Find and Reuse a Description
This guide shows you how to find a Description and reuse its identity. You do not retype the authors and title. You point at the record that already exists.
Prerequisites
- You know the title, or part of the title.
- For your own records and for shared records, you have signed in.
- For public records, you do not need an account.
Find a public Description
Open the public registry. It lists every public Description. Search by title. The search matches letters in order. It does not need a full word.
Open a row to read the full record. You see the title, the provenance, and the summaries that are not private. You see who owns the record and when it was last updated. You do not see the owner's tags. You do not see values of private fields.
Find your own Descriptions
Sign in and open your list. Your list has three views:
- records you own
- public records
- records shared with you
Search by title in any view. You can sort by recent update or by title.
Open a record you own to read it. From there you can edit it. From there you can remove it.
Find a shared Description
Open the view of records shared with you. These are Descriptions that another owner shared to your email. You can read them. You cannot edit them. Private fields stay hidden. Tags stay hidden.
If you expected a share and do not see it, check two things. The owner must have saved the share to your email. You must sign in with that same email.
Reuse the identity
Every Description has a permanent identity. Copy that identity when you want other people or other NUU tools to cite this record.
Reuse means you point at this Description. You do not create a second Description for the same source. You do not copy the authors into another tool by hand.
If you work on disk, pull the Description to a file. The file carries the same identity. Read Keep a Description as a File.
What you get
You have the record in front of you. You have its permanent identity. You can cite that identity. You can open the public view of a public Description. You can return to your own list to edit records you own.
If no public Description exists yet for the source, describe it yourself. Read Describe a Source.