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What
can you find on our site ?
Listings of Main ReliefWeb sections can be found on the Home
Page, the Site Map, and the drop-down menus on subsection pages.
The
answers to many common questions can also be found on our ReliefWeb
FAQ page
Emergency
response documents can also be located by using the Search
and Advanced Search.
The
Help pages explain the menus, document selection criteria,
and contents of this site.
What
can you find in Help?
-
How
to navigate and find information in ReliefWeb.
-
The
organization and structure of the site
-
Technical
questions on use of the site and the World Wide Web.
HELP
Contents
How
to optimize use & Technical questions
More
questions?
Send
us mail at: <comments@reliefweb.int>
Glossary
of technical terms
Abbreviations
How
to find specific documents
The
documents are arranged by Emergency and By Country.
Documents
by Emergency
Start
from the Complex Emergencies or Natural Disasters menu, select
an emergency. This is the easiest way of finding all documents
related to that emergency or natural disaster especially when it
involves several countries.
For
example:
If
you are looking for the latest reports on the Great Lakes, go to
-
Complex
Emergencies, select Great Lakes: you see a chronological
list of the documents starting with the latest and you can
click directly the date field of a document to see it. To
view earlier documents, click on the Next on the
bottom of the list.
Documents
by Country
Start
from the By Country menu, and select a country. This is
the easiest way of finding all documents related to that
specific country. Background links by sector also appear in
context on this page.
For
example:
If
you are looking for the latest reports on Kenya, go to
-
By
Country, select Kenya: you see a chronological list of the
documents starting with the latest and you can click
directly the date field of a document to see it. To view
earlier documents, click on the Next on the bottom of
the list.
If
you are looking for reports from a particular source or of a
certain type:
-
From
the Latest view. From options on top of the page, click By
Source. You see a list of sources which have produced
documents on the emergency or country in question.
-
From
the Latest view. From options on top of the page, click By
Format. Then, select Situation Reports by clicking the
blue triangle next to it, and next UN OCHA. You have to
scroll down the screen to see the listing of OCHA documents.
If
navigating by Emergency or By Country does not satisfy your
needs, try the search capabilities of our site:
-
Full
text search looks for all words in all documents. You give
freely selected words in the search field, and will get the
results arranged by date or relevance. Go
to search Help.
-
Advanced
search allows focussing the search to a certain emergency,
information source, geographical area, organization, or
selected keywords. Search results are sorted by relevance or
date.
-
The
search looks only for emergency documents (Complex
emergencies and Natural Disasters), not for other documents
on OCHA Online, maps or financial tracking.
How to find
background information
Background
links can be accessed from the By Country pages as well as
directly from the Background home page. Links are categorized
by country and sector. Click on the blue triangle next to a
country name to expand the view into sectors, click a sector
to see the links. Scroll down if needed. Use previous
and next to navigate forward or backward on the list.
How to use
our documents
All
documents are in the public domain, and can be used for
educational purposes. They are not for resale, or
redistribution without the explicit consent of the original
source with the exception of United Nations documents and maps
produced by ReliefWeb.
How to
monitor site updates
We
aim to publish continuously during weekdays. In acute
emergency situations updates are more frequent. The Latest
Updates page, and the Latest pages of emergencies and
countries are the key to new entries.
What
if the site does not look like the latest version? If you
and your organisation are using the site all day, it may be
that the proxy server or your browser cache stores an
earlier version of the site: to refresh it, click Reload/
Refresh.
Subscribe
to the ReliefWeb via E-mail.(see below)
Subscribe
to the Bulletin via E-mail. Click
here for instructions
to subscribe.
How to get
Web documents by email
If
you do not have access to the Web, but have an Email account,
you can still receive ReliefWeb documents by subscribing to
ReliefWeb via Email.
This
service will be introduced in January 2000.
More
information about Web access via Email can be found at http://www.bellanet.org/email.html,
or download the instructions from Offline
Internet Access.
