Hello,
I would like to suggest a possible improvement for the indexing workflow in Dédalo, especially for projects involving oral history interviews or other long audiovisual/textual records.
During the indexing of an interview, it is very common to use the same thesaurus terms or descriptors in several different fragments of the same interview. For example, once a term has been identified and selected for one fragment, it may need to be applied again later to other fragments where the same subject appears.
At the moment, each time the same term needs to be reused, the user has to search for it again using the filter/search function in the thesaurus field. This works, but in long interviews it becomes repetitive and slows down the indexing process. It can also increase the risk of selecting a similar but not identical term by mistake, especially when the thesaurus contains closely related terms.
For this reason, I think it would be very useful to have a functionality that allows the user to pin selected thesaurus terms temporarily during the indexing process.
The idea would not be to automate the indexing or to suggest terms automatically. The aim would simply be to make it easier for the indexer to reuse terms that they have already selected manually and consciously.
Proposed functionality
The functionality could be called, for example:
Pinned terms or Pinned descriptors or Quick access terms
The basic idea would be as follows:
When the user searches for and selects a thesaurus term during the indexing of an interview, there could be an option to pin that term. Once pinned, the term would remain visible in a small panel, list, or dropdown within the indexing interface.
When the user moves to another fragment of the same interview, they could apply one of the pinned terms directly, without having to search for it again in the thesaurus field.
Each pinned term should still refer to the existing thesaurus term, with its proper identifier. The functionality should not create new terms, duplicate terms, or modify the thesaurus in any way. It would simply provide quick access to already existing terms.
Suggested behaviour
A simple version of the functionality could include the following behaviour:
- When a thesaurus term is selected, the user can click an option such as “Pin term” or “Add to pinned terms”.
- The pinned term appears in a visible list or panel within the indexing interface.
- When the user is indexing another fragment, they can click on a pinned term to apply it to the current fragment.
- The user can remove individual terms from the pinned list when they are no longer needed.
- The user can clear the whole list at any time.
- The pinned list could be temporary and limited to the current interview or indexing session.
- Ideally, each pinned term should display enough information to avoid confusion, for example:
- preferred label;
- term identifier;
- language, if relevant;
- thesaurus branch or hierarchy, if useful.
This would be especially important in cases where different terms have similar names.
Possible scope of the pinned terms
There are several possible ways to define the scope of this functionality. The most useful and safest option, in my opinion, would be:
Pinned terms per user and per interview.
This means that each user could have their own list of pinned terms while working on a specific interview. The list would not affect other users and would not modify the thesaurus or the interview metadata by itself.
There could also be different possible behaviours to consider:
- pinned terms remain available only during the current session;
- pinned terms remain available when the user reopens the same interview;
- pinned terms can be manually cleared by the user;
- pinned terms are not copied automatically to other interviews unless the user chooses to do so.
As a first implementation, a temporary list per interview and per user would probably be enough.
Why this would be useful
This improvement would have several advantages:
- It would reduce repetitive searches during the indexing of long interviews.
- It would make the indexing process faster and more fluid.
- It would help maintain internal consistency within the same interview.
- It would reduce the risk of accidentally selecting a similar but different term.
- It would make the interface more comfortable for manual indexers.
- It would support controlled vocabulary work without replacing human judgement.
- It would be especially useful in oral history projects, where the same topics often reappear throughout different moments of an interview.
In oral history interviews, themes are rarely concentrated in a single fragment. The same topic may appear at the beginning, disappear for a while, and then return later in a different context. For this reason, indexers often need to reuse the same descriptors several times across the same record.
Having a small set of pinned terms available during the indexing process would make this work more efficient while preserving the documentary criteria of the person doing the indexing.
Important clarification
This proposal is not about automatic indexing, artificial intelligence, or automatic term recommendation.
The user would still decide:
- which terms are relevant;
- when a term should be applied;
- to which fragment it should be applied;
- whether a pinned term is still useful or should be removed.
The functionality would simply provide a temporary working tool to facilitate the reuse of selected thesaurus terms during manual indexing.
Possible minimal implementation
A minimal viable version could be:
- a “Pin” icon or button next to a selected thesaurus term;
- a “Pinned terms” panel in the indexing interface;
- an “Apply” action to add a pinned term to the current fragment;
- a “Remove” option for each pinned term;
- a “Clear all pinned terms” option.
This would already be very useful, even without more advanced options.
Possible future extensions
If the functionality proves useful, it could later be expanded with additional options, such as:
- saving pinned term sets for a whole project;
- allowing users to create personal favourite terms;
- showing recently used terms in the current interview;
- distinguishing between “pinned terms” and “recently used terms”;
- allowing pinned terms to be grouped by theme;
- offering a warning if the same term has already been applied to the current fragment.
However, these would be additional improvements. The core functionality could remain simple: a temporary list of terms pinned by the user for quick reuse during indexing.
Summary
The proposed feature is a temporary quick-access list of thesaurus terms selected by the user during the indexing of an interview.
Its purpose would be to improve usability, speed, and consistency in manual indexing, without modifying the thesaurus and without automating the documentary decision-making process.
I think this could be a valuable improvement for projects that involve long interviews, repeated themes, and controlled vocabularies.
I am suggesting this from the point of view of daily indexing work. In practice, this small improvement could save a considerable amount of time and make the indexing process much more comfortable, especially when working with long interviews and detailed controlled vocabularies.
Thank you for considering the proposal.
Best regards,
