Perseus has been installed on a central computer server at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is available over the network on Apple Macintosh computers at various points on campus. At the moment it is not available through WiscWorld or via modem; the computer must be connected to the campus ethernet.
Perseus needs a group of resources on the hard drive of the computer which is running the program. These are stored in a folder called "Local Stacks." This folder has been copied to all the Macs in 140 Memorial library and all Macs on the NLS network (in the Greek and Latin Reading Room, the Kohler Art Library, etc.), so Perseus is immediately accessible from those machines. If you want to run Perseus from machines which do not have the Local Stacks on them (for instance those in College Library or the Computer Center), you must first copy the Local Stacks from the server, as described below.
Tip: close the PERSEUS_DISK_1 window after you have copied the files, so you only see the icon on the desktop. If you leave the window open, your computer will freeze periodically and annoyingly as it checks the network.
| You get an error message saying that Perseus will not run with a locked gateway. | You may have started Perseus by double-clicking on the Perseus Gateway icon on PERSEUS_DISK_1, not your local hard drive. You must start Perseus from the hard drive in your Macintosh, which will probably have an icon like this: [Image], not the networked hard drive which will look like the image above. |
| You get an error message saying that there is not enough memory to run HyperCard, or consistently get error messages saying that there is not enough memory to show images. | Are you running other applications? These may be using up
the computer's memory, and not leaving enough for HyperCard. Pull down the
applications menu in the upper right hand corner of the menu bar: this will
list the applications currently running. Some may be hidden; if so their
names and icons will be grayed out, or they may have no windows open;
either way they are still using the machine's memory. To quit, choose the
application(s) and quit from it. You should generally quit from all other
applications before running Perseus, since Perseus takes a lot of memory.
If this does not work, restart the computer and try again with a clean slate. This is a useful tip -- if things are acting wonky, quit, restart the computer and begin Perseus again. |
| Perseus starts up but gives you an error message saying that it cannot find files, or it keeps giving you errors like "Where is [blah blah blah]?" | Make sure that the networked disk PERSEUS_DISK_1 is mounted on your desktop. If is not, quit from Perseus and mount it using the Chooser (see above for this procedure). Then restart Perseus. If you cannot mount the disk manually, there may be something wrong with the network. |
| Perseus is acting strangely: it gives error messages, or cannot find images or other resources, or crashes the computer, or some other damn thing. | You may have started Perseus by double-clicking on something
other than the Player. You should not double-click on any file in Local
Stacks other than the Player. Quit Perseus and restart by double-clicking
on Perseus Player. Some files in the Local Stacks folder may have been damaged or deleted. Since these must be left unprotected, it is possible for users to modify or delete them. Clean copies are always available on PERSEUS_DISK_1, however. Quit Perseus, and drag the entire Local Stacks folder into the trash, and choose Empty Trash from the Special menu in the finder. Then get a new copy of the Local Stacks folder from PERSEUS_DISK_1 as described above. If all else fails, don't get frustrated; restart the Macintosh and start again. |
Remember, you cannot break Perseus. All the files are locked, and you cannot delete or change them. If you damage the local files, just recopy them from the server. If the computer is screwing up, remember who's boss, and restart the stupid beast. Feel free to experiment and play!
Perseus includes on-line help, tips and hints -- click on the question mark on the Navigator icon in Perseus (below). Full documentation is in the "Documentation" folder on PERSEUS_DISK_1. The following may help you get started, though.
When you start Perseus, you will be taken to the Gateway, which looks
like this:
Each button will take you to a different "department" or area of Perseus. Primary Texts are works of ancient Greek literature, in both Greek and English. Art and Archaeology contains catalogs of sites, buildings, sculptures, vases, coins and other objects, as well as supplementary material. The Atlas contains more than 1000 maps and satellite images of the Mediterranean world, on which can be plotted some 2000 ancient sites. The Browser allows you to search and browse through many of the different kinds of information in Perseus. The Historical Overview is a short introduction to Greek history and culture, with links to other locations in Perseus. Other Essays include essays on Greek vase painters, sculptors, vases in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Athenian legal practices. Tools and References include general searching tools, an encyclopedia, philological tools for the study of Greek language and literature, and a bibliography. For more information on these features, see the Perseus documentation.
Perseus adds two menus to the usual HyperCard menu bar. The Links menu will take you to other locations in Perseus. If you have a word or text highlighted when you choose a location in the Links menu, Perseus will try to look up the word in that part of Perseus. For instance, if you were reading about Athens and wanted to see it on a map, you could highlight the word Athens, pull down the Links menu and choose "Atlas." This will take you to the Atlas and plot the site of Athens. This is described in the chapter on Navigation in the Perseus 2.0 Documentation.
When you go to a new location in Perseus, either by using the Links menu or clicking a button or a field, it will normally close the window you were in and open a new window. It is convenient and much faster, however, to go to your destination in a new window. You can do this by holding down the shift key as you click the button or choose the location from the Links menu. This way you can, for instance, have both the Browser and the Vase catalog open at the same time, or an ancient text and the atlas, or whatever. (See the documentation under Settings, for more about this feature). The only drawback is that these windows take up some memory; if you have more than 10 or 15 open things slow down somewhat.