How to select
language (Français) / language of documents
Language
icons in the document listings indicate if the document is in
French or Spanish. Documents in English have no icon.
How to send
comments or E-mail to ReliefWeb
Click
on the Contact item button on the top navigation bar to
get the Comments address. E-mail is also available on the bottom
of each document in ReliefWeb.
How to submit
information to ReliefWeb
Click
on the Contact item button on the top navigation bar to
get the Submit address.
How to get
best results with World Wide Web browsers
Recommended
browsers and browser versions:
If
you do not have access to the Web you could still access the
Internet by E-Mail. More information about Web access via Email
can be found at http://www.bellanet.org/email.html,
or download the instructions from Offline
Internet Access.
How to
retrieve and save documents on your own PC (downloading)
Download
a document: Select File Save As... from the browser's menu to
save it in HTML format on your own hard disk. If you prefer to
have the text only, copy the text from the screen and paste it
into a word processor file.
ZIP-files
cannot be viewed on-line: click the link to get a dialog-box
which allows you to download (Save file..) the file, and unzip
(using WinZip) it on your own system.
GIF-files:
to download a map in Netscape, click the right mouse button on
the map, and you get a menu where you have the option to save
the image. (Our maps are on HTML-pages, so simple File Save
As.. does not save the map.)
How to speed
up the loading of documents
If
you face problems with access speed, the problem may be with
network connections, busy time on international networks or
the speed of your own equipment.
Select
a good time: morning in Europe is better for connections
than late afternoon or evening when American users are also
connected to the Internet in large numbers. The peak hours
for traffic on the Internet are between 2 to 6 UTC.
Check
that your browser settings have enough cache memory reserved
for quick reloading of pages.
Set
a proxy
server if available (consult your LAN administrator or
Internet service provider about this). You get more local
storage capacity, and some documents may be found locally in
the proxy if someone else using the same proxy has visited
our site recently.
Before
loading a graphics file (like a large map) make sure that
your network connection is fast and your computer has enough
capacity (These are relative values. Closing any additional
software and graphics if you run Windows 3.11 would also
help).
How to deal
with graphics, postscript files and large tables
We
provide our maps in GIF which is the format best known by
Web browsers, and also in WMF (Windows metafile) format for
downloading and local editing.
Postscript
(EPS) is a file format developed by Adobe and used by
high-end printers. You need to have software and a printer
capable of interpreting Postscript files to be able to view,
edit and print them.
Some
of our tables and maps are too large to fit on the normal
screen or to print on an A4 paper. If available, a large
monitor helps.
Sometimes
graphics colours or pictures may not display correctly on
your monitor. If your monitor has only 16-colours, it is not
enough for many pictures. In case of 256 colours display,
you may run out of colours as well, if one picture uses all
codes of the colour palette (like photographs often do).
Other pictures then have to adapt to that one, which usually
gives a less than satisfactory result. Some browsers do not
handle graphics well: to correct the situation, load and
install (or buy) one of the recommended browsers from the
Web.
Browsers
handle graphics and tables slightly differently. Though we
make an effort to standardize graphs and tables, those from
other sources may follow unique coding practices which
result in diverse formats.
How to print
maps
Landscape
printing: if the map or financial tracking table is wide,
select landscape printing instead of portrait in the printer
Setup.
Financial
tracking: print only the GIF-image table, not the whole HTML
page. In Netscape, this is done by clicking the right mouse
button and selecting print from the pop-up menu. If you have
Lotus 1-2-3 software, download the Lotus 1-2-3 table and
print it from that program for a higher quality print-out.
If
the map does not print on one page, you must download it and
use a graphics program to resize and print it.
If
your browser is not able to print a map, you have to save it
first in the cache memory or in a file, and print it using
graphics software. Consult your browser's Help-function for
instructions, or install a new browser version.
Colours:
our maps print also in black and white even though they have
been made in colour.
Home Page: http://www.reliefweb.int/
Email:
comments@reliefweb.int
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