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Context menu

The context menu appears on all view and some edit pages to provide greater contextual information about the record currently being viewed.

In the default theme, the Dominion theme, AtoM’s view and edit pages are generally displayed in the user interface in either a 2 or 3 column layout - the current record’s display data is presented in the central part of the page, while the side column(s) are generally used to provide additional options and further contextual information to enhance user orientation and navigation. These side columns make up the context menu.

The information provided in the context menu varies by the entity type or display. Each is described separately below.

Archival descriptions

Context menu shown for archival description

The context menu for an archival description can include the following elements, depending on some configuration options set by an administrator via the application settings:

Left-hand context menu

  1. The name/logo of the archival institution which holds the resource described. For more information on linking an archival institution to an archival description, see: Link an archival description to an archival institution.
  2. The treeview (described in more detail below) if it is set to display in the sidebar mode, and the Quick search box. In the above image, the treeview is set to Full-width display, so only the Quick search box is visible in the left-hand context menu (the full-width treeview appears in the central body of the page). An administrator can set the treeview display mode via Admin > Settings > Global - see: Treeview type. For more information on the Quick search, see: Treeview quick search.
  3. If you have configured a custom sidebar menu with links to static pages, these will appear on all archival description view pages below the Quick search and Treeview, in addition to the home page. For more information, see: Add a custom sidebar menu with links to your static pages.

Right-hand context menu

  1. A link to add the current record to the Clipboard. For more information on using the Clipboard, see: Clipboard.

  2. The “Explore” section, which contains various ways to explore the current archival unit. These include:

  3. Import and Export options. For more information on import and export, see: Import/export.

  4. Finding aid generation options. For more information on generating and using finding aids in AtoM, see: Generate, upload, download, and print finding aids.

  5. Related subject, name, genre, and place access point terms that have been linked to the archival description currently displayed. These include:

    • Related subjects, linking to descriptions with the same subject as the resource described.
    • Related people and organizations, including the creator of the resource described as well as an people or organizations who are the subject of the resource described. These link to the authority record for the person or organization.
    • Related genre access point terms, which indicate the types of materials associated with the archival description
    • Related place access points, linking to descriptions with the same geographical location as the resource described.

    For more information on adding an access point to an archival description, see: Add an access point “on the fly” from an archival description.

  6. Physical storage information related to the archival description. For more information on linking a physical storage location to an archival description, see: Link physical storage.

Tip

Adminstrators can choose whether or not physical storage information is visible to all users, via the Visible elements module. See Physical storage and Visible elements for further information.

Treeview

The treeview is a contextual and navigation element for archival descriptions or terms (such as place, subject, or genre access points. It serves the dual purpose of showing a record’s or term’s relationships to other records or terms in a hierarchy, as well as serving as a navigational tool. This section will focus on the Treeview as used for context and navigation in archival description view pages - for more information on the Terms treeview, see: Terms treeview.

The treeview for archival descriptions can be displayed in two ways - either in the left-hand context menu (referred to as the sidebar treeview), or in a larger version in the main column of the view page of an archival description. The display of the treeview can be controlled by an administrator via a global setting - for more information, see: Treeview type.

A comparison of the full-width and sidebar treeview displays.

A comparison of the full-width and sidebar treeview displays.

The specific features of each treeview display option will be outlined below.

Jump to:

Users can also click on the “Quick search” tab to search for desriptions within the current archival unit. For more information on using the Treeview quick search, see: Treeview quick search.

The quick search box, located in the left context menu.

Administrators can decide how they would like descriptions in the sidebar treeview to sort and display throughout their AtoM installation. See Sort treeview (information object). For the full-width treeview, the sort is automatically set to Manual.

In addition to supporting navigation, both treeview types can also be used to support arrangement. That is, a logged in user with sufficient edit permissions can drag and drop sibling nodes (i.e. descriptions with the same parent) to re-order them. Dragging and dropping is not currently supported between levels (for example, dragging a file-level description to a different parent Series). For the sidebar treeview, the sort settings must be set to “Manual” for this to work - see: Sort treeview (information object). For more information, see:

See also

In addition to displaying in the context menu for archival descriptions, the treeview is also used for hierarchical taxonomies such as Subjects, to show parent-child relationships between terms. For more information, see:

