Best practices in organizing resources

[Mike Nibeck]

Trying to wrap my head around the possible organizational option RS offers. Themes, collections, etc.

In our situation, we would like to "logically" group video assets in multiple groupings. For example "Webcasts", "Interviews", "Features", "Promotional".  These would just be logical grouping, in that a given asset could exist in multiple groups.

We would also like the ability to create sub-grouping within these. ex)

Webcasts:

   -> Bookfest

   -> Music

   -> Research

etc.

Is this sort of organization possible in RS?

_mike

[Allison Stec]

I think your situation might be a great candidate for the "smart collection" config option. This is a collection based on a saved search that auto-updates.

This would also require the use of some of the great search options available in the system. 

For example, you could create a field "Webcasts" and have your subgroups be field options. From there you would do a search for webcasts:bookfest to show all resources that contain bookfest within the webcasts field. saving this search as a smart collection will allow you to quickly view this collection in the future. Want a collection of all the webcasts? You can use an "OR" search (webcasts:bookfest OR webcasts:music OR ...) to find everything and save it in the same manner. The fact that smart collections auto-update means you don't have to worry about missing any resources as long as your search is set up properly.

It would be wise to set up field options as a drop down or checkbox list so your field options are controlled and you'll know what your search options are.

Another option is category trees. I know this options has had mixed results in the past, so i'm not sure what the status is on this functionality.

_mike

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[Mike Nibeck]

Interesting, I will look into these options.

I noticed you didn't mention "Collections", which, at least by name, sound like an option also.

How are Collections and Themes "supposed" to be used?

_mike

[Allison Stec]

Collections are often considered to be personalized, meaning users create their own. When a collection is changed from private to public it becomes viewable to all users.

Themes are a special type of public collection that are categorized. Categories can have sub categories. I use themes to emulate the folder structure my users were used to seeing before I implemented resourcespace.

You might think that themes would be a great options for your situation. However, there are some limitations of themes. For example, if your theme structure has two category levels you would not easily be able to view everything that falls under the parent category.

smart collections have the ability to become public collections and can be categorized with themes as well. The big value is their ability to auto-update. I haven't used this function much myself, but i would also assume that, because smart collections are based on keywords they could not easily be removed from said collection. traditional public collections and themes give anyone access to add or remove resources.