Finally we go back to the Panels feature to see how all the additional content you have just added can be pulled together into panels pages. We will also explore the panels controls that allow you to curate and add content directly from your panels pages.

This eLearning package is based on the old Drupal 5 version of the Scratchpads. For the current Drupal 6 version you should use the training materials at http://scratchpads.eu/scratchpad-training-files.

This section provides an introduction to the concepts used throughout the process of building, sharing and maintaining content within a Scratchpad. These concepts are essential to the rest of the eLearning package and include definitions of content (nodes), taxonomy, users and administration as used throughout the Scratchpad project.

We recommend that you watch the following four overview videos in turn to familiarise yourself with these concepts. Clicking on a link will open the screencast in a new window:

This section provides an introduction to the basic features of the Scratchpad environment. Specifically it covers logging-in, the taskguide, where to find help and creating a simple page.

In this section we cover basic aspects of administering a Scratchpad. Specifically we explain the site information area, the content section, blocks, menus, users, roles, and your personal account settings. For an introduction to the administration functions try watching the overview "administration" screencast.

The following assume you are viewing the Administration menu page (URL http://YourSite/admin/).

This section covers various methods of importing, displaying and using classifications throughout the Scratchpad environment. If you have not already watched it, view the "taxonomy" overview screencast to get an introduction to the concepts involved.

The "Panels" feature provides a configurable environment that allows you to aggregate information from the web, with information you have uploaded into your site. In this section we introduce the concept of panels, which provide a window in to the world of biodiversity data available on the web. Specifically we cover panels for Google Scholar, The Biodiversity Heritage Library, Wikipedia, Yahoo! Images, flickr, GBIF distribution maps and NCBI Genbank.

 iSpecies Panels

Here we cover issues relating to the creation of a bibliographic literature database. Specifically we detail how to importing a bibliography, create and edit single bibliographic entries, attached files to bibliographic records and export bibliographic records to a third party reference manger such as EndNote.

The following outlines how to import specimen records from an Excel spreadsheet, how to create and edit single specimen records, and how to clone specimen records for rapid entry of new data.

Here we cover how to mass import, select and annotate collections of images. These collections are used to build image galleries within a Scratchpad. You will also learn how to associate images with specimen, location and publication records.