Finding Resources
From ResourceSpace Documentation Wiki
Simple Search
The Resource Search panel appears to the right of every screen giving access to the ResourceSpace search engine. The panel has a text filf for quick, free text searching across the whole library along with other search options, such as resource type, country and date. The Advanced Search page is accessed directly from this panel giving more options to refine and target your searches.
The resources in ResourceSpace have been comprehensively categorised and the search engine is optimised to search through ALL data attached to each resource. You can type one word or many words to find resources. The search engine will then match ALL your words to the library and return the results that include ALL the words you’ve typed.
For example ‘Africa water’ will return only resources that contain both these words.
Choosing the other options, further refine your search and return more accurate results. For example, searching for ‘water’ may find over 6000 resources but if you search for ‘water’ and select - Type: ’Image’ - Country: ‘Brazil’ - Date: ‘2005’ you may find around 20 resources.
If ResourceSpace is unable to find any resources, it will suggest another word to help you. Every single resource has a unique ID. If you know a particular resource ID you can go straight to it by typing that ID in the text box and clicking search.
Advanced Search
Access Advanced Search from the bottom of the Resource Search panel. Advanced Search allows you to search all the specific categories and data attached to every resource individually. The comprehensive search form includes all the options from the Resource Search panel and many more including multiple countries, events, captions, credits, classification and image format. By using this form, it is possible to carry out very detailed searches, targeting the specific data of each resource.
Any section of the form that you leave blank, or unticked will include ALL those terms in the search. For example, if you leave ALL the country tick boxes empty, the search engine assumes you don’t wish to target any particular country and leaves it out of the targeted search. The results will then come from ALL countries. If you select just ‘Africa’ then the results will ONLY contain resources linked with ‘Africa’. This intelligent form feature avoids the need to have a lot of ticking and unticking to find resources.
Themes
ResourceSpace provides another way to find resources available within the system. Themes are handpicked groups of resources sharing similar ideas. They change regularly and highlight the very best resources ResourceSpace offers. Sets of resources are grouped under various headings including emergency appeals, photographer showcases, themes, popular images and many more. Access Themes from the main menu or homepage. They change often and can be a great way to browse resources that you may not have seen before.
