How to Search the Conservation GIS Reference Project Database
How to Search the Conservation GIS Reference Project Database:
(Jan 13, 2020)
(STATUS NOTE: THE Search Methodology Described is still being applied, second round of 400 source documents expected to be completed by Apr 15, 2020)
Search in Geonet is done by clicking on the “Content” tab of the MAIN Conservation Group page: https://community.esri.com/groups/conservation-gis/content It will have the following top banner:
Below that banner, at the top of the text section, you’ll see a “Type to filter by text” window (see right) That’s where you enter your search terms. By default, multiple terms combine as “AND” not “OR”, ie all terms must be found. The more terms you add the fewer results you will find. The search will look at every word in every posting.
So normally a search for resilience restoration projects involving birds would return results for any posting that mentioned those words anywhere in the doc. A search for all TTT trainers in Russia would return all docs that mentioned Russia in any capacity and also mentioned TTT. To help make results more specific, the “x” terms were created and assigned to every document. X terms are specific assignments based on classification of the documents, profiles, paper presentations and other activities of the person involved. For example, the search “2019” would return every mention of that year, but a search for “x2019” would only return official conference presentations, scholars, presenters and chapters who reported on something for the year 2019.
“xYear” search terms can have additional modifiers to indicate if the person gave a talk, map, or was a scholar or TTT trainer for that year, ie x1950TTT would give a list of just the official TTT trainers for 1950.
To facilitate searches specific to a program or chapter, there are also x terms for the TTT program, Scholars, Chapters and Countries, which can also have additional modifiers for a year, ie x TTT2019 x Scholar2015 x ChapterRussia x Russia2013
The goal for every posting is that there is at least one xYear term for every year they served or presented, and at least one x program term for every program, country or chapter they participate in. This sometimes leads to partial overlap but the goal is to return all the postings and only those postings relevant to a specific search, and to facilitate search scopes ranging from all years all time, all people/events in a year, to specific years, countries and events.
Please note that once you have defined a satisfactory x search, you can add any additional normal words & terms in order to narrow your search further.
Please also note that Geonet also offers a structured “tagging” fuction, which was not utilized for this purpose in order to leave it open and available to all posting authors to use for their own additional search and classification purposes.
