Feature: Ability to search all items across all exhibits

[VanessaVenti]

Problem being solved

In the current Spotlight implementation, item-level search is scoped to individual exhibits. Users cannot search across all items in all exhibits, which limits discovery of relevant content and makes it harder to explore the full breadth of materials.

Several institutions—including NLM, Princeton, and Stanford—have expressed interest in or implemented cross-exhibit item search. This functionality improves access, especially for users looking for a specific topic, object, or person that might appear in multiple exhibits.

NLM has also requested the ability to limit search to one or more selected exhibits, rather than being restricted to a global search or single exhibit view.

Feature details

Implement a search interface that allows users to:

• Search all items across all exhibits from a central search bar or landing page
• View item-level results regardless of the exhibit they belong to
• Optionally limit the search scope to one or more selected exhibits using a dropdown, filter, or advanced search UI
  • Include support for full-text search of OCR content, where available

Stanford’s implementation includes a pulldown menu for searching either exhibit titles or items, and supports full-text search within OCR’d content. See: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/ and Stanford Jarndyce Test Exhibit (OCR demo) See also Princeton's example

Acceptance criteria

• Users can perform a global item search across all exhibits
• Search results display individual items with links to their exhibit context
• Users can optionally limit the scope of search to:
  • A specific exhibit
  • Multiple exhibits (multi-select or filter interface)
• System supports indexing and searching OCR’d full-text content (where present)
• Exhibit-level and item-level search scopes are clearly distinguishable in the UI
• Newly added items are indexed and included in global search automatically
• Search respects exhibit-level access controls (e.g., non-public items or exhibits should not be surfaced)