BTAA Geoportal search strategies

Text searches

The BTAA Geoportal’s homepage and the search results page feature a text search box that will scan the metadata for all of the items.

From the Home Page:

To see only a specific kind of resource (Maps, Datasets, Web Services, Imagery, or Websites), clock on the relevant category below the search bar on the homepage.

By scrolling down to the “Browse All Resources” section of the homepage, you can use facets to filter results by even more categories.

Resource Type: a facet that describes geometry type for datasets and cartographic genres for maps
Place: a text filter for place names that were assigned to the resource by a cataloguer
Publisher: filter by the publisher of the map, dataset, or website

Within Your Search Results:

After entering a search term or selecting a facet on the homepage, even more facets to further narrow your search will appear on the left of the search results screen.

Year: a widget that a user can limit years by selecting a decade or typing in a start and/or end date
Resource Class: allows users to filter by Datasets, Maps, Web Services, Imagery, Websites, Collections, or Other
Resource Type: a facet that describes geometry type for datasets and cartographic genres for maps
Language: the language(s) of the map or dataset
Creator: a person or organization that directly developed the resource. For maps, in may include the surveyor, cartographer, and lithographer. For geospatial data, it can include names of specific individuals or agencies.
Publisher: filter by the publisher of the map, dataset, or website
Provider: The source, host, or distributor of the resource
Access: Public records can be accessed by anyone. Restricted records require an institutional login or authentication protocol to access.
Georeferenced: To indicate whether or not a scanned map or other imagery has a georeferenced version.

Broadening Your Results

Searching with either an asterisk * or a question mark ? in your query is a way to capture more results and cast a wider search net.

Truncation

The asterisk * will search for any number of characters after your initial phrase, including zero. For example, india* retrieves India, Indiana, Indianapolis, the Indian Ocean, etc.

Wildcard

The question mark ? will represent any single character and must be repeated to represent multiple characters in a query. For example, india? will only retrieve Indian, while india* above retrieved any number of characters after india.

Similarly, a search for india??????? will retrieve only Indianapolis because we put 7 question marks after india and therefore any results must be words 12 characters long.

find out more information about an item? Look at the Links box on the right side of the item page.

Learn More About Your Results

Need to find out more information about an item data set or web service that came up in a search? Click on the result in question, and Llook at the “Links” box on the right side of the item page. The “Visit Source” link will take you to the original source of that data, where you can find more information and download the dataset.

Advanced search

The Advanced search page facilitates combining multiple keywords and facetted searches. To open an advanced search, look for the word gear icon next to the text search box.

Map search

Option 1: Browse for records using a geographic extent

The interactive world map on the homepage supports map-based searches for specific places. One way to conduct a map-based search is to locate all items within a geographic extent. A user can pan the map with the mouse and zoom with the controls in the upper left corner. When the desired area is in view, click the orange “Search here” button at the upper left. Items that are within the geographic extent will display in the search results. Only part of an item needs to be in the geographic extent to appear in the search results.

Alternatively, you can click the blue hexagon that covers the area you are interested in to see all results in that area. Darker blue hexagons indicate more results in that area, and lighter hexagons indicate fewer.

Option 2: Drill down using the cluster and marker icons

Once you have conducted a search using keywords or map search, the search results page will include two maps that you can use to further refine your search. On the left are more hexagons which tell you how many results are linked to the areas within your search: darker hexagons mean more records, and lighter mean fewer. You can zoom in further on this map to further refine your search by geographic area.

On the right is a map that shows the geographic points each of your search results is linked to. The number of each point is the position of that item in your search results list. If you click on a number, it will show you some basic information about that result and you can click “View Details” to go to that item’s page. If more than one result is linked to the same spot, clicking on the visible number will prompt all results to be displayed in a spiral.