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Indexing metadata

Newly created fields are automatically indexed and available for searching, however there may be times that it isn't desirable to index a field, such as for large text fields where searching for a word or term within them slows down your search.

IMPORTANT - changes to indexing: ResourceSpace indexing of text fields will be limited to the first 500 characters of text by default.

  • This limit is applied to each translated string entered
  • Searches for text in long text fields e.g. extracted text from PDF can still be performed from the Advanced search page but will utilise the built in database indexing capabilities. When using this, common words (words that appear in more than 50% of resources) will not be indexed.
  • This change is being made to enable ResourceSpace to quickly search resource metadata, rather than the full file contents. Indexing the text from large files often results in the indexes becoming bloated and polluted with irrelevant information, thus slowing down and reducing the quality of search results.
  • This value can be changed by editing the configuration option $node_keyword_index_chars. This should only be changed with the understanding that, as described above, search performance is likely to be impacted, search results reduced in quality and the keyword index bloated.

You can choose which fields are indexed for searching within the metadata field edit page by checking or unchecking the "index this field" option.

If the field was previously not set to be indexed you will need to select "index" and save, then "re-index" the field using the "reindex this field" link in the text box below the index option.

Additional settings:

  • Partial indexing - Allows searching and matching algorithms to check only parts of this field. This doesn't always work well with long detailed words as they may be part recognised to produce several words from a single word.
  • Display field - Determines if a field is visible on the resource view page, if not displayed it can still be used for searching.
  • Enable advanced search - Allows this field to be shown on the advanced search page
  • Enable simple search - Allows this field to be shown on the Simple Search panel, for fast access searching.
  • Use for find similar - Means the field is available to help users find similar resources. Options in this field with which the current resource is tagged will display at the bottom of the resource view page as a prompt to find other resources with shared metadata.

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