So, I plan to keep the digital archive I’m building as simple as possible. We have a local history collection with about 150 folders and each of the folders has anywhere from 10 to 25 items in them (documents, photos, news clippings). I plan to make each folder a Collection and each of the items within a folder an Item. I just wanted to run that by you and make sure that’s a good approach.
My second question has to do with searching the archive on the public side. When a person enters search terms in the search box, Omeka will search through the metadata terms I entered into the Dublin Core fields and look for a match, correct? Basically, is that how the search function works? I just want to make sure I’m envisioning the process correctly.
Your planned correlation of existing folders to collections makes perfect sense.
Regarding search - search on the public side is a text search of metadata, yes, with the caveats mentioned in the troubleshooting section of the search documentation. You also have the choice to turn on Advanced search, which lets people create more focused searches on the public side.
I read the troubleshooting section and had a question about the following:
“MySQL considers terms that appear in over 50% of indexed items to be so common that it excludes them from keyword searches.”
So if I use the word Photograph, for example, in the Format field of Dublin Core, in over 50% of the entries, then I can’t enter the word Photograph in the keyword search and expect photographs in my search results? But if I use Boolean or Exact match I could?