Overview
This refines the use cases with a focus on user stories for each use case.
See also: Initial Use Case Definitions - Search API Best Practices for Authoritative Data Working Group
Required will be marked as...
- MUST HAVE - The system is unusable without the feature represented in the user story.
- IMPORTANT - The feature will be heavily used and the lack of this feature reduces the usefulness of the system.
- WOULD LIKE - This feature is desired and will make the system more usable and useful.
- OPTIONAL - This feature is optional. The system can continue to work well without it. May want to be able to turn it off.
Use Case: User wants to find the URI of an external entity from within a metadata editor
| Required? | User Story |
|---|---|
| Catalogers | |
| NOTE: The following user stories are related to creating or editing resource descriptions typically within a metadata editor or similar application. | |
| MUST HAVE | As a cataloger, I want to edit an entity (e.g. work, instance, etc.) and add a link to an external URI from an external authoritative sources (e.g. LCNAF, OCLC FAST, etc.). |
| MUST HAVE | As a cataloger, I want to edit an entity (e.g. work, instance, etc.) and display a label from an external authoritative sources (e.g. LCNAF, OCLC FAST, etc.). |
| MUST HAVE | As a cataloger, I want to be able to enter the exact external authoritative label and get the URI from the external authority linked to the entity being edited. This applies when there is a unique authoritative term. |
| MUST HAVE | As a cataloger, I want to start typing a known external authoritative label and get the URI from the external authority linked to the entity being edited. This is left anchored type-ahead. |
| MUST HAVE | As a cataloger, I want to start typing a known variant external authoritative label and get the URI of the authoritative label linked to the entity being edited. |
| MUST HAVE | As a cataloger, I want additional information in the search that indicates that the term listed has a variant that matches the keyword typed. |
| MUST HAVE | As a cataloger, I want to type in the alternate identifier (e.g. Q label in wikidata, ISNI label, organization code etc.) and get the URI for those entities. |
| OPTIONAL | As a cataloger, I want to be able to search for a broader term in a hierarchy and get a list of narrower terms from which to select. NOTE: Some systems have seen performance issues in actual implementations. Catalogers generally know what they are looking for. |
| OPTIONAL | As a cataloger, I want to be able to see broader and narrower terms when the authority is hierarchical. |
| OPTIONAL | As a cataloger, I want to be able to step into broader or narrower terms when the authority is hierarchical. |
| As a cataloger, when I am unable to find what I'm looking for in an authority lookup, I want to be able to search an authority source in an external site by clicking on a link to its native search UI. | |
| As a cataloger, I know some keywords, other attributes related to the entity that are not in the primary or variant label (e.g. occupation, resource type, etc.), that will help me locate and select an authoritative entity. | |
As a cataloger, I want search results to contain highly relevant terms for my keyword search based on standard indexing approaches. Actual relevancy is subjective. | |
| As a cataloger, I want transparency in the approach for indexing to be clear. (e.g. exact match on primary label, stemming, which fields are searched, etc.) May vary between authorities. | |
| As a cataloger, I want search results listed in rank order as determined by standard indexing approaches. | |
| As a cataloger, I want to choose how search results are returned (e.g. left anchored, keyword indexing rank, or as yet unknown approach) | |
| As a cataloger, I want to see, for each entity that appears in results of my keyword search, which of the fields that were searched triggered its inclusion in those results. (e.g. keyword was in the variant label, occupation, or descriptions instead of the primary label) | |
| As a cataloger, I want to see contextual information (e.g. variant labels, occupation, birth date, etc.) about the search results that distinguishes it from other, similar-looking results, to help me to select the correct authoritative entity and to recognize false positives. The context may be drawn from authoritative entities and real world object entities based on what is available in the authoritative data. | |
| As a cataloger, I want to be able to filter search results to a specific date range for a field on the authoritative entity (e.g. birth date, death date, floruit, etc.). | |
| As a cataloger, I want to be able to filter search results to a specific class type (e.g. a corporate name, person name, meeting name, etc.; manifestation, item, expression, etc.). | |
| As a cataloger, I want to be able to filter search results to the language of the resource (e.g. The book is written in Greek and I want to see the information displayed in Greek.) The user types in Greek and expects to find the Greek version of the title. May type non-Greek, but still want to have access to the Greek terms. This is complex and may need UI mockups that capture potential cases. Part of the results for this may be described by identifying which field triggered the results. May be good to have a UI widget that allows for filtering after the results are returned. May need User Studies to determine how best to do this. Want to lookup in a language I know but need to include a label in a language I do not know well. While cataloging works, the work may be in another language and need to be sure I've cataloged the one in the correct language. It would be good to collaborate with non-roman script working group to see what their use case is for this. For LOC, if the user searches in Greek, they will get Greek results back. Nearly all subject headings, names, lookups in general, they are all in English. The suggest search does not search variant labels. This can limit results that are returned. | |
| As a cataloger, I want to type in a keyword in French, the authority only searches values in French, and get results back in French. This may impact stop words and other indexing implementations. | |
| As a cataloger, I want to see search results in my preferred language generally set through browser's preferred language settings, application settings, or passed as a parameter (e.g. I speak German and want to see results in my native language.) This is dependent on the authority having data in that language. | |
| As a cataloger, I want to be able to filter on specific fields in the search results (e.g. occupation, resource format, agent, etc.) This is a filter of results after they are returned similar to a facet. | |
| As a cataloger, I want to be able to specify in the search limiting results to a keyword in a particular field (e.g. an advanced search that passes in 'occupation includes humorist'). | |
