Understanding your workspace
What this chapter does
A workspace is where you move between finding, reading, and doing. Search and Browse help you find material. Entries, Cases, Research and Sources help you understand it. Check and private saving perform separate operations with their own permissions.
Reader outcome
Recognize the main destinations, choose the next page for your question, and understand why some operations require a signed-in identity.
1. Find your starting point
Open Search if you know a name or question. Open Browse if you want to explore a collection before narrowing down. For a familiar trial, use the Statue of Liberty, then choose an identified monument entry instead of a photograph with a similar title.
A search result is an invitation to inspect something. The result’s type, provider and available identity tell you what you have selected.
2. Know the difference between page families
| Destination | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Entries | Read a subject account, citations, relationships and available qualifications |
| Sources / Source Atlas | Inspect the identity, publisher, version and destinations of documents |
| Cases | Follow a question through attributed positions, documents and decisions |
| Research | Read longer research work and its separate artifacts and cited materials |
| History | Compare recorded versions, decisions and changes where supplied |
| Check | Prepare and execute an authorized assessment of a particular statement |
A single subject may connect to more than one destination. A document mentioned in an entry does not necessarily have a retained copy. A graph link does not itself prove a claim.
3. Move from one surface to another
After opening the Statue entry, inspect a related subject, such as Liberty Island, and follow a relevant document reference. To understand the source, read its named publisher and date. To return, keep the original subject reference or use the existing navigation.
For a different kind of subject, the Theranos reading chapter explains why allegations, findings and convictions must remain in their proper documentary contexts.
4. Recognize your access context
Public content may be readable without signing in. A private saved result belongs to its authorized identity; copying a URL does not grant a recipient access. A Check operation or authenticated software call uses the scope and permissions of that action.
Before retrying an inaccessible item, distinguish signed out, wrong account, insufficient permission, and missing or unavailable material. They require different next steps.
5. Know when you’re finished
You might leave with an identified subject, a source citation, a connected research question or a Check result. All are valid outcomes; not every journey should end with assessment.
If the navigation or destination is missing in a particular release, use its documented alternative, record the missing route and consult Help and limitations. Do not assume that an absent page means the underlying subject does not exist.
Continue with Searching Counterpedia, Browsing the knowledge universe, or Exploring sources.