An Item is any particular instance of one of the Sources. For example, when you are in the Artworks Source, you will see listed in the Item listbox a number of Artworks; when you are in the Contacts Source, you will see Contacts.

The Item listbox can take either of two shapes: a narrow vertical box for Contacts and Artists, and a wide horizontal box for everything else.

You select multiple Items - to add them to a Set, to Print, or to do many other things - by Shift-clicking for contiguous Items, or Command-clicking (Mac OS X) or Control-clicking (Windows) for non-contiguous Items.

If you have only one Item selected, the details of that Item will be displayed in the Detail pane, the lower right hand part of the Browser window. The Detail pane gives you the same view of an Item as the Detail window in View mode.

You'll notice that there are sectional headers in the detail pane. For example, a Contact has sections titled Details & Notes, Transaction History, Bibliography, and Sets & Metadata; an Artwork has sections titled Details & Notes, Transaction History, Costs & Values, Price History, Ownership History, Location History, Condition History, Exhibition History & Bibliography, and Sets & Metadata. To hide or show the contents of any particular section, click on the disclosure widget to the left of the heading.

You'll also notice that some labels are a medium gray and some are a dark gray. If you move your mouse over a dark gray label, the label will turn blue.

Click on these labels to access the Smart Labels feature of Voltaire - a contextual menu will drop down giving you access to commands such as Google Contact (the Name label in Contacts), Create Email to Contact (the Email label in Contacts), Open Artist Detail View (the Artist label in Artworks), or Open Transaction Detail View (the Transaction label in Artworks).

Whether or not you have one Item selected, if you click on the View button in the toolbar, or select View... from the Edit menu, the Item(s) will open into a new Detail window. To edit the basic information of the visible Item, click on Edit button in the Detail window toolbar.

From the Browser window, you can open an Item directly into Edit mode in a Detail window by clicking on Edit button in the Detail window toolbar, or selecting Edit Item... from the Items menu.

When you have an Item open in Edit mode in a Detail window, the Item's editing controls will be exposed. Note that your changes will not be saved unless you click on the Save button.

To perform an operation, such as a batch editing operation, on an Item or selection of Items, use the Items menu - the Artworks menu in Artworks, the Contacts menu in Contacts, etc.

You can also access the commands of the Items menu by right-clicking or Control-clicking (Mac OS X) on the Item in the Item listbox - this will drop down a menu where you clicked.