Linked data-style entities?

[timalamenciak]

Hi there! Is it possible to have a metadata field consist of named entities, such that à page could be created for those entities with additional properties?

For instance, "Tim Alamenciak" could have a page with additional metadata like my ORCID, affiliation, other items in the collection, etc.

[evanwill]

@timalamenciak yeah, it is possible with some customization. We have a number of collections that use what we call a "glossary" approach (for lack of a better term), where there is the main Item metadata csv (each row generates an Item page), and an additional glossary csv (each row generates a glossary term page). We tweak the metadata display on the Item page to add links to the related Glossary pages.

For example, in HJCCC the main Item metadata generates the Browse and Item pages, and a separate csv generates the Glossary page and glossary term pages. On the Item pages, for the metadata that relate to a glossary term, the term links to the glossary term page.
e.g. this Item, https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/hjccc/data/hjccc-30.html under Material we have a link to the "Hanjiki (half porcelain)" term page, https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/hjccc/glossary/hanjiki-half-porcelain.html
the Hanjiki page displays a definition and thumbnails from all related Items that use the term.

The links between the two are created by using keys that match between the two spreadsheets. Using Liquid you can look up the information in the other spreadsheet to pull it into the page being generated. You can use the multiple csvs in "_data" kind of like a database with linked keys. And by tweaking the page_gen settings in _config.yml you can generate pages from multiple csvs.

[evanwill]

For example, you might have "publications.csv" (with columns objectid,title,date,authorid) and "authors.csv" (with columns objectid,title,affiliation).

To generate both publication Item pages and author pages, you would modify "_config.yml" adding something like:

page_gen:
  - data: 'publications'
  - data: 'authors'
     template: 'author'
     name: 'objectid'
     dir: 'authors'

Then in the "_layouts/item/" you would create custom layouts for the publications and authors.
In the publication layout, you can use the authorid to look up the author information from the other spreadsheet, something like:

{% assign authors = page.authorid | split: ';' %}
{% for a in authors %}
{% assign author = site.data.authors | where: 'objectid', a | first %}
<a href="{{ '/authors/' | relative_url }}{{ author.objectid }}.html">{{ author.title }}</a>
{% endfor %}

In the author page layout, you can link back to related publications doing the opposite, something like:

{% assign related_pubs = site.data.publications | where_exp: 'pub', 'pub.authorid contains page.objectid' %}
{% for p in related_pubs %}
<a href="{{ '/items/' | relative_url }}{{ p.objectid }}.html">{{ p.title }}, {{ p.date }}</a>
{% endfor %}

[timalamenciak]

Thanks, Evan! This is perfect.