The early volumes mainly contain articles and primary documents concerning Virginia, while later volumes have a broader scope, dealing with early America as a whole. The online Quarterly is easy to use. Subscribers access the database using a username and password. Other than a computer with a modem and an internet connection, no special hardware or software is needed to view journal articles. On screen, pages appear exactly as they do in the original hard copy journal, complete with maps, graphs, and pictures.
Users can print, download, and bookmark articles for future reference.
These searching capablilities far exceed those offered by other resources, such as CDs . Once the key word or name has been located, the pages are identified and can be read or printed. Author, title, and Boolean searches are also possible. When viewing an article, users may start at the beginning, or jump directly to a page on which a requested keyword appears. The Quarterly was one of ten journals selected initially for a pilot project to determine if there was adequate demand for such a service.