Link selected field values on Item Details page?

[ggeisler]

User research revealed that when looking at the item metadata on the Item Details page, more than a few users try clicking on names and subjects in field values; the expectation seems to be that they would be linked.

A potential improvement might be to link the values of selected fields (fields that are likely to have a decent number of records with the same value) so that selecting the field value link would take the user to a search results page for that value.

As an example, we did this in the Vatican project. The metadata from an example item details page includes linked values for several fields:

Selecting the Country value, for example, takes the user to this results page, where all listed records have that same value for the Country field.

To do (Ignore the discussion below unless you need context on these decisions):

• [x] hyperlink cho_contributor
• [x] hyperlink cho_creator
• [x] hyperlink agg_data_provider
• [x] hyperlink agg_provider
• [x] hyperlink cho_subject
• [x] hyperlink cho_spatial
• [x] hyperlink cho_temporal
• [x] hyperlink cho_language

[mwerla]

@jacobthill Can you propose here which fields will have the values linked? It's useful to do it, but not for all fields it makes sense. I guess we should focus on the ones that have a more "tag-like" nature and skip the ones which usually contain longer textual descriptions.

Two clarifications:

• If for a metadata field we have several different values, I assume each of them will be linked separately (e.g. language: English, Arabic).
• If a single value has several words, like "Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana" in the example above, the search query will be linked with the entire phrase (as a search phrase with "" ) or it will be word by word? I assume that phrase based approach is better (higher relevance of results).

[jacobthill]

I think we can link 'cho_language', 'cho_subject', 'cho_spatial', 'cho_temporal'. If we want we can also link 'data_provider' and 'item_provider'. The links would be to the entire phrase. We will want to make sure the linked search results are exact matches, e.g. selections from the facet rather than query results.

[mwerla]

Great, thanks for the list, looks good, but maybe we should also add creator and contributor fields? I agree that providers fields should also be linked.

[jacobthill]

creator and contributor are already exposed in the application. The curator can control their visibility. They aren't currently visible in dev because I haven't found a curatorial use for them yet but I can always display them if needed.

[mwerla]

I am not really sure what do you mean that the fields are not visible. At least for creator, it's visible (in production), for example: https://dlmenetwork.org/library/catalog/ResimKlksyn%2F983

[jacobthill]

Nevermind, I mixed up the tickets. I think the problem with linking contributor and creator is that most will link back to sparse search results but I don't really have a strong opinion about this. We can link those fields if you think it would be useful.

[mwerla]

I hope that at least across the data from one provider the linking will be somehow useful. It will be for sure less useful to discover items across providers.

[ggeisler]

~I agree with @mwerla that linking to a provider could be useful. It should link to the same result set as selecting that provider from the facet sidebar would, I believe.~ EDIT: I got provider and contributor mixed up; I think we mean the standalone Contributor here, not item/data contributor. But I'd have the same thought I have about Creator below for Contributor.

Linking to a creator might not produce substantial result sets very often, but I think that could have some value in itself; it helps inform the user that "these are the only items in DLME associated with the creator you are interested in." It's informative, even if the result set is very small.

@jacobthill I'll leave it up to you to decide if and how to ensure the decisions we made here are actionable for the team.