Question: What is a collection?
Answer: A collection is a group of publications, all of which have a specific character and can be described by a certain set of attributes (qualities), used to search the publications. Some attributes can be found in various collections, while others are specific to only one collection.

Question: How to search by collections?
Answer: Included on the main page of the Digital Library of Geodesy and Cartography is a whole list of collections and subcollections. Clicking on the name of a collection will allow to display the whole list of publications within the collection (link: Publications list).

Question: What is an exhibition?
Answer: An exhibition is a set of publications belonging to the same subject and being presented in a specific order. Documents included in an exhibition may come from various collections.

Question: What is the general search (simple and advanced) and how to use it?
Answer: Each publication consists of a description (comprising a set of attributes, such as author, title, editor, keywords etc.) and a content. In order to find a requested publication it is necessary for a user to create a search expression using terms (in the simple search) or terms and the Boolean operators (in the advanced search). In the simple search the terms appearing in the search expression are searched in a content of a publication, in a description of a publication (it is possible to narrow the search scope to only one element of the description, e.g. an author) or in both a content and a description of the publication (when the search scope is set to everywhere, which is a default value). In the advanced search the terms appearing in the search expression are searched in a content and (or) in a description of a publication (it is possible to narrow the search scope to only one element of the description), using the Boolean operators. The general search may be conducted on the whole digital library (all collections are searched) or on a chosen collection (all publications within the collection are searched). The second option allows to shorten the search time and limits the number of results.

Question: What is the index search and how to use it?
Answer: Index search, unlike the general search (simple and advanced) limits the search only to descriptions of the publications. There are indexes of titles, authors and keywords available in the index search.

Question: What is the use of a user account?
Answer: A user account gives the user access to the additional functionality, e.g. an e-mail newsletter containing a list of recently added publications. To create a user account it is necessary to have an e-mail account, to which an e-mail with an account activation link will be sent. In order to activate the account the user has to click on the received activation link.

Question: Is it possible to download a publication without opening it?
Answer: Yes. To download a publication in ZIP format the “floppy disk” icon can be used. The same effect may be obtained by using the Publication window (in the left column) and clicking on the link Entire publication as ZIP.

Question: In what ways does the option “Use synonyms” help?
Answer: Using synonyms expands the search by including terms with the same or similar meanings, which are listed in a dictionary of synonyms, created by editors of the digital library. This option enables to obtain results indicating publications which contain synonyms of requested search terms.