Full-width treeview

An image of the full-width treeview

An example of the treeview when displayed in Full-width mode

The full-width treeview, pictured above, has some notable differences from the older sidebar treeview. Most notably, it will allow users to browse all levels of description in the hierarchy of the archival unit at one, while the sidebar treeview will only display siblings of the currently viewed level. By being positioned in the center of the page, it necessarily has more room - and a user can click and drag the bottom bar of the treeview to expand the viewing area further:

Full-width treeview expanded by dragging the bottom bar

Click and drag the bottom bar of the full-width treeview viewing area to expand it

Note

An administrator can also enable a setting that will display the full width treeview in a collapsible container, which is closed by default when users first navigate to an archival description view page. This widget behaves similarly to The Advanced search panel on archival description search and browse pages. An administrator can also customize the labels shown for collapsing and expanding the treeview. For more information, see:

The full-width treeview also supports keyboard navigation - use the up and down keys to navigate, and the left/right keys to expand or collapse descriptions with children.

Basic indentation is used to better visually indicate the hierarchical relationships in the full-width treeview. When a description contains children, a + plus sign appears to the left of its title - click this (or use the right arrow key when the record is selected) to expand the children. The - minus sign can then be clicked (or the left arrow key used) to collapse the parent record again.

Basic icons are also used to help visually distinguish different levels. At present, these are hard-coded and cannot be changed without a developer making changes in AtoM’s code. The collection and fonds-level records will use the box icon; series, sub-series, and other intermediate levels use the folder icon, while file and item-level records use the document icon. If a user adds a new level of description to the Levels of description taxonomy, it will by default use the folder icon:

An image of the icons used at different levels in the full-width treeview

To help differentiate the levels at a glance, 3 different icons have been used in the full-width treeview. New levels added to the Levels of description taxonomy will use the folder icon by default.

As different descriptions are selected in the full-width treeview, the description view page will automatically update to display that record. When navigating with a keyboard, the view page will not update until the user presses the “enter” key to select the description for viewing.

Like the sidebar treeview, for performance reasons AtoM may not load all available descriptions at once, when there are many immediate children below the top-level description in the archival unit. The default value for this behavior is 50 - meaning, if there are more than 50 immediate children below the parent description, AtoM will add a count of the number of remaining records not immediately displayed to a button in the top right corner.

An image of paging in the full-width treeview

Clicking on that button will load the next set of records. If there are still more records not displayed, the number of remaining records will be shown and the user can choose to see the next set, or return to the beginning by choosing “reset”.

An image of paging in the full-width treeview

Tip

An administrator can adjust how many child records are loaded in the full-width treeview initially, and with each click of the “More” button, via a pager setting in gears Admin > Settings > Treeview. The default value can be set anywhere between 10 and 1,000. For more information, see:

Like the sidebar treeview, “(Draft)” will appear beside all draft descriptions displayed to authenticated (i.e. logged in) users. Unlike the sidebar treeview, however, an administrator can configure what metadata elements are used for display in each treeview node - for more information, see:

To navigate with the full-width treeview, users can do the following:

  1. Click on a different description title to see that description. The main archival description view page will reload to display the selected record, which will now be highlighted in the treeview. When using the keyboard to navigate, pressing enter will load the selected record in the view page.
  2. Use the scroll bar or the up/down arrow keys to navigate up and down the displayed records.
  3. Click on the + “plus” sign beside a description with children to expand or collapse all the children titles. If navigating with the keyboard, the right arrow can be used. Click on the - “minus” sign to collapse the child records again, or use the left arrow key.
  4. Click and drag the bottom bar of the treeview viewing area to expand it

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Authority records

Context menu shown for authority record

The context menu for an authority record includes the following elements:

  1. Archival descriptions which the person or organization is the subject of.
  2. Archival descriptions which the person or organization is the creator of.

Note

When a relationship is created between two authority records or between an authority record and a function, the relationship is expressed in the body (i.e. the main part or center column) of the authority record’s view page, in the “Relationships” area of the record.

Subject and Place browse pages

Subject and Place terms can be used in AtoM as access points, and then browsed to explore the archival descriptions and/or authority records to which they are linked. For more information, see: Browse subjects and places.

