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Jun 25, 2026

Heratio Help Center article. Category: Public Access.

Explore Hub User Guide

Overview

The Explore hub is a single starting point for everyone who wants to discover what is in the collection. Instead of hunting through menus, you land on one page that gathers the public-facing discovery tools - browse, search, ask the collection, and AI-surfaced discoveries - and presents them side by side with short descriptions. It is the front door for researchers, students, curators, and casual visitors alike. Open it at /explore.

What it does

The Explore hub brings the collection's public tools together in one place so you can choose the way of finding things that suits the question you have:

  • Browse the catalogue by collection, level of description, date, place, and other facets.
  • Search with keywords or natural-language questions across the whole catalogue.
  • Ask the collection a question and get an answer grounded in the catalogue records.
  • Discoveries - AI-surfaced connections that link records across different collections.

Each tool is shown as a card with a one-line description and a link, so newcomers can see at a glance what is available and pick the right entry point without prior training.

How to use it

  1. Go to /explore (also reachable from the main navigation).
  2. Read the short description on each card to decide which tool fits your need:
    • Know roughly where to look? Choose Browse.
    • Have keywords or a phrase? Choose Search.
    • Have a plain-language question? Choose Ask the collection.
    • Want the system to suggest links you might not have thought of? Choose Discoveries.
  3. Click the card to open that tool. You can always return to /explore to switch approaches.

Good to know

  • The Explore hub is a public page - no sign-in is required to reach it, and the tools it links to respect the same access rules as the rest of the catalogue. Records you are not permitted to see will not appear.
  • It is a launchpad, not a separate search engine. The actual results come from the individual tools it links to.
  • The hub is a convenient place to bookmark or to share with first-time visitors who are not sure where to begin.