pages for collections?

[holfordm]

It could be very useful for users to have more information about the history and contents of the various collections as this is not currently easily available anywhere else (information on archives.bodleian is usually very limited). For example there could be a page collections_1 for Bedfordshire, collections_2 for Berkshire and so on (these would be based on TEI records /collections_1 either inside the collections folder or in a new folder). Charter records could link to these using @key on the collection element. <collection key="collection_xxx">Miscellaneous</collection>. Links from the landing page could then point to these pages and/or there could be a new "collections" browse button. (If there was a collections browse button the landing page could show more basic information about the contents of the catalogue rather as archives.bodleian does). Sample collection page bc2d41aeda6542ce47fb10d8e77da7d8c1c2dd47 Does any of this seem sensible - how easy/difficult would it be to implement - should we wait until user testing to see if it would be a high priority for users?

[holfordm]

tagging @irv as I can't assign the issue to more than one person!

[Slange-Mhath]

Sorry just to clarify, do we want collections to have their extra show page with all the information about the collection similar to a charters show page? So clicking on cambs for example gets me to a show page which gives me info about that collection? On the index page clicking on one of the collections for example Cambs, shall then no longer filter all the charters related to Cambs but take the user to the collection show page with details about Cambs? Do I understand that correct?

That would probably be possible, have to have a closer look at it but should be doable. We would need to introduce a new document type in solr. Not too sure about timeframes regarding this.

[holfordm]

@Slange-Mhath Yes that was what I had in mind. But the collection page would also link to all the charters for the collection. So there would be some information about the collection, followed by a list of charters.

[irv]

Sort of how it works in DB? https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/western-medieval-manuscripts/

We might need to think about how we implement this consistently across the catalogues, and we might not have time to do that before we go live with Charters...

[holfordm]

@irv yes exactly. Happy to discuss about consistency across catalogues (although I do think the case is particularly strong here because the information isn't available elsewhere and because the catalogue often describes parts of collections (as with many of the D.D. collections)

[Slange-Mhath]

Please do have a look at this example. If the collection has no info it will appear like it did before! Let me know what you think :)

[holfordm]

Hi @Slange-Mhath and @irv , I've created some more collection pages and linked them in commit 4531800b281a23656032011476359124a5ecf713 to the relevant item records using msIdentififer/collection[@key] - could you please reindex to see if this works as expected before I create the remaining collection pages? (I've added the information in a quick and dirty way so some records will have more than one collection element but there should only be one with @key, and I'll tidy the records up as soon as I can)

[irv]

That doesn't seem to cause an issue as is, it will take me a day or two to make the changes (e.g. create links to the collection, properly generate the html for each collection)

[irv]

Actually, would it be possible to include an msID idno for each one?

e.g.

            <idno type="msID">MSS_Ch_Bucks</idno>
            <idno type="collection">Bucks</idno>
            <idno type="catalogue">Western</idno>

we won't display it, but it would help not break everything else

EDIT: and can the value in collection match the one used in the charters? "Bucks" vs "Bucks. (Buckinghamshire)"

[holfordm]

does 3abe09ba35d88e481525175dcd53b8b8c6917326 do this?

[irv]

I think so!

https://charters-qa.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/?f%5Bms_collection_s%5D%5B%5D=Cambs.+%28Cambridgeshire%29&f%5Btype%5D%5B%5D=charter

[holfordm]

should I still aim to add key attributes linking to the collection pages (<collection key="collection_100002">Berks. (Berkshire)</collection> and so on)? (with the aim that https://charters-qa.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/collection_100002 would then show all associated charters) @irv