Context menu shown for term browse

When a term has been selected from the Subject or Places browse page, the user is redirected to a term browse page, listing descriptions and authorities related to that term as an access point. The context menu on this term browse page appears on both the left and right-hand sides, and includes the following elements:

  1. A terms treeview on the left side of the page, with a list view and a term search included in separate tabs. The terms treeview is discussed in greater detail below: Terms treeview. For further information on searching for terms, see: Searching for terms.
  2. Below the treeview, addtional facet filters that can be applied to the browse results are listed, if relevant. For more information on using facet filters in AtoM, see: Facet filters.
  3. On the right side of the page, additional contextual information is provided. This includes:
    • A count of the currently selected entity type results that have been linked to the term. AtoM will only display related results for one entity type at a time - you can use the results tabs at the top of the view page to switch between archival description and authority record result lists. The count shown in the right context menu is specific to the currently selected entity type - in the screenshot above for example, it is showing a count of related descriptions, and not a total of all results across entity types.
    • If the current term is part of a hierarchy, a link to the parent record is included under the heading Broader term.
    • If the current term has children in the taxonomy, a count of child terms nested under the current selection is listed under the heading No. narrower terms.
    • SKOS import and export links are also provided in the right-hand context menu. For more information, see: Import and export terms with SKOS.

Terms treeview

The treeview is a contextual and navigation element located in the context menu for archival descriptions, places, and subjects. It serves the dual purpose of showing a record or term’s relationships to other records or terms in a hierarchy, as well as serving as a navigational tool.

Treeview tabs available on a subject or place term browse page

The terms treeview, used on the browse page for a specific subject or place term, includes three tabs - the default treeview tab, which displays the record in the context of its hierarchical organization; the list tab, which displays terms of all levels ordered alphabetically, and the search tab. Each is described in greater detail below.

Treeview tab

The treeview tab is the default view for the terms treeview. It shows the terms belonging to the current taxonomy (e.g. subjects or places) in hierarchical context, and allows to the user to browse these hierarchies by clicking on different nodes or titles in the treeview.

To navigate using the terms treeview, users can do the following:

  1. Click on a different term title to see that term’s description, and any archival descriptions that have been linked to it as an access point. When a new term is clicked, the main term browse view page will reload to display the selected term, which will now be highlighted in the treeview.
  2. When a term has children (e.g. narrower terms that are nested beneath it in the taxonomy), a caret “caret” icon appears next to the term in the treeview. Click on the caret “caret” beside a term with children to expand or collapse all the children titles.
  3. The treeview will only load a certain amount of records at a time. In large taxonomy with many terms, ellipses ( … ) may sometimes appear, indicating that there are more records available. Click on the ellipses to expand more term descriptions not currently in view.

See also the instructions on using the archival description treeview, above for further details - the main actions are the same in both treeviews.

This main view of the treeview is also used when browsing terms in a taxonomy. See below for more information: Results pages.

List tab

The list tab allows users to browse all terms in the current taxonomy (e.g. subjects, or places), regardless of where they are positioned hierarchically. In a taxonomy where many terms are nested as narrower terms, it can be difficult to get a sense of all the terms available in the treeview tab or the main taxonomy browse pages. A total count of terms is included at bottom of the page. If there are more than 10 terms, “Next” and “Previous” buttons are included to navigate between pages.

Search tab

The search tab in the terms treeview operates the same as the dedicated search for terms included in the terms browse page. Users can click the gear icon to limit the search to the preferred term label (e.g. the authorized form of name), ‘Use for’ labels (e.g. non-preferred, alternate forms of name), or both. The default setting is to search both.

For more information on using the dedicated term search box, see: Search for Terms.

Archival institutions

Context menu shown for institution record

The context menu for an archival institution includes the following elements:

  1. The name/logo of the institution.
  2. A list of the first 10 alphabetically listed holdings at the fonds or collection level of description of the institution, with a link to the complete holdings.
  3. The primary contact information for the institution, including buttons that link to the institution’s website and email. The contact information is drawn from the information added to the “Contact” area of the archival institution record.

Results pages

When a user searches for information objects, the context menu consists of facet filters which allow the user to narrow down their search results.

Context menu shown for information object search results.

For more information on working with facet filters in AtoM, see: Facet filters.

When a user searches for a term which is organized hierarchically in a taxonomy the context menu will include a treeview of that taxonomy.

Context menu shown for term search with treeview

Place and Subject term browse pages have additional features available in tabs in the treeview provided in the context menu. For more information, see above, Terms treeview.

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