[CONTACT] cat_records feedback

[babogan]

Good morning ARCTOS team! I'm excited to see the work that's been put in and it's looking great! I have one suggestion that mainly pertains to making ARCTOS a bit more navigable for the public. As it is now I think the list of museums may be a bit intimidating. As it currently appears there is no way to know which museum is which unless you already know (AMNH has been used for Alabama Museum of Natural History, for example). Perhaps choosing one museum (First selection-> ALMNH) and then choosing from their collections (ALMNH->Entomology) would be a bit easier? It would definitely make the drop down a lot less intimidating. I fear that, as is, it is not sustainable for ARCTOS's growth into the future with the addition of more museums- 300 museums each with 10+ collections would yield 3000+ selections. Another idea: I don't know how achievable this is, but I think it would be really neat to have images visible on the search page if requested ( with a check box?). From a public point of view, it's a lot less intimidating when you can see the specimens right on the search page. This would be especially helpful for biological collections with a lot of unidentified specimens. It would be unpleasant to go through thousands of records to see if my exact butterfly of interest is in a collection only identified to the family level- but much easier if I could scroll through images and open those that are the most promising. Collections catalogs feel very intimidating even when gold standard records exist within because, as we know, some collections terminology isn't the most helpful. "Chair" could describe so many different things in a historical collection. Thank you for all that you do! Excited to see the future of the search page!

[dustymc]

list of museums

I presume you're referring to the "choose" widget? I can add anything you see in manage collection to it, just let me know what you want. (Mockups, however crude, are very useful.)

images visible

[babogan]

This is the idea with the drop-downs.. hope this makes sense I got this with the media tool! This looks amazing, thank you so much! Totally missed that initially.

[dustymc]

Ah, thanks. Here's the idea, which is very much open for discussion.

The search box is using DATALIST, so it should suggest single collections when you start typing.

You can overwrite that by typing whatever you want, or by using the "choose" option, which does have some grouping options.

I think that's a decent balance - users who want to see details and choose collections can use the widget, most of "us" will maybe do that once and then use the saved-by-browser options (eg list of "your" three collections) for subsequent searches.

[dustymc]

And FYI the background discussion (or lack thereof) is https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/1555

[dustymc]

I added some stuff to the chooser for next release.