Please note: This video presents our optimal vision for this feature in FOLIO; What you see in this prototype is what we are working towards in the long run, and might not all be present in the first, developed version. Please help us improve it — share your questions, constructive feedback and ideas in the comments below.
Questions for SMEs:
How will sorting of results work? Some useful criteria are: Most recent. Most relevant. Alphabetical.
Also, we often suppress records to the public catalog for various reasons and we can change a setting so that suppressed records are highlighted. That makes them easy to find in search results.
I think a search everything is a great idea, just as a place stick in standard numbers. From an acquisitions standpoint, it would be wonderful to have a similar search interface for acquisitions data as for the collection, which is sadly missing from our ILS today. I think the search everything box then is a place to plunk in a standard number or a title without having to think, now, let me go to the right interface to get this information. A great example of this is Harrassowitz’s Fokus product, where I can quickly search for a journal title, journal ISSN, or stick in our PO in the same box and be linked up quickly to our order.
For filters, often we are working across different apps, trying to answer questions:
e.g., I want to find Title X and see if it has an open PO attached. I’m not sure how this could work with FOLIO - do a search for the title, then filter to POs attached, and then identify open POs? Right now, it seems like I could filter by content type, to see holdings, or to see POs, but I’m not sure how to see the relationship between the POs and the holdings.
I could also see the need to view relationships important from a Resource Access standpoint, e.g., Show me X title, but only if it’s checked out.
Thinking about features, I wonder if in the “Show me Everything” it would be possible to intermingle results across different content types as a form of display? I realize the relevancy of the results would be hard to deal with, so maybe that would need to sorted by date created or date updated. Results would also have to be labeled with what they are. I could see this being potentially useful, although not critical.
Finally, when first coming to the screen, it might be nice not to have the record pane open until something is selected, and to be able to close it easily. I could see the need to review a larger set of results or see more information about each result in order to select the proper record, and having more screen real estate devoted to the search results would help.
The current thinking on this concept of a universal search app is that it will show you the top results of each type, and that you will also be able to select which types of results you’re looking for in the filter pane.
The sorting would be based on relevance by default. This might be customizable per individual user in the long run. It makes sense that one might be able to sort by other things, like the ones you mention.
@kmarti Thank you for your advice, Kristin!
The Preview pane on the right will be collapsible in the long run — see an example on http://ux.folio.org/universal-navigation/uxi-3/
