user_guide
The Indigenous Traditional Knowledge Database or "ITKDB" is a searchable repository of historic knowledge. Primarily focusing on tracing the relationships between natural resources and people, from where and how they are or have been collected to how they are used. This tool allows different groups of people to collect and store that data in an organized fashion so that it may be easily searched and shared.
To view the data, you must first have an account to log in. If you do not have a username and password, you will need to reach out to your administrator to get set up. Contact information should be available on the website's 'help' or 'about' page, or through contacting the Tribe directly.
Once logged in, clicking 'Explore' will take you to the 'Explore' or introductory search page. The controls here are fairly simple - a search bar for you to type in a key word or phrase you would like to search on, and a series of categories you can search under specifically.
Categories include 'Place', 'Resource', 'Activity', '(Bibliographic) Source', and 'Media'. You can select any combination that suits your needs.
If you'd just like to browse the entire database, you don't need to enter anything.
Once you're ready to dive in, just click on 'Go'.
Once you've submitted an initial search, you will be brought to the results page. There are several elements of this page to note:
Search Phrase (Top) - If you entered a search phrase for your search it will show up here. At any time you can edit this phrase and press 'Enter' or click the arrow to the right to update your results using the new phrase.
Category Filters (Under Search Phrase) - Click on the checkboxes to apply/remove category types from the displayed results. Unlike 'Search Phrase', these updates will be applied immediately after each click.
Results Data (Above Results, to the left) - A brief explanation of how many results were found and what search term was used to find them.
Pages & Controls (Above Results, centered) - Your search results could possibly return hundreds of entries. To prevent them from all trying to show up in your browser at once, they are broken into 'pages' - sets of a few records at a time. Click on a page number or on the '«' or '»' to navigate one page back or forward respectively. This will not affect how much data is downloaded when downloading data (see below).
Download Options (Above Results, to the right) - You may download the list of results to a spreadsheet file in a similar format to what is shown.
- .csv (Comma Separated Values) - This is a versatile table file that can be opened with a great number of tools, including Microsoft Excel. While this is not as easy to use in Excel as the .xlsx option, this is likely the best option for any other tool to read.
- .xlsx (Excel) - The preferred format for using Microsoft Excel.
Results (Left and underneath other elements, majority of page) - These are your results. Each row indicates the type of result, the name of the result, and if applicable, a little more information to clarify the content of the record. Clicking on any of these will take you to a page showing all available information about the selected record.
Map of "Place" Results (Right) - If your results include place records with geographic information, then the place will appear in orange on the map to the right. These may be represented with 'push pins' to show single points, lines for linear features like trails and rivers, or polygon shapes to represent areas.
Click on any record in the search results to see its information page.
Back to results - At the top left of each record page is a button reading 'Back to results'. Clicking this will take you back to your search results.
(.csv/.xls) - like the Results page, you can also export each record's data to a spreadsheet, either as a Comma Separated Values file (.csv) or a Microsoft Excel file (.xls).
Depending on the type of record you have opened, and what information has been collected, you will pre presented with different but complete information about the record.
One of the focuses of this tool is not just showing you records you searched for, but how they relate to other types of records in the database, giving more context and understanding of the data than a simple record could provide on its own. Because of this, near the bottom of each record page all related records (if any) will be presented as links to those records. Simply click on a related record to navigate to its page.
At the very bottom of each record page information about the user who entered the data, the date they entered it, the last person who modified it, and when they modified it are presented. This should give a clear idea regarding how up-to-date the information is. If there are any questions about the data, these are the people to follow up with.
If a media file exists and you have been granted permission to do you, you will see a button to download the file.
Results - As mentioned above, results of any query may be downloaded as a spreadsheet, either as a Comma Separated Values (.csv) file, or as a Microsoft Excel file (.xlsx).
Records - Like Results, individual Records can be downloaded as a spreadsheet, with much greater detail about the record, either as a Comma Separated Values (.csv) file, or as a Microsoft Excel file (.xls).
Media Records - Some media records may also allow you to download the file that is described in the media record (such as a document, and image file, an audio file, or even a video file). If this is available, a large 'Download' button will appear to the right of the record data section, below a preview of the media if the format is supported (such as images).