Browse¶

Using the “Part of” facet¶

When arriving on a search or browse page, you can use the “Part of” facet filter to limit results to children contained within an archival unit such as a fonds or collection. Note however that at present, the AtoM facet filters will only show the top 10 results for any facet - so this method will only work if your target archival unit is included in the facet’s display (see the section below on Using the top-level description filter if your target archival unit is not included in the “Part of” facet filter).

To use the “Part of” facet for limiting results to a single archival unit:

1. Using the Browse menu located in the The AtoM Header Bar, navigate to Browse > Archival descriptions. For more information on navigation in AtoM, see: Navigation in AtoM.
2. Make sure that the top-level descriptions filter is turned off - by default, AtoM will display only top-level parent records when arriving on the Browse page. You can display all results by clicking the X on the “top-level descriptions” filter tag.
3. In the left-hand column, locate the “Part of” facet filter. The facet will display the top 10 results - e.g. those top-level records with the most children. For more information on using facet filters in AtoM, see: Facet filters
4. Click on the name of the archival unit (e.g. fonds or collection) whose lower-level records (children) you would like to explore.
5. AtoM will reload the page with the results filtered to the chosen archival unit. This will be indicated, and can be quickly removed, via the filter tag with the name of the unit at the top of the search/browse results page. You can continue to apply further facets and fliters as desired to narrow your results within the selected archival unit.

Using the top-level description filter¶

TO ADD AFTER SEARCH PAGE REDESIGN

Using the “Browse as list” button¶

If you are already on the view page of an archival description that includes a descriptive hierarchy (i.e. a top-level description such as a fonds, collection, or series that has lower-level children), you can explore the descriptions contained in the archival unit using the browse buttons included in the “Explore” section of the right-hand context menu. For more information on context menu items in AtoM, see: Context menu and Recurring page elements.

There are two options for browsing within an archival unit included here - the “Browse as list” button, and the “Browse digital objects” button. Additionally, if it has been configured by an administrator, there may also be an option to view an inventory. This section will describe the “Browse as list” button - see the Browse digital objects button and Browse inventory list sections below for the other options in this part of the context menu.

To use the Browse as list button:

1. Navigate to an archival description that is part of the archival unit whose children you wish to explore - it does not have to be the top-level parent record. For more information on searching, browsing, and navigation in AtoM, see: Access content.
2. In the right-hand context menu, locate the Explore section - you will see browse options listed there, including the “Browse as list” button.

3. Click on the “Browse as list” link. AtoM will redirect you to a browse page, limited to the current archival unit - this will be indicated by the filter tag at the top of the browse page with the name of the top-level description. If you click the X to remove the filter tag, AtoM will reload all search/browse results (i.e. the page will no longer be limited to the selected archival unit).

4. You can continue to apply further facets and fliters as desired to narrow your results within the selected archival unit.

Using the “Browse digital objects” button¶

If you are already on the view page of an archival description that includes a descriptive hierarchy (i.e. a top-level description such as a fonds, collection, or series that has lower-level children), you can explore the descriptions contained in the archival unit using the browse buttons included in the “Explore” section of the right-hand context menu. For more information on context menu items in AtoM, see: Context menu and Recurring page elements.

There are two options for browsing within an archival unit included here - the “Browse as list” button, and the “Browse digital objects” button. Additionally, if it has been configured by an administrator, there may also be an option to view an inventory. This section will describe the “Browse digital objects” button - see the Browse digital objects button section above, and the Browse inventory list section below for the other options in this part of the context menu.

The “Browse digital objects” button will allow you to explore the digital objects associated with descriptions included in the target archival unit, on a dedicated browse page described in the Browse digital objects section below, but limited to that specific descriptive hierarchy.

To use the Browse digital objects button:

1. Navigate to an archival description that is part of the archival unit whose children you wish to explore - it does not have to be the top-level parent record. For more information on searching, browsing, and navigation in AtoM, see: Access content.
2. In the right-hand context menu, locate the Explore section - you will see browse options listed there, including the “Browse digital objects” button.

3. Click on the “Browse digital objects” link. AtoM will redirect you to a digital object browse page, limited to the current archival unit - this will be indicated by the filter tag at the top of the browse page with the name of the top-level description. If you click the X to remove the filter tag, AtoM will reload all digital object browse results (i.e. the page will no longer be limited to the selected archival unit).

4. You can use the Sort button and the media type filter on the page to further sort or limit the results as desired.

Using the Inventory list¶

The Inventory list allows an administrator to make a page of lower- level descriptions contained within a parent record available on a separate inventory page formatted as a table with sortable columns.

If there are a lot of lower-level descriptions (for example, many files and items in a series), this can be a useful way to quickly browse the contents of the archival unit - and the sortable columns can be used to sort and view the lower-level children in a way that the treeview does not allow. Columns in the inventory page include:

• Identifier
• Title
• Level of description
• Date
• Digital object

Only the digital object column is not sortable - this column will provide an indication of whether or not there is a digital object attached to the description - if so, the row will have a hyperlink called “View” in the Digital object column. Clicking on the “View” link will take a user directly to the master digital object - if a user does not have permission to view the master, the column’s value will be empty for that row.

