need an option to navigate directly to ETDs

Posted over 5 years ago by Allegra Swift

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Allegra Swift

I sent in a request: Protocol for UCSD ETD unit - Ticket ID: 43836

Currently the only way to locate UCSD theses and dissertations is to search for “dissertation” and then follow the breadcrumbs in a record to https://escholarship.org/uc/ucsd_etd

Could we set up a unit for https://escholarship.org/uc/ucsd_etd so that users can navigate from here https://escholarship.org/ucsd/units?

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Allegra Swift posted over 5 years ago

it would be great to have the visibility when looking at the site, just to understand that it exists
also to have the link prominent if there is a need to link to or show off that is readily visible
and it would also be nice to search on individual authors and get only stuff authored by them (ie: weed out the dissertations they mentored). I think this is another ticket though...

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Allegra Swift posted over 5 years ago

I have another suggestion, could we have a designation added to the campus carousel (see red arrow below)

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Justin Gonder posted over 5 years ago Admin

Hi Allegra,

Browsable targets for campus ETD series, as well as campus Previously Published Works (aka PPW or postprint) series were removed from campus templates based on user feedback as part of the eScholarship 5 redesign. Because these collections contain many thousands of items and no organizational facets or hierarchy, user feedback suggested that they were not useful browse interfaces and that over 90% of readers accessed the items by searching.

The good news is that the same release also introduced a lot of flexibility, and you can easily restore links to the above series in one of two places: as a link in the Nav bar (which I see has already been done for UCSD) or by building a new "text box" sidebar widget. More information about how to do both can be found in the article: Using the Site Configuration Tool.

If you have other ideas for how we might improve discoverability of ETDs in eScholarship, let us know. Since ETDs are a type of content rather than a "unit" adding a link on the Academic Units page doesn't seem like the right fit, but perhaps we could have a sidebar widget on that page that surfaces these collections, or add an 'ETD' item to the stats carousel on campus homepages?

-justin

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