Navigation Information

How To Use This KnowledgeBase

There are three ways to navigate the content of the KnowledgeBase:

By Category
using the menu under the masthead at the top of every page.
By Searching
for specific words in the articles using the Search text field at the top of the right-hand sidebar on every page.
By Tag
using the Tag Cloud in the right-hand sidebar on every page.

Click below for more detailed information.

Categories On The Top Menu

Articles are divided into three broad categories: Dancers, Callers, and CALLERLAB Information.

Dancers
contains information about finding, recruiting, training, and retaining dancers. It also contains information on operating clubs, lesson systems, community and party dances, and other topics.
Callers
contains information for and about callers. It includes material that callers may use for their own education, as well as materials to help those who are mentoring a potential caller.
Social Connections
contains items focused on creating and maintaining the social connections and bonds that keep our activity vibrant.
CALLERLAB Information
contains information about CALLERLAB as an organization.

The first two categories are very broad and contain a large number of articles. Use them when you are browsing to see what sort of information is available but don’t have a specific item or topic in mind. The second two categories are much more tightly focused on specific information relevant to their topic.

Selecting a category will take you to a page that describes the category and displays the articles it contains. For each article the title is displayed accompanied by a short excerpt of the content. You can do a quick scan of just article titles by clicking on the “List of Article Titles” button. Also, you can filter the articles displayed by clicking the Filter by Tag button and selecting a tag from the list. This will reduce the articles displayed to those in the category that also bear the selected tag.

Other Items On The Top Menu
Useful Links
contains links to a variety of outside organizations, tools, resources, and historical sites.
Contact US
provides information about how to contact the managers of this KnowledgeBase or the CALLERLAB organization.
COVID-19 Information
collects information related to the COVID pandemic and its effect on square dancing.
Stuff On The Sidebar
Search

A search text field appears at the top of the sidebar on the right of every page. Enter a search term and hit Enter or click the Search button.

Entering multiple search words will select any article that contains one of the search words (a logical OR). Example: martinez education will find any article that contains at least one of either martinez OR education.

To force all selected articles to contain a word, precede that word with a plus sign (+). Example: +martinez +education will find any article that contains both martinez AND education.

To exclude articles that contain a word, precede that word with a minus sign (-). Example: +education -martinez will find any article that includes education but NOT martinez.

Partial words will be matched. Example: Searching for tool will also find articles including words like toolbox or footstool.

Contiguous phrases may be found by enclosing them in quotes. For example “lots of stuff about” will only return items with those words in that order. Without the quotes, items with any one of the words will be returned.

If an article is long and you are having difficulty finding the search term within the article, you can use your browser’s search facility (usually invoked by Ctrl-F (Windows) or Cmd-F (MacOS)) to find the text on the page.

Tags

Each article is tagged with keywords that describe the sort of information it contains – for example, “Music” or “Recruiting Dancers”. The Tag Cloud button in the right sidebar displays all the tags that have been assigned to articles. The relative size of the tag indicates how many articles have that tag. To display the exact number of articles, hover your mouse pointer over a tag until a small box displaying that number appears.

Clicking on a tag, whether it appears in the tag cloud, in an article, or in other lists of tags, will take you to a page listing all the articles with that tag. On that page, you can filter the results both by Category and by another tag by using drop-down menus.

Tags vs. Search

Tags are applied to an article by the author and indicate some part of the article is relevant to the subject indicated by the tag. A search will deliver all articles containing that word, even if the word is incidental to the subject of the article.

Other Navigation Notes

Certain articles that collect many items, such as the article containing a list of all CALLERLAB convention session audio recordings, cover virtually all subjects and will have been assigned many tags. To find specific items on specific subjects within those collections, try using your browser’s search facility to search the page you are viewing (Ctrl-F on Windows, Cmd-F on Mac).

Each article page contains a list of the categories and tags assigned to that article. The page also points to three related articles selected by a software algorithm. If you are browsing, this may help you find additional articles.

Other Sidebar Items
Navigation Information
Takes you to the page you are reading now.
Recent Articles
Displays a list of the most recently created articles.
Popular Searches
Displays a cloud containing the most frequent searches over the past 30 days.
Most Viewed Last 30 Days
Displays the 10 most frequently viewed articles in the past 30 days.
Article Type Explanations

Articles in this knowledgebase are classified into several “types”. The type is intended to convey some information about the nature, the form, or the origin of the information the article describes. The types are described below (click on header to see articles of that type):

Collection
compilations that discuss a topic area and point to other articles and resources relevant to the topic.
Document
indicates information in the form of a document such as a reference manual, book, tutorial, paper, or handout.
Idea
a short description of a raw idea, many of which have been abstracted out of a larger article such as a Winning Ways Story, but which are deemed interesting enough that they should be independently searchable.
Presentation
an article about a presentation, such as a session at a CALLERLAB convention, which may include pointers to handouts, an audio recording, or occasionally video.
Publication
refers to newsletters, magazines, note services, etc. published (or formerly published) on a regular basis.
Resource
refers to descriptions of resources such as websites, blogs, vendor sites, etc. that aggregate information and pointers, or to tools such as computer programs that provide functions specific to calling or dancing.
Video
indicates the content is presented in the form of a video recording.
Winning Ways Story
stories shared by callers and dancers who have tried something out and are willing to share their experience for the benefit of others.
Site Tags and Categories

The display below shows all site categories and tags with a short description of what they designate. Click on the category or tag name to go to a page showing all the articles they include. More detailed information is contained above under the How To Use This KnowledgeBase button.

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