msDesc/additional should always display last

[holfordm]

The additional element, as a child of msDesc, contains bibliographical and administrative information relating to the record as a whole, including any msPart elements. The default display of this information in document order, before any msPart elements, is potentially confusing. Displaying this information at the end of the record will provide an improved user experience and have the incidental benefit of making it easier to use mspart to describe endleaves.

[andrew-morrison]

I've made a change so that:

• Anything within msDesc/additional is displayed after the last msPart.
• If there are msPart elements, a subheading of "Additional Information" is added, in the same size font as the subheadings for each part, to indicate that what follows is not about the last part.
• msPart/additional are left as-is.

I've re-indexed Medieval QA to provide some examples:

Old	New	Notes
MS. Canon. Liturg. 205	MS. Canon. Liturg. 205	Simple, no parts, therefore no difference
Jesus College MS. 29	Jesus College MS. 29	Simple, short, 2 parts
MS. Ashmole 244	MS. Ashmole 244	Longer, 8 parts
MS. Digby 76	MS. Digby 76	3 parts, the last of which has its own additional
MS. Barocci 156	MS. Barocci 156	Flyleaves

As additional is always last except when there are msPart, testing in other catalogues produces little or no difference. In Fihrist, only 24 records are affected. So if this looks OK for Medieval, I'll send Mohammad an example (I can't re-index the production Fihirst web site currently, because they've got duplicate manuscript IDs.)

[holfordm]

This all looks good for medieval

[andrew-morrison]

Just a thought: Would it be preferable for the "Digital Images" section, i.e. surrogates, to be pulled out of the rest of additional and displayed at the top (say after any SC or other alternative identifiers)?

[holfordm]

I don't think so, but it does raise the question of navigating long and complex entries 9which I don't really have an answer to: I don't really like how the Hebrew catalogue handles this (e.g. https://hebrew.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/volume_14) but maybe a stripped down version of that with just the part numbers?

[andrew-morrison]

There are always edge cases. Like MS. Lat. misc. a. 3, which has 87 parts. Or MS. Bodl. 572 with parts within parts containing works with sub-works.

One thing that could handle any size or complexity of description, without taking up a lot of space and cluttering the layout, would a drop-down, maybe in the top-right corner. It would jump to whatever part (or other major section?) you choose, using JavaScript. Here's a mockup:

But I'm not sure how usable or accessible that would be.

[holfordm]

Andrew - would you be able to implement this drop down on QA so we can test it? We've got an increasing number of longer and more complex records, and I think it could be really helpful in those cases. Thanks!