Searching in Aviary

Last edited 646 days ago by Kevin Glick

In Aviary there are two different search engines: Aviary's cross-resource search; and the resource-level search.

Aviary's cross-resource search boxes appear on Aviary's home page, on an organization's home page, on a collection landing page, and on the resources page. When using this search engine users are always searching across one or more resources, from one or more collections.

For each resource, the following metadata is included in this search index:

Title

Descriptive metadata fields (Resource-level)

Descriptive metadata fields (Media file-level)

Indexes

Transcripts

Transcript Annotations

Aviary's resource-level search box only appears on the resource detail page. This engine searches only within the current resource that is being viewed. It will search the same values noted above, but only for the current resource.

Searching for content in Aviary

On an organization's home page, use the search bar in the center of the hero to perform standard keyword searches across all collections. Just type in the keyword or terms you are looking for and hit return. The simple search bar accepts wildcard searches (*), and boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). Boolean operators must be entered in all caps. You can also search for phrases by wrapping them in quotation marks ("Like this").

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Alternatively, you can click on the “Advanced Search” button that appears when you click in the search box. Advanced Search provides options to make your searches more powerful and precise. On each row of the advanced search, you can select the target of the search. By default the target is "Any Field", but you can select other options to limit the content that you are searching against. Selecting "Any Field" searches across the full set of metadata stored for any resource that is available to you within the Aviary site. You can also select the matching rules, e.g., Has, Starts With, Ends With, or Contains. This will affect how the search criterium is matched when finding a result. You can also enter your desired search term. Currently, advanced search only supports single terms for each row, i.e., you cannot enter phrases in the Advanced search mode. Each row focuses on constructing matching options for a single term. To construct a wildcard search, use the "Contains" matching rule for your desired string. Click "Add new criteria" to add additional rows of search fields. For each new search field, you will be required to select a Boolean rule from the drop down, i.e., AND, OR, or NOT. Click on the “Clear Search Terms” button to clear your search and begin again.

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You can also use the facets at the left of the screen to further refine your searches. Select the plus sign next to each facet title and you will get a list of options for that particular facet. Selecting a facet filters current search results by the criteria you select. You can reset the facets by selecting the "Reset" button, or by clearing the facet criteria you have selected. This will not affect your current search criteria.

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If you begin your search from the Aviary homepage, your searches will produce results from across all of Aviary. However, if you begin your search from a member organization’s Aviary page, your searches will only produce results from within that particular organization’s collections.

“Found In” field

Searching for keywords will return all records that contain those keyword somewhere in the associated metadata. The keyword can appear in a variety of fields, including description or subject terms, and may also appear in the index and/or transcript.

To help you locate the keyword on the search results page, the “Found in” area in each record helps you to understand how relevant a search result may be for your query.

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Clicking on a result will carry your first search term through to the resource detail page, enabling you to zero in on its occurrences in a particular resource. The numbers in orange circles indicate the presence of the keyword in a particular section and how many times it appears. Within a particular tab, the keyword is highlighted. Clicking on the up and down arrows allows you to jump between occurrences of the search term.

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Facets and filters

Whether you are interested in narrowing your search or simply browsing Aviary’s contents, the facets and filters on the right side of the search page will allow you to do so. Clicking on the + next to a facet will reveal filter terms you may choose to select. Clicking the check boxes will filter the results to only those resources that correspond to your selections.

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