Increase Searchability of Exhibitions with Foreign Language Titles in PD
complete
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Lillian Beeson
Currently, you cannot search by translated title in the PD. It would be extremely helpful if you could since, in some instances, the translated title field has the English title of the exhibition which our users are more likely to search by. It would also be helpful to expand the search capabilities of the original title field in the PD. Right now, it seems that only Latin-script alphabet languages will populate search results (and even then there seems to be issues with diacritics), but it would be great if we could expand the search to include languages with other alphabets/characters such as Japanese and Russian.
An example of this issue is the Bearden exhibition ブラックアーチスト ロマー・ベアデン展 / Black Artist: Romare Bearden (exhibition ID 65319). Right now we have the English in the original title field because of this searchability issue, but ideally we would be able to move it to the correct field (the translated title field) without making it undiscoverable using the search feature in the public display.
Lisa
Merged in a post:
Search exhibitions by translated title
Caitlin Sweeney
If you have an exhibition with an "original title" in a language you don't speak, and you have entered an English title in the "translated title" field, you currently cannot search for the exhibition by the "translated title."
It would be extremely useful to be able to search by translated title, in addition to original title.
Lisa
Merged in a post:
Translated title field data in searches for exhibition titles
Caitlin Sweeney
On the exhibition search overview, search results for title should include data from the translated title field. (If I search for "French Art of the XV–XX Centuries" then one of the results should be "Выставка французского искусства XV–XX веков [French Art of the XV–XX Centuries]"
Lisa
updated the status to
complete
Dear Lillian,
The exhibition search bar in PD has been updated to consider both original and translated titles.
Kind regards,
Lisa
Samantha Rowe
This will also be a significant factor for the exhibition catalogues displayed on the WPI Library Portal. We have a large number of catalogues from Japan that we want to ensure are fully searchable.
Lisa
This functionality will be included in our upcoming release
Lisa
Hi Caitlin,
Thank you for your post.
Currently there is only one title filter available for exhibitions, which is called "Original title". Could you please clarify, if you want a general titles filter for exhibitions that covers all of the below:
- Original title
- Short title
- Translated title
and whether you want this new filter to replace the original title filter or keep this specific title filter alongside?
Thank you!
Caitlin Sweeney
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for your response!
First, regarding short titles, I am not sure how researchers use the "Short title" field at this point —if at all. I am prone to thinking that any text that is in the "Short title" field would also be in the "Original title field" (Such as "Jasper Johns" vs. "Jasper Johns and the increasingly gray paintings he is making of flags" or "Grids" vs. "Grids and their compositional importance in conceptual art, 1969–1972." So I wouldn't prioritize the ability to search Short Titles.
Second, regarding translated titles. I find it useful that translated titles come up in a general search. I can envision scenarios in which you would ONLY want the translated title to come up (Especially if you could search for exhibitions that have
any
data in the translated title field, no matter what it was.) In contrast, I don't think that it is imperative to make sure that the results when searching for an original title DON'T
include translated titles. There are not so many that they would gum up results. Therefore, I would propose:
General Title Search: Includes Original Title & Translated Title - most important
Translated Title Search: Includes only the Translated Title. - not as high a priority
Original Title Search: Includes only the Original Title - probably not important, may cause confusion.