Our goal with HumaneSpot.org is to help animal and environmental advocates be more effective by empowering them with informative research. During the two and a half years since we launched HumaneSpot.org, I'm pleased to say our user base has grown significantly and we consistently receive positive feedback. To help advocates get even more from using HumaneSpot.org, here are a few essential tips and resources...
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First off, if you’re new to HumaneSpot.org, please consider reading through our user guide. It’s a concise, yet comprehensive look at the diverse tools and resources we offer and how to access them.
Browse by Topic
We added this feature in 2009, so it’s possible that some you may have not have used it yet. You can now search both research citations and external resources by category, to focus in on just the items that are relevant to your work for animals. Just click on one of the links below, then click on the topic that interests you under “Browse Records/Resources by Issue.”
To browse the HumaneSpot.org research citations by topic, go here
To browse our external resources, go here
Advanced Search
This is covered in our user guide, but it’s worth mentioning again. To access the advanced search page, click on either the search button (when logged in and without entering any search terms) or on the “Advanced Search” link on the site’s navigation menu.
Use the options on this page to specify exact phrases or to require or omit words from your search (similar to Google's advanced search feature). You can also refine your search by selecting one or more of the "primary topics" in the box to the right. To select multiple topics, hold down the CTRL/CMD key on your keyboard and click on the topics you want to search. Lastly, you can also limit your search to specific content types using the checkboxes.
Email Preferences
HRC’s “Spotlight” emails go out on Wednesdays, according to the schedule that you choose (weekly, biweekly, every 4 weeks, or every 8 weeks). To avoid accidentally filtering our emails as spam, add "info@humanespot.org" to your email address book.
To set your email preferences, first log in to HumaneSpot.org and then go to http://www.humanespot.org/spotlights/email. On this page you can choose how often you would like to receive the Spotlight emails using the "Delivery Interval" drop-down box (select "never" if you prefer not to receive spotlights via email).
Next, choose your topic preferences; you will receive one combined email with new items matching all of the topics that you select here. Finally, select the content types that you would like to hear about via email. HRC strongly recommends selecting at least "Research Citation," but chances are that most people will find the other content types useful too.
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Those of us at HRC work hard to keep HumaneSpot.org up to date and to create useful resources for animal and environmental advocates. We hope you take advantage of these free tools and provide us with any feedback that you have. If you’re not already a registered user, please go here to apply.