Whether or not the Inventory link appears on a particular description will depend on how it has been configured in the settings page - there, an administrator determines which levels of description will be included (see: Inventory for more information). If the current archival description you are viewing does not include lower-level child descriptions matching the settings, no link will appear.

Because it is configurable, an inventory list may not include ALL lower-level records available in a particular archival unit. For example, if you viewed the inventory page from a fonds-level description that included sub-fonds, series, files, and items, but the administrator has configured the inventory settings to display only files and items, then at the fonds level, the inventory list will display all files and items (including those contained within lower-level subfonds and series), but the subfonds and series records themselves will not be included on the inventory page.

Similarly, the Inventory link will only appear on parent records - for example, if you are viewing a file that is part of a series, you would need to navigate to the series record to see the inventory link.

To use the Inventory list:

1. Navigate to the archival description whose children you would like to explore. For more information on navigation in AtoM, see: Access content.

2. If the description includes children that match the inventory settings configured by the administrator (see: Inventory), then an “Inventory” link will appear in the right-hand context menu, in the Explore section:

3. Click on the “Inventory” link. AtoM will redirect you to the inventory list of lower-level records for the chosen description.

4. The Inventory list page will include the title of the parent description, as well as a breadcrumb trail back to the top-level description for the archival unit. On the right-hand side of the page, a button to return to the view page of the parent archival description is also included.
5. The column headers of the inventory list that appear in blue can be clicked to sort the inventory list by that column. Clicking again will reverse the sort order of the column (for example, from A-Z to Z-A). The only column that cannot be sorted is the Digital objects column.
6. The Digital object column will indicate whether or not there is a digital object associated with the archival description listed in the inventory list row. If there is, and the user has sufficient permissions to view the master digital object, then AtoM will provide a direct link to the master digital object.

7. If there are more than 10 results, a pager, with a count of the total number of results above it, will be included at the bottom of the page.

Using the Quick search bar’s browse option¶

The view page for an archival description includes a feature known as the Treeview Quick search - it allows a user to quickly search an archival unit for a specific lower-level description. Instructions on how to use it can be found at:

• Treeview quick search

However, whenever a search query is returned with at least 1 matching result, a link that allows a user to browse all descriptions in a dedicated search/browse page, limited to the current archival unit, is also included:

If you click the “Browse all descriptions” link included at the bottom of the Quick search results, AtoM will redirect you to a search/browse results page, limited to the current archival unit.

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Browse the holdings of an institution¶

When a user clicks on a result in the archival institution browse page, they are taken to the view page for the selected repository.

This view page includes a list of holdings - archival descriptions that have been linked to the current repository. For more information on linking a description to an archival institution, see: Link an archival description to an archival institution.

The holdings list can be used to browse the holdings of a particular archival institution, which can be especially useful in a multi-repository AtoM instance, such as a union catalogue, portal site, or network. It appears in the left-hand context menu of the view page for an archival institution, beneath the logo.

The search box on the holdings list will search all indexed fields in all descriptions related to the archival institution. When used, it will take the user to a full search results page, limited to the current institution (as indicated by the filter tag at the top of the search results).

See Search for archival descriptions for more information on using the search results page.

Below the search box, is a holdings browse link, that lists the total number of holdings (e.g. top-level descriptions linked to the repository). Clicking on this link will take a user to a browse page limited to the current repository, and filtered to display only top-level descriptions. Users can remove these filters by clicking the X next to the filter tag to broaden the results. See Browse archival descriptions above for more information on browsing archival descriptions in AtoM.

Below the search box and holdings browse link, an alphabetized holdings list appears. The list consists of hyperlinks - clicking on one will take the user to the related description. The number of results in this list per page is controlled by the “results per page” setting found in Admin > Settings > Global. See: Results per page for information on changing this value. The default value in AtoM is 10 results per page.

A holdings count appears under the holdings list, which includes the number of results per page, and the total - e.g. Results 1 to 10 of 45, etc.

If there are more holdings than the number of results per page, a pager will be included below. Click the <- back and forward -> arrows to move through the pages. The current page number is listed between the navigation arrows. For large results sets, you can also manually enter a number into the current page number box - the holdings list will jump to the appropriate page. Any invalid numbers (e.g. entering 1000 when there are only 10 pages) will be ignored, and after a moment, AtoM will replace the value with the current page number.

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Hierarchical terms and browse results¶

When terms are organized hierarchically in a taxonomy (e.g. nested within broader terms, with a parent to child relationship), and a child term is added as an access point to an archival description, AtoM includes the parent terms as well for context. This is expressed as a breadcrumb trail on archival descriptions in the Access points information area, as shown in the Places example below:

In the above example, the user has added the term “Waterloo” to the description - but the term is organized hierarchically in the Places taxonomy, and its parent terms are inherited. Because of this, when browsing results for the parent term “Waterloo, Regional Municipality of”, the example description will appear, even though the term was not directly added.

For users who would only like to see results where the current term has been directly added, a link is provided at the top of the results, with a count of directly related results:

Click the “Exclude narrower terms” button at the top of the results, and AtoM will reload the page, displaying only archival description results where the term has been directly added (and not inherited from a narrower term).

A filter tag appears at the top of the narrowed search results indicating that only directly-related results are being displayed. To return to the previous view of all results, click the X on the filter tag - AtoM will reload the page and return to displaying all related results.