[RangelandsWest] Rangelands West / Global Rangelands Tech Update

[Pfander, Jeanne]

Tech Updates! The Arizona team will be sending out periodic "Tech Updates" to keep the Partnership informed about changes in the Global Rangelands / Rangelands West technical infrastructure. At the annual meeting in Alaska, the Arizona team received feedback from members on the priorities for Phase II developments. Here is our first progress report!



Completed Phase II Items:

*         Since meeting in May 2013, we've improved the user interface so when searching from a State template, the search results page has the same template as the State homepage. Prior to this, the search result page looked like Global Rangelands page template. This also has been addressed on the Rangelands West search results page.



Example: The following screen shot shows search results from an Arizona Rangelands site search. The page matches the theme of the overall Arizona site.



[cid:image003.jpg at 01CE7FC5.250B1050]


*         The Rangelands West search results page now includes results from Journal of Range Management and Rangelands journals.

*         We've also added Search boxes to each collection's listing of resources. This can be found on the "Collections" menu item.

Coming Up! More Phase II Developments in Progress:


*         Advanced Searching: Advanced searching will allow the user to specify criteria such as Keyword, Author, Title, Journal Source, etc. and narrow the results to specific years and document types. The advanced search will complement the faceted search that currently exists on the website.


*         Faceted Browsing: Faceted Browsing will allow a user to browse content at a generalized level without first having to provide a search term. For example, Faceted Browsing would allow users to "See all conference proceedings".


*         Browse All Authors Alphabetically: Allow users the ability to browse Author by last name.


*         Print Friendly Pages: Provide a print friendly button that formats the content of the web page to match an 8.5x11 page paper.


*         State Template Improvements: States have requested the ability to add more "slides" to the front page rotating slideshow. We plan to increase this number. We also plan to add a dynamic secondary page that allows users to see all future upcoming events.


*         Streamlined Data Harvesting: We'll improve the back-end mechanism and workflow for importing data so that when new data becomes available on partners' repositories, it becomes searchable through Global Rangelands more quickly.

We'll be working on these new features and improvements this summer and into early Fall. Looking forward, we plan to tackle larger tasks such as designing a mobile-friendly version of the website, providing search widgets, creating a tagging box that allows State admins to quickly tag resources to a State, and upgrading the site's back-end to Drupal 8.

Feel free to provide feedback or suggestions on this report to the Arizona team: Barb, Sheila, Jeanne, Matt, Kelly!
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