They function in a similar manner to Diablo III.

Early on, however, new heroes may want to avoid pressing said key while buying scrolls if they have little gold, as it can leave them unable to buy desired equipment.

Fill Tome: By pressing the shift key while right-clicking on a scroll you want to buy, you automatically purchase enough scrolls to fill the first unfilled tome of that scroll type in your inventory.

You may also hotkey the use of a tome, so that, for example, when you click on your pre-selected hotkey, a single scroll from your tome will be used to cast Town Portal.

Dropping one tome onto another will consolidate both into a single tome, unless the tome being placed has more scrolls than the other tome has room for. Add scrolls to a tome in your inventory or Stash by dropping the scroll directly onto the tome. When a tome is empty, it remains in inventory until it is replenished with more scrolls, sold, dropped, or traded. Right-click on a tome to cast one of the scrolls stored within it. Vendors who sell scrolls generally sell tomes as well. The two types of tomes, Tome of Town Portal and Tome of Identify, are designed to hold volumes of similar spells, each tome can store up to 20 scrolls of the same type. In Diablo II tomes are also items which can collect magical scrolls.

When read however, the text similarly scrolls up across the screen with voiced narration. Tomes are rarer in Diablo II than its predecessor.

Diablo 3 cultist's pages