Browsing
  Browsing by year
  Browsing by Subject
Searching
  Advanced search
  Simple Search
  Saving Searches
Exporting Search Results

Browsing

EPrints provides many ways for a repository to be divided into different collections or be viewed from different perspectives. Out of the box, its provides two default browse views for users to look through the current existing documents in the repository. These are to sort the documents by the year they were published or by its subject area. Browsing by year will also allow users to view the month the item was published if it is known.

Browsing by year

To browse the items in the repository by the year they were published, click on the "Browse by year" button on the menu bar near the top of the page.

This will bring you to a list of the years in which one or more documents which are in the repository were published in (the number of documents under each year is displayed in brackets next to the year). Documents without specified publish dates are listed under UNSPECIFIED.

Proceed from here by clicking on the year you are interested in to be taken to a list of the documents sorted by the month they were published. The documents with unknown months of publish are listed at the bottom of the page.

You can view a document by clicking on its title to reach the document overview page (See the Viewing Items section for details about this page).

Top

Browsing by subject

To browse the items in the repository by their subject area, either click on the "Browse by subject" button on the menu bar at the top of the page or on the "Browse repository" button on the homepage.

Both links bring you to the same page; a list of the subject areas which have had items deposited under them. The number of items under each subject area is displayed in brackets after the subject heading.

From here, click on the subject area you are interested in to display a list of the items. Some items will appear under more than one subject heading to make finding them easier.

You can then view a document by clicking on its title to reach the document overview page (See the Viewing Items section for more details about this page).

The repository can be configured to allow users to browse by any of the metadata fields. For example, view by Department with subheadings for articles, books, theses and other publication types.

Top

Searching

EPrints allows a variety of search methods to make it as easy as possible to find the exact items you require. To conduct an advanced search through the repository, start by clicking on the "Search repository" link on the homepage.

Advanced search

This brings you to a search form where you can enter search terms for all metadata fields to find the exact documents you require. This means, for example, that you could search for all the items by a particular author which were published in a particular journal. This allows you to easily and quickly find the exact documents that you require.

Some of these search criteria allow you to select whether the entire phrase must be matched or just parts of it using a dropdown menu, giving users further choice in how precise the search results are.

You can also toggle help messages by clicking on the

symbol. Clicking "Search" will perform the search and clicking "Reset the form" will clear the form. There is also a link near the top of the page to allow you to perform a simple search.

Top

Simple search

The simple search page allows you to just enter one or more search terms to search through the repository with. You can enter part of the title, the author or any other piece of information you would like to search for. You can also choose whether the search has to match all or any of the search terms that you enter depending on how precise you would like your search results to be.

You can also use the "Order the results" dropdown menu to choose how to order the results; either by year, by author's name or by title. As with the advanced search, clicking "Search" performs the search and "Reset the form" will clear the form. You can also do a quick search by typing search terms into the text box in the top right hand corner of the menu bar and clicking on the "Search" button next to it.

The repository can be configured to have many different searches with any combination of metadata fields. For example, there could be a "Published Journal Article" search, which would force the type to be "article" and the status to be "published".

Top

Saving Searches

EPrints makes it possible to save searches in order for users to stay updated on items which match a set of search criteria. You can save a search and then be contacted via E-mail whenever a new item which matches the search criteria is deposited. To do this you must first be registered and logged in (See the Getting Started section). You can then either use the quick or more comprehensive search functions (See the section on searching for more information) and then click on the "Save Search" link located just above the drop down box that allows users to order the results.

A new screen will appear in the same window that allows the user to give that particular search a descriptive name, the option of receiving email alerts and how often (daily, weekly, monthly or never), whether or not they wish for empty alerts to be emailed to them (an empty alert means that there were no new items in the search) and whether to make the search public or not.

The user then has the option to either go ahead and save this search or to cancel by pressing either "Save" or "Cancel".

Top

Exporting Search Results

EPrints offers a facility to export search results into a variety of formats for use in other websites or in citations. The formats supported by default are ASCII Citations, BibTeX, Dublin Core, EP3 XML, EndNote, HTML Citations, METS, MODS, OpenURL ContextObject, Refer and Reference Manager. Other formats (such as ZIP) or web services are supported by plugins available from the EPrints developers repository (http://files.eprints.org). To use the exporting facility you must first run your desired advanced or quick search (See earlier sections for details on these) and then select the format you would like to export to from the dropdown menu near the top of the page.

Once you have made you selection, click on the "Export" button to display the search results in the format that you selected.

Google Maps

The following are examples of what may be done with the exported data. Firstly, here's a view of the Google Maps export:

This shows some of the results from the search "Turtles". When a search is exported to the Google Maps export, Google Maps is automatically contacted to create the map. The markers are generated from the location metadata, if present, in the EPrint. The example above shows where three of the results where authored, although the location data could show where something was found or sighted if applicable.

Endnote

Next is a screenshot of the Endnotes export:

This may look like an unhelpful text file but it is the raw data that may be saved and imported into the Endnote application. When this is done the results are as follows:

For a larger view please click upon the image above.

Top

Browsing and Searching

Contents