The Collex Name Browser
NINES has been investigating new ways to facilitate browsing in the Collex interface, resulting in a new, experimental feature, the name browser, as a way to target authors, editors and publishers associated with a set of results.
Once a user has begun a search, the new browser will be offered below the constraints table. Opening this feature sends another query to the NINES index, returning names as they were contributed by the NINES partner sites in their metadata.
Clicking on any one of the names in this list will add a new facet to your search, allowing you to target the more relevant items. And since name contributions to NINES are not rigorously standardized, the new name browser exposes variations to users, allowing them to consider objects that are similar, but differ in terms of markup.
Since the majority of searches within NINES will return large numbers of objects, a full name browser dialog can be opened from this screen, in case the user prefers an exhaustive name search.
Since this feature is very new, and still under development, we would appreciate any and all feedback from our users!
3 comments December 8th, 2009