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Introduction

The iDigBio specimen portal provides access to millions of records about neontological and paleontological specimens curated at museums and other institutions in the US. Records might include information about the specimen, when, where and by whom it was collected, the institution providing the data, images and other media related to the specimen. The main intent of this tutorial is to familiarize the user with the search capabilities of this portal.

Requirements

The iDigBio Portal requires the use of an HTML5 compliant browser with cookies enabled. The Portal has been tested successfully against, and is supported for, the following browsers:

Chrome
Firefox
Safari
Internet Explorer 10,11
Microsoft Edge

Portal Navigation

The main features of the portal can be accessed through the Green Menu Bar (Fig. 1) near the top of the page. The menu choices include links to the iDigBio Home, the Portal Home page, the Search Records page, Learning Center, the Data page, the Research Collaboration page, Feedback, and Documentation which are detailed next.

Fig.1 Green menu bar at top of page

iDigBio Home

The iDigBio Home link takes you away from the portal, and into the portion of iDigBio website containing information about the project, its workshops and working groups, research, education and outreach.

Portal Home

Use the Portal Home page to start searching Specimen Records quickly on a scientific name, and to view basic overall statistics about the existing data (i.e., distribution of data by collection type, and overall number of records). Search results are returned on a new page that allows a more comprehensive search.

Search Records

Use the Search Records page for more comprehensive and specific searches. On this page, you can perform a Full Text Search and/or an Advanced Search and view the search results as detailed in the next section.

Learning Center

The Learning Center link takes you away from the portal, and into the portion of the iDigBio website containing information about tutorials, workshops, webinars, and conferences.

Data

Use the Data menu to access the Publishers, Collections, and Portal Stats submenu pages

The Publishers page provides a general count of the datasets and publishers provided to iDigBio. The Collections page provides a comprehensive list of collections and institutions that house data in the United States. The Portal Stats page provides information about usage statistics for the iDigBio Portal.

Research Collaboration

The Research Collaboration link takes you away from the portal, and into the portion of the iDigBio website containing historical information about iDigBio collaborations over the years.

Documentation

The Documentation link takes you away from the portal and to the site you are currently on.

The iDigBio Search Records page is a graphical user interface representation of what can be achieved with the iDigBio Search API or associated R client.

Documentation on how to use Portal Search can be found here.