User Documentation

• Browsing
• Searching
• Text Search Fields
• Lists of Values

Browsing

Browsing is a good way to access images and videos in the database if you don't have a specific idea of what you're looking for. There are several ways to browse the repository, including by species, site and scientific classification.

To browse the repository either select Browse from the front page or from the navigation bar at the top of the screen. Then choose which property you wish to browse by eg. "species".

You will be presented with a list of possible values, select one of these, and you will be given a list of links to media in the database (if any) which match this value. To access the media, simply click on its link in the display.

Searching

The database offers two levels of searching, simple and advanced. They are similar, but the advanced form lets you perform a finer-grained search using more fields. Access the simple search using the Simple Search link on the front page, or using the navigation bar at the top of the screen. To perform an advanced search, use the advanced search link at the top of the simple search page.

Text Search Fields

These are used to search fields like species or behaviour. These are the fields where there is a text entry area, and a popup menu just to the right of it. Type your search terms into the box. You can decide how the system will use your search terms by selecting one of the options from the popup menu just to the right of the input box.

Lists of Values

With these you can select one or more values from a list of values for the system to search for. If no value in the list is selected, the system will ignore this field (i.e. it will retrieve media with any value of this field.)

In cases where each individual record may have more than one value attached to the list, you can also change search behaviour by selecting ``Any of these'' or ``All of these'' from the popup menu on the right of the list.

Any of these.

If this is selected, any record which has any of the values you select will be retrieved.

All of these.

If you select this option, a record must have all the values you choose associated with it to be retrieved.

---

Citation In any downloading or consulting of the data from this website, the visitor acknowledges that he/she agrees to the following: If data are extracted from this website for secondary analysis resulting in publication, the website should be cited as follows: Jones, D.O.B., Gates, A.R., Curry, R.A., Thomson, M., Pile, A., Benfield, M. (Eds) (2009). SERPENT project. Media database archive. Available online at accessed on If any data constitutes a substantial proportion of the records used in secondary analysis, the authors/managers of the database should be contacted. In any case, there are additional data which may prove valuable to such analyses. SERPENT Image and Video Archive is running on GNU EPrints repository-creating software, which generates eprints repositories that are compliant with the Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting OAI 1.1 and 2.0. The GNU EPrints repository-creating software is available for free at http://software.eprints.org/. More information is available about the repository.