DSpace 7 facets?

[alaw]

Our repository, VTechWorks, runs DSpace 6.3 XMLU and serves our comprehensive university with over 100 departments and programs. We provide a Department facet for our ETD collection, https://www.lyrasis.org/programs/Pages/DSpace.aspx. If the patron selects "View more..." in that facet, they will be presented an alphabetical list of all department and programs, from which they can select the program or department of interest.

The ETD collection in the Iowa State University repository running DSpace 7.3, https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/collections/0830d32e-14e1-4a4f-bb8f-271a75ed35af?scope=0830d32e-14e1-4a4f-bb8f-271a75ed35af, also offers a Department facet. However, if one clicks, "Show more," they are presented 5 more options in that facet list. It seems impossible with this presentation to ever get to less popular programs such as Fisheries. Is there the possibility of having the current DSpace 6 XMLUI behavior to allow the full list of options? Not only is it simpler for our patrons, we use this functionality extensively to manage our content, for instance using the Content Type facet to list all content types to correct outliers. Is this functionality planned for a future versions of DSpace 7? If not, have others thought how they might provide this functionality?

I also tried the search box within that facet. That seems to find the first word of a department but not subsequent words, for example listing a match for Physics but not Astronomy for the department, "Physics and Astronomy."

One final observation about the facets is that the check box for each option seems to be vertically centered on each option. This is fine for single lines but is confusing for multi-line options such as Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. I propose putting the check box inline with the first word of each option.

Thanks,

Anne

[Tim Donohue]

Hi Anne,

The current "show more" behavior in the DSpace 7 search facets only displays the next 5 facets in order to ensure the performance is good.  Attempting to display 100s or even 1,000 facets after clicking "show more" would be extremely slow.

The intention of the search box under each facet was to do the same thing in an easier way.  It's supposed to allow you to quickly search for the facet you are looking for (rather than continually clicking "show more" or loading them all at once). And then allow you to select that facet quickly.  This was a redesign of the old 6.x behavior into 7.x, but the goal was the same.... you should be able to find even smaller facets quickly and us them to filter your results.

However, based on your feedback, it does appear that it's not doing exactly what users expect in this scenario...I agree with you that it should not require searching from the beginning of the facet text.  I'd consider this a bug. Maybe you could create a ticket with thoughts on how to improve the behavior? https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues

Regarding the checkbox display.. I'm not seeing that behavior in Google Chrome (it appears aligned at the top).  I wonder if this is a browser specific bug?  If so, I'd recommend creating a ticket for this as well, and list the browser you are using so we can retest in that same browser.

Thanks for the feedback.  In general, we do welcome creating bug tickets or usability tickets (or comment on other's tickets if you hit the same issue as someone else).  Generally, the more an issue is mentioned or commented on, the more developers become aware that this is a common problem for many/most sites & the higher priority it'll get.  The opposite is also true, when a bug/usability issue is not​ reported into our issues list, it's highly unlikely anything will get done as it's simply not tracked in the system.

Thanks again,

Tim

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From: dspace-c...@googlegroups.com <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of alaw <al...@vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2022 5:16 PM
To: DSpace Community <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [dspace-community] DSpace 7 facets?

 

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[alaw]

Tim,

Thank you for your feedback. The vertical alignment of the checkboxes seems to be an issue with Firefox but not Chrome or Safari (although Safari's are a little off horizontally). I created the issue, In facets, vertically align checkbox with first word of option, https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/1711.

Regarding the search box behavior, I created the issue, Facet search box should search all words, not just first word, in options,

https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues/1712.

I do mourn the loss of the XMLUI "View more" behavior, especially for administrative purposes. I would be interested to hear from others who use XMLUI, whether they have found this functionality helpful and any thoughts of how this functionality might be attained in DSpace 7.

Thanks,

Anne

[t.h...@unsw.edu.au]

Hi Tim and Anne

We too have had feedback from users about having to click 'show more' in search facets multiple times and getting frustrated with the number of clicks.

Is there a middle-ground between 5 and 100's that will work and not affect performance?

Thanks

Tanya

UNSW, Sydney

[Tim Donohue]

Hi Tanya,

Yes, of course there could be a middle ground between 5 at a time, and 100s.  I honestly just don't know what the right middle ground would be.  The number 5 was chosen as we made a guess that​ people would use the facet-specific searchbox if they wanted to find a facet value not near the top of list.  But that guess sounds like it has been proven incorrect by real-life user behavior.  So, if 5 is the wrong number, then we'd need to find a new number (10? 20?).  Or maybe maybe it needs to be made configurable?   (My response about performance issues was only to say that one solution that won't work​ is simply displaying every facet value after clicking "view more".  There must be some fixed number we stop at, otherwise performance could be a problem if there are a very large number of facet values.)

I guess I'm pointing out here that as institutions who use DSpace all of you have feedback into this.  If you have an idea of how to create better behavior, I'd encourage you to either create a DSpace issue ticket (https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues) describing the better behavior you'd propose.  Or, maybe bring this up for discussion with the DSpace Community Advisory Team (DCAT) who can combined create such a recommendation.  I'm here to help explain why​ we chose the current behavior...but I will fully admit that we may never be able to get it perfect the first time, so it's important to get this feedback & ideas for improvements.

Anne has already created a few tickets (she linked to) which I've pulled over to our development work board.  I don't yet know what release they'd be fixed in, but they are now on that board and will get prioritized/analyzed there (alongside all other reported issues).  We also always accept code contributions/donations from anyone... so if an issue is really bothering you, and you can either help fix it, or pay a service provider to fix it, that's is often the quickest way to a solution.

Glad to provide more advice as needed,

Tim​

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From: dspace-c...@googlegroups.com <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of tany...@gmail.com <t.h...@unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Friday, July 1, 2022 1:21 AM
To: DSpace Community <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [dspace-community] DSpace 7 facets?

 

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[alaw]

Tanya,

Thank you for sharing your experience with DSpace 7 at UNSW. We are looking for examples of DSpace 7 repositories and appreciate the work your team has done on UNSWorks, https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/home. I notice that the facets there don't include the search box which appears in DSpace Demo, https://demo7.dspace.org/search?query=cell&spc.page=1. That box, even with the bug mentioned, might help with user frustration. Also I notice that the options for the facets are listed alphabetically, rather than in descending frequency, as they are in DSpace Demo.

Anne