help us improve the catalog/browse functions

LeonMire · Post by **LeonMire** » April 16th, 2008, 4:06 pm

I think it looks really good. And I prefer the one with the genre sidebar. I have a feeling that a lot of first time visitors are going to see that page, glance at the sidebar, and see something they like. "Oh wow, they have fairy tales!" or something like that.

I don't think it'll look cluttering, myself. That is, if the search results are in one long page. If you click on "Browse by Author: G" and that brings up all the G authors in one page, the sidebar will only take up a little space at the top.

Also, Cori: What do you mean about the genres needing to be updated?

Shurtagal · Post by **Shurtagal** » April 16th, 2008, 4:07 pm

I like the genres sidebar.

I don't know if length is indexed but being able to search by length of recording would be nice. Also clarifying between Colab projects and Solo projects on the search page. I like the idea of single search box that goes through language, category, title, author, etc., but it would be good to preserve the ability to delineate, as in searching for books in French not books about France, books read by Smokestack Jones not books about Smokestacks. I would not put the genre stuff in a drop down mainly because I think it would be less obvious and less used, also where it is now balances the page nicely. also yes, putting the number of books in each genre next to the genre name would be nice. including text descriptions would be good. yes grouping works together would be nice for series books, (Anne of --, Aesop's Fables, Shakespeare Monologues) but not for things like short story/poetry collections b/c of the wide variety of their contents. and yes searching by reader should return things in compilations.

I think that that is all. (for now)

P.S. I'm assuming that the search screen won't make every title start with "g" when searching for G's right? (e.g. Jack and Jill = Gack and Jill, Stops, or how to punc. = Gtops or how to punc., Jewish Children = Gewish Children )

Post by **hugh** » April 16th, 2008, 4:27 pm

P.S. I'm assuming that the search screen won't make every title start with "g" when searching for G's right? (e.g. Jack and Jill = Gack and Jill, Stops, or how to punc. = Gtops or how to punc., Jewish Children = Gewish Children )

actually a marketing company has advised us to try to differentiate ourselves from other audio projects, & since the works are all public domain, we can call them whatever we want. so we're planning to rename all opur books starting with ONE letter only. so the main thing we have to do is figure out what letter we want all our books to begin with. obviously my preference is "G" but i'm open to other options (Q, U and T have all been suggested, but others might have benefits too). thoughts?

Post by **hugh** » April 16th, 2008, 4:29 pm

i guess i should add a

... just in case.

Shurtagal · Post by **Shurtagal** » April 16th, 2008, 4:31 pm

ooh, what a great idea! I would suggest 'X', it would give us such individuality. And this eliminates the need for a browse by title feature. Very niiice.

lol JK

musicmaiden · Post by **musicmaiden** » April 16th, 2008, 5:13 pm

hugh wrote:
P.S. I'm assuming that the search screen won't make every title start with "g" when searching for G's right? (e.g. Jack and Jill = Gack and Jill, Stops, or how to punc. = Gtops or how to punc., Jewish Children = Gewish Children )
actually a marketing company has advised us to try to differentiate ourselves from other audio projects, & since the works are all public domain, we can call them whatever we want. so we're planning to rename all opur books starting with ONE letter only. so the main thing we have to do is figure out what letter we want all our books to begin with. obviously my preference is "G" but i'm open to other options (Q, U and T have all been suggested, but others might have benefits too). thoughts?

Definately not! I can't believe you'd consider such a thing! Especially naming them all beginning with 'G'! This has got to be the most ridiculous . . .
Oh wait.
Just saw the

Returning to normal: I prefer different search boxes for title and author, or maybe one search box with a drop-down list so you can choose what you're searching for: search through everything, title, author, genre, length, reader, whatever else you're putting in there.
It would be nice to note if it's a solo or a collab. I would like to be able to see a list of short stories all on one page, without having to browse through the 25 volumes we're up to now. Length would be nice, but I think it might complicate rather than simplify. How would you tell if you were searching for the length of a whole project, or just the length of a short story? Another idea would be to make it so that you could sort the catalog by author or by title. And please keep the search by reader function.

Question: What's the advanced search going to be like?

PaulW · Post by **PaulW** » April 16th, 2008, 5:16 pm

lezer wrote:Or maybe the Genre list could be a drop down menu, so it's less cluttering?

Or maybe a "Browse by Genre" section underneath "Browse by language"...and I've noticed that there's not a "Folklore" genre in our current genre listing (at least there wasn't a couple of days ago when I looked last).

Post by **hugh** » April 16th, 2008, 5:18 pm

the advanced search will be much like it is now:
http://librivox.org/newcatalog/visitor_advanced.php

bublsort · Post by **bublsort** » April 16th, 2008, 6:40 pm

Shurtagal wrote:I don't know if length is indexed but being able to search by length of recording would be nice. Also clarifying between Colab projects and Solo projects on the search page.

I would really like both of these things, and also it would be awesome to have a "people who searched for this also looked at this" type of feature, something that reflects how people associate recordings. even better if it were to do with recommendations and not just search results, but that's a whole other thing I guess. anyway i always find that very useful, on amazon or whatever.

erin

p.s. i suck at design but i would be willing to help code. i do databases and all that kind of thing.

bublsort · Post by **bublsort** » April 16th, 2008, 6:42 pm

also, if someone would like to send me the logs I would be quite interested and happy to do some analysis on them.

Kaffen · Post by **Kaffen** » April 17th, 2008, 6:33 am

I think that we might want to segregate finished titles more completely from works in progress. For people wishing only to locate and download an interesting title, our mass of activity on the way to published volumes may not be useful and may only represent clutter.

An option to display "upcoming works" would pull up works in progress. Thinking of which - since we have titles that are two years old and still incomplete, adding a start date - the date of the original forum thread - may give a sense of whether the title will *ever* complete.

Post by **hugh** » April 17th, 2008, 6:35 am

hey mark, that was my initial thought too, but someone pointed out - rightly i think - that showing the "in progress" projects really shows listeners what the project is all about - probably a(n) (in)valuable recruitment tool?

PaulW · Post by **PaulW** » April 17th, 2008, 10:19 am

hugh wrote:hey mark, that was my initial thought too, but someone pointed out - rightly i think - that showing the "in progress" projects really shows listeners what the project is all about - probably a(n) (in)valuable recruitment tool?

I like the way the current seach separates "Completed projects" with "In Progress"...maybe we could add the stage the in progress projects are in, i.e., Readers Wanted, Readers Found, Proog Listening, etc. That way, searchers would have more of an idea of how soon the project might be finished.

tis · Post by **tis** » April 21st, 2008, 4:31 am

hugh wrote:
P.S. I'm assuming that the search screen won't make every title start with "g" when searching for G's right? (e.g. Jack and Jill = Gack and Jill, Stops, or how to punc. = Gtops or how to punc., Jewish Children = Gewish Children )
actually a marketing company has advised us to try to differentiate ourselves from other audio projects, & since the works are all public domain, we can call them whatever we want. so we're planning to rename all opur books starting with ONE letter only. so the main thing we have to do is figure out what letter we want all our books to begin with. obviously my preference is "G" but i'm open to other options (Q, U and T have all been suggested, but others might have benefits too). thoughts?

Surely the prefix XXX would get us a whole load more google hits?

tis · Post by **tis** » April 21st, 2008, 4:37 am

Shurtagal wrote:I don't know if length is indexed but being able to search by length of recording would be nice.

It isn't indexed at present, but it's not impossible that it will be as part of some other work we're looking at. So don't give up hope on this one!