Generating Views of Collection Data

Once you have imported your collection data you can create views of the collection to embed and share online. This page describes how to choose a layout, preview, add facets and views, and chose which features to display in your interface.

Chose a Layout

From your data page you can build a view of any collection data set. Click the build link next to a data set to begin building a view. You will be prompted to pick a canvas to set the overall page structure of your view. For example, if you chose the Two Columns Left canvas, you will be able to put as many facets as you like down the left side of your interface and the maps, timelines, and other views you chose to use will show up on the right. On each canvas, the blue boxes represent the areas you will be able to put facets and the beige area shows where the main view will be created. Note: Once a specific canvas is chosen, you will not be able to change to a different canvas.

Preview Your View

At any point, you can click the preview link to see what your interface looks like so far. It generally works best to toggle back and forth between the edit and preview modes as you work. Most users find that when they actually see what their collection view looks like in the interface they will want to tweak which fields to display and their display order. Data fields, as well as facets and views, can be arranged by dragging and dropping them into the desired order.

Save Your View

It is a good idea to click the save button early and often. The first time you save your view, you will be prompted to name it, add a description, and chose if you want it to be public or private. Public views will be visible to anyone. By default, private views are only visible to you. You can share private views by generating a link for that view; only users accessing the view through that link will be able to access it. You can always change a view from public to private and back again and you can also chose to revoke access privileges to links you create. If you want to change a view's name, description, or accessibility later on, go to the main "Views" page, click the "Inspect" link by the view, and the green "Edit" button beneath the view details.

Add Collection Facets

Facets provide persistent ways to navigate through any of your views. Click the add facet button and select any of the available facets. The available facets include: a search box, a list, a weighted tag cloud, space for a logo image, and free text. You can add as many facets as you like.

Once you chose a facet type you will be prompted to chose a property that you want to display in that facet. The interface will show you each of the properties in your collection, the number of distinct values for each property and the number of items that are missing each property. This information is invaluable for deciding which properties to use. For example, the image below is from a collection with 22 items. Thus, properties with 22 values have unique values for each individual item. That would make a property like "Name" a bad candidate for a facet like a tag cloud which displays the relative frequencies of a given value. In this case, the "Category" field looks like a good field for a tag cloud. With only 10 values and no items missing the property, you can be sure that there are some items that have the same value.

Add Collection Views

Collection views are the primary windows Viewshare provides into your digital collections. To add a view click the "add view" button in the middle of your page. This will prompt you to choose a view type. The particular views you choose are going to depend on the nature of your data. If your collection includes location information it may make sense to let your patrons browse the collection on a map. If your collection includes temporal information it might make sense to let them browse your collection on a timeline. Once you have added a view it will show up as a tab next to the initial default list view. You can rearrange the order of your views by dragging any of your view tabs and dropping them into the order you prefer.

Set Display Preferences

For each view (map, timeline, list, etc) you can chose which properties you want to display and how you want to display them. Different views work better with different amounts of information, so you will want to experiment with which fields you want to make visible in which views. Beyond setting the visibility for a given field, each of the different views come with different kinds of required fields. Consult the full user guide for more details on setting up each kind of collection view.

The image above shows an example of how you might set the display preferences for a map view. You can see from the radio button set for the Name property that this view will fill in the title block for each item with the value in the name field. As the names will show up in the title block, this user has decided to unchecked the box to "show" the name property. That means that the name property will not show up again in the list of information for each item. You can use these check-boxes to set which of the properties you want to display for each individual view. Consequently, your map, timeline, and list can each display different properties. You can also drag-and-drop any of the properties to set their order for each view. Each different view comes with a its own additional settings. For example, this user has set the Lat,Lng value, required to create a map view, to use their property "lat long." The user has also set the values for the different categories to decide the color of the pins on their map.

Continue to Save and Preview

As you add more views and facets you will want to continue to preview and save your work. Below is an example of what a finished interface might look like.

In this case, the interface above includes three facets: a search box, a weighted tag cloud of the categories, and a list of the names of each of the items. In the center you can see that the displayed map view's pins are colored by the categories. From the links at the top, we can see that this view also includes a list, timeline, and pie chart view.

Once you have created a view you have several options for embedding and sharing that view.