You can find records in the knowledge base before they are activated (indexed)? A few of you have lamented over time that, until you (or someone) takes the time to edit and activate a record, you are unable to find it again. Maybe you have come up with additional information, the next day, that you want to add to the answer before it goes “live.” Or on the other side of the coin, maybe you’ve decided that the answer was not the best and you want to delete the record, or you’ve decided the Q&A is not appropriate for the knowledge base to which you submitted it. Or you’ve just had a question similar to one you already answered and submitted to the KB but cannot find by searching.
Whether or not you have editorial privileges, you should be able to find a known item before it completes the editorial process by browsing--if you remember anything at all about the question or answer. There are several effective ways to browse knowledge bases. Take a look at the Browse option in the Knowledge Base module:
1 From the My QuestionPoint home page, click on the “Knowledge Base” link in the left margin. It sits just above the search box for the Global Knowledge Base.
2 This takes you directly into the Knowledge Base module, where you have access to your local knowledge base and the Global Knowledge Base.
3 Click on the Browse tab in the top left of the page.
4 Now on the Browse page, take a look at the different ways you can browse.
Folder and Knowledge Base: If you’re looking for a Q&A you know was submitted, whether or not by you, you probably want to a folder (Active, Inactive, Submitted by Me). You can search all these folders at the same time if you can limit the retrieval in some other way. Are you looking for a known Q&A that was put into your local knowledge base? Then select that KB. Again, you can browse both the KBs at the same time, but you might want to limit the pool of choices when you get results.
If you are trying to find a Q&A that you submitted, just select the Submitted by Me folder. Results are returned in reverse chronological order, so you may find the record you need right away, by just browsing that folder. This folder includes both Active and Inactive records.
For Inactive records (remember, Inactive records have not yet been edited and activated by an editor; they are not yet searchable, only browsable), chances are only Requesting/Responding Institution and Date Range will really be applicable. In some workflows, the other values (Category, Subject and Subject Broad Class, and so on) are set during the editing process; in others, they are set during submission of a Q&A to the KB. Whether or not you can use them for Inactive records depends on your library’s practice. If you don’t know you can try using a value in them to limit your browse results; if you get zero results drop them from your browsing “equation.”
Requesting Institution: this is the library that received the question. If your library has answered questions from another library—maybe a partner library or through the Global Reference Network—and the Q&A you are looking for is one of those, select that library here.
Responding Institution: this is the library that answered the question. If several libraries actually participated in the particular Q&A you want to find, it is the final library to have used the Answer button that is associated as the Responding Institution. Maybe you’re looking for a Q&A that you had referred to another library; stipulating a library in this drop-down menu could help reduce the results list considerably.
When you are browsing in your own local KB, the above two limiting options may not be very important. But if you are trying to locate a record that was submitted to the Global Knowledge Base, stipulating your own institution as the requesting or responding institution will probably be essential.
Date Range: This is the limit option that may be most useful to narrow results when browsing. You can choose to browse only those Q&As Answered on a particular date or within a date range, or only Q&As Submitted to the KB during a certain period of time. “Modified” means when a Q&A in the knowledge base was edited, activated, or updated in some way. Unless you are an editor, this may be less useful, and the same with Update Required.
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Results of browse for KB submissions for a week in September 2008. Note that both Active and Inactive records (edited and unedited) and two knowledge bases (Global Knowledge Base and the local KB named Local Reference Group) are represented on this results page.
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