Author search in DSpace 7.6.1

[Milos Ivanovic]

Dear All,

The author's search in the default setting has an apparent usability issue. Here is a situation.

Namely, when I type "Surname, Name" (image 1 attached), even when the corresponding authority is available in Solr, many times it doesn't appear in the search results at all. However, when I type only the Surname (image 2 attached), the appropriate authority appears somewhere in the list.

My question is how exactly the authority search is implemented? What does the Solr query look like, where is it implemented and which fields are subjected to search? If one searches for "Smith, John" it is normal to get "Smith, John" as the first search result.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to change this behavior and make it more logical?

Many thanks!

Milos

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi Milos,

Off the top of my head, I don't know exactly how this code is written.  But, I wanted to point out that you can easily *see* every REST API call made from the DSpace User Interface in your web browser's Dev Tools as described here: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/REST+API#RESTAPI-FindingwhichRESTAPIEndpointtouse

So, you can use that tool from the User Interface, and see exactly which REST API endpoints are called.  Then, search for those endpoints in the backend codebase to see exactly how those endpoints are running the Solr search.  (Sorry, I don't know this info off the top of my head and won't have time to look into it today.  But, hopefully if someone else *does* they'll respond to this thread.)

Regardless, I'd recommend logging this as a usability bug in https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues.  If you are able to find a fix, please do send it our way and we'll add it to a future release.  If not, that new ticket could be a place to help us find if anyone else has found a fix or is willing to help develop one.

Tim