Frequently asked questions

The OSEO bookmarklet

Does this work for any web page? Not just in OSEO?

That’s right. If the web page presents a reference in the usual shapes for references – Author, Title or Author, Title, line (or Author, ‘Title’, or Author, ‘Title’, line) – it should work. Or even if you just click on the title of a work.

Will it work on any mention of a text?

Sadly, it’s not magic – the bookmarklet won’t be able to find everything, even if the text is in OSEO. If the reference isn’t presented in a normal way, it won’t work. It might not be able to tell an author’s name from a work title; might get confused by punctuation parentheses or quotation marks – or there might be hidden code on a web page that might confuse it. At the moment, it will only take you to a precise line if your reference includes both author and title: so, Milton, 'Lycidas', 193, will work, but 'Lycidas', 193 alone, won't. (We hope to improve this.) And it must be from an HTML web page: it doesn’t work with pdfs.

What if I don’t have a well-formed reference?

If the bookmarklet can’t automagically parse the reference, it will leave you on OSEO with query fields that you can edit. Or, click on the bookmarklet without highlighting anything – you’ll have a nice single text field to type into. This is a great way to get quickly to the text of a play, poem, or novel – click on the bookmarklet, type in a title, and click ok.