New GRIIDC Search Application!

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Improving the Search for Data

Over the years the GRIIDC software development team has worked diligently to develop a data repository that is user-friendly and efficient. The development team utilizes user feedback and suggestions regarding data submission processes and other applications when developing software improvements. One of the most heavily used features on our site is the search feature, known as Data Discovery, which allows users to search for datasets using a combination of search terms, geographic areas, and research group filters. GRIIDC has responded to the valuable feedback regarding this application and made some major improvements. We are happy to announce the release of a new search application which will make finding datasets easier!

New Search Features

The new GRIIDC search contains a variety of new features to help the user find the exact results they are seeking.

Advanced Search Terms

Users can now search for exact phrasing using double quotes around the search term. For example, a user can type “migrating seabirds” and get more accurate results of that topic, versus a list of entries for “migrating” and/or “seabirds” that are not related to the exact phrase, reducing excessive results. Users can also exclude terms from search results by adding “-term” to their search string. For example, the search string “sediment -core” would return all datasets that match sediment but do not match core.

More Relevant Results

Additionally, search results that match the title, author, or theme keywords are boosted twice as much as matches in other fields since these are the primary search items people tend to use when searching for a dataset. This means that results relating to the title, author, and theme keywords will display first.

DOI and UDI Matching

When users search for DOI’s or GRIIDC unique dataset identifiers (UDIs), the corresponding datasets will appear first in the results. Datasets where a DOI or UDI appears in other fields, such as abstract, will also be returned.

Restrict Search to Specific Fields

The use of keywords has always been the primary way users could search for datasets. With the new search application, Search terms can now be narrowed down to specific fields. For example, dataset title, abstract, author, or theme keywords.

Facets

The filter field has also been updated to filter results by dataset status, funding organizations, and research groups. These facet filters can be combined to allow the user to obtain results matching multiple conditions, for example: datasets from the “Deep-C” and “C-IMAGE II” research groups that are “Restricted”. These facets can be combined with search terms.

Search Tools

The number of results returned is now displayed so users can see how many results their search produced. Also, the URL can act as a bookmark feature so users can save the URL to save the Search Query, which is very helpful for those that use our system on a regular basis.

Technology

The new GRIIDC search application is built using Vue.js, Bootstrap, Symfony, and Elasticsearch. These modern libraries and frameworks will allow GRIIDC’s software development team to easily improve and extend the search application.

On-going Improvements

Ongoing improvements include improving the responsiveness of the search application page. which would allow the display to fit and scale to any device used to view the Search app, and adding spatial extent thumbnails to the search results

We encourage users to look at our new search and let us know what you think! At this time, GRIIDC will continue to make our Data Discovery page available for users, as the application contains a useful geographic search.