Save in box is showing the folder you created (if not, navigate to it) and then click Save. An average article will take between 50-60 kb to store on your hard drive. You can save around a third of this space by saving the article as Web Page, HTML only, but this will remove a lot of font formatting, as well as images. Unfortunately, this is the only option available in most versions of Netscape.

To print an article, simply go to the File menu and choose Print. If the tiled backgrounds are printing and you are using Internet Explorer, you can turn that off by going to the Tools menu, choosing Internet Options, clicking the Advanced tab, scrolling down to the Print section, and unchecking Print background colors and images.

© 2008 Direction (Winnipeg, MB)

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