| As a cataloger, I want search results to be returned quickly, so that I can catalog efficiently, generally seen as sub-second results or some indicator that a longer search is being processed. | |
As a cataloger, I want to be able to request additional search results if what I am looking for isn't visible in the current set of results displayed, e.g. I didn't get it in the first 10, so give me 10 more results (aka pagination). | |
As a cataloger, I want to determine whether the entity I'm searching for doesn't exist in the authoritative source that I'm searching. Perhaps stating No Result Found indicating the search completed and there were no results, or No Exact Match Found when this was an exact match? Christine Fernsebner Eslao Can you confirm this is an adequate description? It may not be possible to definitively state that the entity doesn't exist. May need to redirect to the source authority to do a search there to confirm whether or not the desired entity exists. | |
| Developers | |
| As a developer, I want one field in the authoritative entity to be a human readable, meaningful representation of the entity that can be displayed to users to identify the entity for selection. The challenge here may be the difference between an authoritative source and an identity management system. For example, ISNI does not provide a display label. The question is who is responsible for creating a meaningful label. | |
| As a developer, I want to receive a permanent URI for each entity to uniquely identify the entity. | |
| As a developer, I want to provide a widget that enables a cataloger to select an entity from an authoritative source using left anchored autocomplete. | |
| As a developer, I want to provide a widget that enables a cataloger to type in keywords and see a list of entities sorted in rank order. | |
| As a developer, I want to provide additional information about entities to improve the accuracy of selection. | |
| As a developer, I want to quickly show search results to users (e.g. sub-second, specific threshold TBD) | |
| As a developer, I want to receive pagination information with search results, such that, I can request the next page of results. | |
| As a developer, I want data to be returned as linked data allowing for configurations that map ontologies to a normalized json format. | |
| As a developer, I want data to be returned in the same format from all authorities (e.g. normalized json, json-ld, or something else) | |
| As a developer, I want to be able to fulfill all search requests. (e.g. source authorities respond to all requests with excellent uptime) | |
| As a developer, I want to update cached labels and URIs as changes are made to the authoritative source data. | |
| As a developer, I want to receive search results with a filter applied. (e.g. date range, class type, language, arbitrary field) | |
| Providers | |
| As a provider, I want my data to be used. | |
| As a provider, I want my data to be used accurately. | |
| As a provider, I want to support the creation of application widgets that provide access to our data. | |
| As a provider, I want our API(s) to be performant (e.g. sub-second queries, specific threshold TBD) | |
| As a provider, I want access to our data to be available 24-7 with occasional outages for maintenance that will be announced in advance. | |
| As a provider, I want to provide data for download facilitating local caching. | |
| As a provider, I want to keep download files up to date. Need to define and publish expectations of reasonably up to date: quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily | |
| As a provider, I want to be able to provide partial downloads with only modifications since last download update. | |
| As a provider, I want to provide notifications of changes to data (e.g. new, deleted, deprecated, moved, split, and merged entities) | |
Cache of entire or significant portion of dataset with updates via retrieve a known concept using a consistent format across datasets
Update cached data
| Required? | User Story |
|---|---|
| Catalogers | |
| As a cataloger, I want to be able to search across multiple authorities. | |
| As a cataloger, I want the display of data in the editing app to follow a consistent and predictable format. | |
| Developers | |
| As an application developer, I want a reliable source of data, such that, I am able to fulfill all search requests. | |
| As a cache developer, I want to store all or significant portion of authoritative data locally. | |
| As a developer, I want to control how data is searched. | |
| As a developer, I want to control what data is returned to and displayed in the end user application (e.g. extended context). | |
| As a developer, I want to control the format of data the editing application receives for the selection widget. | |
| As a cache developer, I want to update cached data as changes are made to the authoritative source data. | |
| Producers | |
| As a producer, I want to make my data available for download. | |
| As a producer, I want consumers of my data to use the most up to date version of the data. | |
| As a producer, I want to provide a change management API that provides information on changes to terms in the dataset (e.g. new, deleted, changed, deprecated, moved, split, merged, etc.). | |
Common External Search Format/Ontology
| Required? | User Story |
|---|---|
| Catalogers | |
| As a cataloger, I want to know that data drawn from multiple authorities have the same meaning. | |
| Developers | |
| As a developer, I want to use the same code to process data coming from multiple authorities. | |
| As a developer, I want to support searching across multiple authorities. | |
| Producers | |
As a producer, I want data alignment between authorities. | |
| As a producer, I want to have an internal representation of my data that may be different from other authority providers. | |
| As a producer, I want to provide a mapping of my data to a community supported search ontology. | |
Auto-fill Batch processing
| Required? | User Story |
|---|---|
| Catalogers | |
| As a cataloger, I want auto-reconciliation processes to run that identify 'same-as' type relationships from other authorities. | |
| Developers | |
| As a developer, I want to run auto-batch processes once data has been entered. | |
| Producers | |
| As a producer, I want to support auto-reconciliation. | |
Manual Batch processing
| Required? | User Story |
|---|---|
| Catalogers | |
| As a cataloger, I want to load data in a reconciliation program (e.g. open refine) and apply changes across multiple entities (e.g. works, instances, etc.) | |
| As a cataloger, I want to be able to filter potential choices by date range. | |
| Developers | |
| Producers | |
| As a producer, I want to support an API that allows my data to work with popular reconciliation programs (e.g. open refine) | |
