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Library Frequently Asked Questions

The Questia Service
What is Questia?
Is this service an online library?
Doesn't this make it easier for students to plagiarize?
What features does Questia offer to help in the research process?
What kind of search capabilities do you offer?
What citation formats are available in your research tools?
Can multiple users access the same title at the same time?
Are subscribers able to download books?
What are the minimum hardware or software requirements to use this service?
What is Lexile?

What is Questia?
Questia is the revolutionary online library offering the full text and images of scholarly books and journals focused in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles. Combined with powerful search and writing tools, Questia provides access to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help them study, conduct better online research, and write better papers.
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Is this service an online library?
Yes, the Questia service is an online library focusing on the humanities and social sciences. However, our service is not designed to be a substitute for a traditional library but rather is designed to make an extensive collection of titles and research tools available online to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We believe that physical libraries, and their librarians, will continue to play a key role in the future of research and education.
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Doesn't this make it easier for students to plagiarize?
No. In fact, citation tools allow students to generate footnotes and bibliographies automatically, making it easier for the student to correctly cite a referenced work. This ultimately helps reinforce proper citation guidelines, as many students do not always know when a citation is required.
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What features does Questia offer to help in the research process?
Users can search the entire collection for a word, phrase, or concept and quickly find the most relevant publications in the entire collection. They can also keep track of useful information in these documents by bookmarking, annotating, and highlighting them online. These personalized notes - with hyperlinks back to the referenced information - are saved on the Questia service, allowing users to easily organize and return to their work via the Internet. To assist students in correctly attributing referenced materials, the Questia service creates, with just a few clicks, properly formatted citations such as footnotes and bibliographies in a variety of styles such as MLA, APA, and the Chicago Manual of Style. An integrated encyclopedia, dictionary and thesaurus provide instant access to background information when viewing any of the collection's works.
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What kind of search capabilities do you offer?
On Questia, there are several ways to find the most relevant book, article, chapter, page, sentence, or phrase quickly and easily. Users can locate a specific book by simply entering the title, author, publisher, etc. They can do a powerful search of the full text of all the books and articles in the collection, and with one click, not only can they access the complete text of each source on their search results list, they can also navigate quickly inside the texts because all internal references, such as the table of contents and indices, are linked.

Boolean is also supported in queries.
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What citation formats are available in your research tools?
The Questia service supports MLA, APA, Chicago Manual of Style, ASA, and Turabian citation formats. These styles represent the primary formats used by undergraduate students in the humanities and social science.
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Can multiple users access the same title at the same time?
Yes. The system is designed to allow an unlimited number of users to access the same title, and even the same page, at the same time.
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Are subscribers able to download books?
No. Questia will serve only one page at a time to a user. Users cannot download any pages from the server, and can only print the one page they are viewing. This approach is designed to protect publisher rights.
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What are the minimum hardware or software requirements to use this service?
The Questia service can be accessed by almost any personal computer connected to the Internet using a current Internet browser from Microsoft, AOL, or Netscape. For more details on recommended system configurations, please refer to System Requirements.
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What is Lexile?
The Lexile Framework for Reading is a tool that makes it possible to place readers and text on the same scale. Teachers commonly use the Lexile Scale, a developmental scale that ranges from 200L to above 1700L, in order to match students with reading assignments that suit their reading level. For more on understanding Lexile reading measures, click here.

Users will notice that our Advanced Search page includes three search fields for parsing results according to the Lexile Framework for Reading: Minimum, Maximum, and Exact. By entering values into these fields, users can limit their search results to materials that fall into specified Lexile reading ranges.

Questia subscribers can choose to enable or disable the display of Lexile reading measures on their search results by going to the Preferences menu directly under the Help tab and choosing the appropriate selection. Note that even if you disable Lexile reading measures, the Lexile search fields will still be available on the Advanced Search page. Entering values into these fields will continue displaying Lexile reading measures in your search results.
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