Perseus has no beginning and no end. From the Gateway you can enter any part of Perseus; from any point you can jump to any other point, tailoring your use of the information to your research. Perseus does not constrain you to an established text or curriculum, but lets you wander freely through the resources it contains.
You can, however, store "paths" through the database: a sequence of stops in Perseus with explanatory notes for each location. Paths can be used as instructional aids to lead students through an assignment or topic; they may also be created and turned in as assignments. For more information see ch. 12, Saving your Work, in the Perseus documentation.
Terminology: a path is, as you might expect, a single series of stops through Perseus. A path can have up to 31 stops.
Paths are stored in a path stack, which is a file on your hard disk or on the server.
You navigate through a path using the path icon on the Navigator palette:
The left arrow takes you to the previous stop on the path; the right arrow takes you to the next stop on the path.
To create your own path stack, make a copy of the file called "Blank Path Stack" in the Local Stacks folder of your hard disk. (The easiest way to do this is to highlight the file in the Finder by clicking once on its icon or name, and select Duplicate under the File menu). Rename it to some more informative name. In Perseus, choose this stack as the current path stack, as described above.
To create a new path in your stack, go to the Path Index (under the Perseus menu). Click the "New Path" button in the upper right corner. The path will be named with today's date and time. Rename it with some more informative name by typing over the highlighted text. You now have a blank path. To add locations to the path, go to the location in Perseus which you want to add, and click on the center of the Path icon on the Navigator palette. You will be asked to give a name to the location, of 10 letters or less, and which path you want to add it to. When you have answered these questions, the Path Note window will appear. Type in notes about the current location, what you want your audience to note or what you have learned.
If you are working in one of the campus computer labs, remember that you must copy this to a floppy disk when you finish working, or it will be automatically erased at the end of the day. Copy it to a floppy by inserting the floppy into the computer. If you have not initialized the disk, the Mac will ask you if you want to do so; follow its instructions. Open the Local Stacks folder, find your Path stack, and drag it onto your floppy; this will copy it onto your disk. You should really copy it onto two floppies in case you spill beer on one of them.
If you want to use this path stack later, you should copy it back into the Local Stacks folder, then make it the current path card as described above.
Perseus contains some 25,000 digital images -- one of the largest collections of photographs of Greek art and archaeology available anywhere. These are available in the catalogs of sculptures, buildings, coins, etc., from the Encyclopedia, and many other locations in Perseus.
To show an image, click on the caption in the Views field in archaeological catalogs; or highlight "ill. 5" or whatever in an essay and click on the "Show Image" button.
Experiment with the Thumbnail Browser: this is a very powerful way to browse through many images.
| The image is in black and white, or the colors look odd. | Check the settings of the Monitors control panel. Under the Apple ([[apple]]) menu, choose "Control Panels", and then double-click on the Monitors icon. Make sure that you have the monitor set to at least 256 colors. Thousands of colors is better; Millions is better yet, but may be slower. |
| You get an error message saying that there is not enough memory to show an image. | You may have a lot of images open. These take a lot of memory. Close some of them (click in the close box in the upper left hand corner of the window). |
Images may cover up the stack from which they were called. If they do, simply move them out of the way by holding down the mouse in the title bar and dragging the image to one side. The images cannot be zoomed in or out. They may be made smaller by dragging on the resize box in the lower right corner. (see also "Photograph and Illustration Windows" in the accompanying Perseus 2.0 Navigation documentation).
Perseus is designed as a purely electronic resource. There are no built-in mechanisms for printing out parts of the database. (This is also part of our copyright agreement with the various sources of texts and photographs).
To quote short sections of text in your paper etc., you can copy them into a word processor. Launch your word processor (for instance Nisus Writer or Microsoft Word) on the Macintosh and open your document, or open a new document. Go to Perseus by choosing HC Player for Perseus from the Application menu, the one in the far right-hand corner. In Perseus, highlight the section of text that you want to save. Copy it to the clipboard of the Macintosh (choose "Copy Text" under the Edit menu, or press command-C). Go to your word processor (choose it from the application menu). Place the cursor in your document where you want the text to appear, and paste the text by choosing "Paste" under the edit menu, or pressing command-V. Remember to footnote the quotation properly. Remember also to keep your own copy of your document on a floppy disk, if you're working on a campus computer, or it will be erased.
There is no mechanism built in for copying pictures. They are under copyright and may not be copied from the server.
To refer to parts of Perseus in footnotes or in your paper, you should use the proper citations. There is a "Citation for this location" item under the Perseus menu which will return the proper vase or literary reference, essay section, etc. Footnotes could look like:
4. Perseus 2.0: vase description for Munich 2241 or Images should be referred to by their archive number, which appears in
the title bar of the image: for instance,
6 Perseus 2.0, image 1990.01.1234
Perseus Project Web server
at Tufts University.
Perseus Atlas Project at the
College of the Holy Cross.
Go back to the index for the Perseus area of the
Art History server at UW
5. Thuc. 2.4, in Perseus 2.0
For More Information