GSR maps significant selections of Western voyages overseas of commercial, scientific, military purpose that took place during the modern age (1500-1914).
GSR offers the possibility of querying its geo-database online. Before querying the geo-database, please read carefully section GSR ID and subsequent instructions in this page to understand the geo-database basic structure, its contents, and the functioning of its web interface.

NB: GSR is a work in progress. Voyages shown in list view that do not appear in geographical visualisations are still being georeferenced.

Top menu
The website masthead - GSR project title - is clickable; this will reset the interface to a clean start.
The top-left menu under the masthead displays a number of tabs that allows you to choose between the geo-database main sections. The default section is Voyages. Other tabs will lead you to different categories of objects.

Main menu tabs, search box, tags
Voyages, Ships, Persons, References, Maps, and Places are accessible through the main menu tabs at the top-left of the main page.
Alternatively, you can enter a blanket search for an object, attribute or keyword into the search box.

Visualisations
List view - Search results are initially displayed as lists or tables. You can sort the records by clicking the ascending or descending icon next to each column title.
Each element of the table’s content can be clicked. This will open a panel with the element’s details. In this panel each element can also be clicked. This will display other related elements (e.g. by clicking on the name of a Person all voyages in which that Person took part will be displayed).

Map view - Each geo-referenced element (i.e. Voyage, Route, Place) allows you to switch from table view to geographic visualisations. You can access these visualisations by clicking the globe icon located either beside the tab "Object" in the panel of each single element, or, when performing a data filtering, in the filtered list subtitle, just above the list itself.
When you are on the Map page, by clicking on the elements listed in the top-right legend you can select what is displayed. Hover over routes and places to see details on routes displayed in a floating window. Click on routes to open a panel with the voyage and route’s details.
The visualization can be clicked/dragged, and zoomed in and out with the zoom level control on the left.

Time scale control - GSR visualisations are diachronic and historical: they map voyages over time. In map and chart views time parameters are controlled by the time line on the bottom of the visualisation.
The chronological spread of the data selection is indicated by the time focus (darkened in time line). The begin-date and end-date of the selection are the focus’s outer edges.
The time focus can be narrowed or widened by click-dragging the focus edges or by setting the date values. The focus as a whole can be click-dragged along the time line. Elements displayed on the map or graph will adjust to reflect these shifting chronological settings.
In Map views the development of the dataset over time can also be displayed dynamically by clicking the playback button.
The speed of the visualisation playback, moving from the begin-date to the end-date of the chosen time focus, can be adjusted in the playback speed settings (you can set 1 second to display 1 week, month, or year).

Scenarios
On the website main page, below the filters, there is a certain number of scenario-buttons.
Scenarios provide illustrative pre-selected dataset samples. These datasets can be displayed as sortable and searchable checklists, or as visualisations.