How to Use the Digital Journal Library

You will need the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader (currently Adobe Reader 9) on your computer system to be able to open, view, read, save or print an article.

The Adobe Reader may be downloaded, free of charge, from: ADOBE

The digital journal library on the website provides for two distinct ways of finding information published in the journals i.e. by means of browsing the 'List of Journals' or by searching on the 'Journal Database'. Links are provided from the landing page (www.sabar.co.za/law-journals) to the 'List of Journals' and the 'Journal Database'.

Browsing

The 'List of Journals' contains links to a 'Table of Contents' for each journal. The journals are arranged from the latest to the first issue (April 1988). The 'Table of Contents' for a journal contains links to the articles in the journal. All articles are available in the form of downloadable PDF files.

For ease of use, 'Back links' have been provided on all the 'Table of Contents' pages (at the top of the left column) to go back to the 'List of Journals', or to the 'Search for Articles'.

Searching

The search facility on the website interrogates the 'Journal Database' for the following fields:

• Article title
• Author's name
• Author's bar
• Author's capacity (e.g. GCB Chair, convenor of a GCB committee, GCB representative)
• Year of publication
• Month of publication
• Volume No
• Issue No
• Page number/s
• Journal section (e.g. GCB news, Bar news, Forum)
• Language used
• Journal name (i.e. Consultus or Advocate)
• First paragraph/ first few sentences of an article (about 500 characters)

The search interface

The search result will contain a link ('Read Article') to the full text of the article contained in a downloadable PDF file.

Articles may for example be traced by an author's name or part of name, by seniority (SC); article title or part of a title, by date, by bar or by author's capacity. The first paragraph/ first few sentences of an article will also be interrogated.

In addition to the customised search facility on the website, the Google search facility has also been added to the main library of journals.

Reading, printing, saving or copying articles

By clicking on the title of an article (on the 'Table of Contents' page), the article will open in a new 'window' where it can be read (click on the maximise button on the browser window to open the article to full screen size). Use the usual 'file save' or 'file print' commands to save or print an article. Text may be copied from an article by using the 'select text' option on your PDF reader to select and then paste the text to your word processor of choice (e.g. MS Word). Take care to copy the text column by column, else the text will 'scramble'.

Page Layout

The page layout as contained in the original printed copy journals has been maintained throughout. In instances where two or three items were published on the same page, the text not applicable to the link in the 'Table of Contents' is 'masked out' by a grey overlay, showing only the text that is relevant to the link from the 'Table of Contents'.

File Quality and Download Time

An effort was made to optimise the PDF files for publication on the website, without compromising too much on file quality. The files are however, still quite large and slow to download.

Each article opens in a new 'window', enabling the viewer to right click on the link, choose 'Open in New Tab' and then continue browsing, or searching, whilst the file is being downloaded.

Problems

Readers are requested to report any errors or problems to

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