Go VE: Full Text Indexing in Primo VE
Primo VE allows you to index full text that is externally held in a file of type PDF, TXT, or HTML for discovery. To use this functionality, you must store the link to the externally-held full text in a local search field. During the indexing of a local field, Primo VE will perform the following actions on each of the full text records:
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Remove stop words based on language.
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Remove HTML tags.
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Index up to 10,000 terms.
In addition, the system automatically indexes full text files of digital items (Alma-D).
In general, external full-text indexing occurs when a URL in the metadata leads to a full-text target, which may be a file of type PDF, TXT, or HTML. If the URL leads to a PDF file that contains text that is searchable within the file, Primo will index that full-text target for searching. However, if that PDF file contains an image of text, such as a scanned image of a newspaper article, Primo will not index that full-text target because the text is not searchable within the PDF file. Note that this is not the case for Alma-D files, where OCR is used to convert text within images, allowing this text to be indexed and searched in Primo VE.
Background
Main Principles and Differences between Primo and Primo VE
Full text indexing is used the same way in both Primo and Primo VE, but here are their configuration differences:
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Primo:
Full text indexing is handled with file splitters in the pipe. For more details on how it is done in Primo, see the File Splitters page in the Ex Libris Developer Network. -
Primo VE:
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Full text indexing is configured by mapping the full text's URL in the source to a local field.
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For digital items (Alma-D) that contain full text files, no additional configuration is needed in Primo VE to index this full text.
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Documentation and Training Videos
In preparation for this task, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the following documentation and training:
Indexing Full Text (2 min)
Preparation: Check for Current Usage of Full Text Indexing
Before you begin to configure Primo VE, it necessary to see what full text you are indexing in Alma and from external sources. In addition, you can check to see if a file splitter exists or your data contains a link to the full text.
Configuration: Creating a Local Field for Full Text Indexing
The Define a Local Field page allows you to create local fields to enhance discovery via additional display fields, facets, and search indexes. For this specific case, the local field is used to index full text from external sources by mapping the source's URL to the local field.
You cannot configure more than one local field to handle full text indexing.
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Open the Manage Display and Local Fields page (Configuration Menu > Discovery > Display Configuration > Manage Display and Local Fields).
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Select Add field > Add local field to open the Define a Local Field page.
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Specify the following fields:
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Field to edit – Specify which local field will be used for full text indexing.
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Display label – Specify the display label for this local field.
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Enable field for search – Select this option if you want users to be able to find records based on the indexed full text.
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Use full text links for indexing – Select this check box to instruct the system to fetch and index externally held full text.
If multiple full text links are defined for a record, only the last link will be indexed.
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Define from which field the full text URL should be taken. Only the Bibliographic Field method is supported to map the URL of the externally held full text to the local field for full text indexing. For more information, see Adding a Local Field in Primo VE.
In the following example, the URL to the full text is mapped from the MARC 500 field to the local field using the Bibliographic Field mapping method.
Add Support for Full Text Indexing