Notice for Scran Contributors

Unfortunately we are currently unable to display the large version of images on SCRAN.
The smaller version can still be viewed on each record.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and hope to resolve the issue shortly.

 
 

What's New On Scran

30th May, 2005

Scran has just launched the latest version of its website. Find out what's new here.

Open Source

Scran has been moving its systems to Open Source. That means we use non-proprietary software where possible which keeps our costs down and we can benefit from the worldwide network of Open Source developers. It also means we can bring new features to you.

Search Format Like Google

Scran now carries out its searches using a very familiar and standard format. It carries out automatic AND searching and sorts the records for display with a relevance feature. That means if you type in Mary Queen of Scots, it will now find all records with Mary Queen of Scots and also records which contain Mary AND Queen AND Scots.

To find a specific phrase and only that phrase - like Elizabeth I, put the phrase in quotes "Elizabeth I".

You can still type in AND, OR and NOT to refine searches but remember to put these Boolean operators in capitals. You can also use + and - instead of AND or NOT. Click here for more information on Boolean searches.

Sorting Results By Relevance

Search used to present results sorted by title of record in alphabetic order. That sometimes meant records you were looking for didn't show up on the first few pages. So, if you searched for elephant, it found all the records with elephant in them but listed all the titles with As, all the Bs etc.

Now it searches by "relevance". Search for "elephant". Note how the elephant picture come up nearer the front of the search but the order of titles is no longer alphabetic.

However, we recognise there are some occasions where you will wish to sort by alphabetic title. You can use the option on the Search results page to flip the sort to Alphabetic Title if required.

Extra Sort Features In Advanced And Fielded

You can get advanced sorting options in our Advanced and Fielded Search which can be accessed from the Search Menu on the left column. Here you can find records by a particular contributor, sort in relevance, alphabetic and contributor order and choose particular media types to find i.e. only Pathfinder Packs.

Formats

You may be interested in the Open Source formats being used by Scran. The website is completely dynamically driven from MySQL databases. We use PHP, CSS and HTML and store materials in JPEG, MPEG, MP3 and PDF format.