Geospatial Librarian

This post provides a description of the ten facets found in GeoBlacklight and how they are populated in the Big Ten Academic Alliance geoportal.    Note: This information is subject to change as the geoportal project evolves. What is Faceting? Faceted searches are a way of helping a user narrow down information by selecting from predefined metadata subcategories. They constitute a cross between a browse and a search, because users can combine facets to create custom searches that were facilitated by the existence of selectable values. Faceting has become more popular among library catalogs and its introduction into the GeoBlacklight application reflects this trend.   One important issue for search interfaces that rely on faceting is metadata quality.  This system puts a greater onus upon cataloguers to provide consistent and complete metadata.  Variations in spelling and element usage will cause similar items to fail to be linked together.  Th...

Summary The Big Ten Academic Alliance Geoportal offers text, faceting, and map based search functionality. This post reviews how to search for items from the homepage and how to refine that search from the results page. Homepage Search Options There are three search options on the homepage:  text search box, category browse, and map search. 1. Text Search Box The first item below the banner is a general keyword search box.  The search will scan all of the text fields in the metadata record. 2. Category Browse Three categories have been placed on the homepage for browsing: Institution, Publisher, and Subject.  At the bottom of each category is the text more >>.  Clicking on this link will bring up an overlay box where the user can sort all of the items alphabetically or by number of entries. Full subject list obtained by clicking "more >>" 3. Map Search At the bottom of the page is a world map for geographic searches. ...