Cheatsheet: 

Dashboard > Curation > Browse

In short, Browse Categories are simply saved searches in Spotlight that can be used to create dynamic pages of items. You can think of saved searches as containers in which items will automatically display when a user clicks on a browse category. In short, what looks like a saved search to you will look like a webpage of items to your visitor. 

Browse categories are really important and allow you to create exhibit pages by simply saving search terms. Why is this important? Let's say that you've created a metadata field called "Wombats." Rather than creating an HTML page and manually loading every image you may have of wombats, Spotlight will automatically generate a page with every image that has wombat in its metadata. If your exhibit grows over time, this means you never have to manually change your pages. Spotlight will automatically put any item in the container called "Wombat." 

It might be useful to think of every single item in your exhibit as a marble. Each marble has certain characteristics that describe it. Marbles may be green, blue, or red. They may be large, medium, or small. Let's say you want to arrange those marbles according to certain properties. You want to arrange all the LARGE RED marbles on one page. Rather than creating an actual page, think of Spotlight as creating containers that look like pages to your user. So, if you go to the search bar and enter the term "red," spotlight will return all the marbles that are red. If you then search for "large," Spotlight will show you all the red marbles that are large. 

Browse categories appear when you SAVE A SEARCH. Remember our discussion about facets? Well, you can create media-rich pages in Spotlight by drilling down through your data and saving your search queries.  To start a search, go to the search bar in the top, right-hand corner of your exhibit (make sure that it is enabled). 

I want to find all the items in this exhibit that have to do with "England"

You will see that my search has returned 495 items that have a metadata field called "England." 

But you will also note that a new toolbar has appeared called "Limit your search." I can now limit my original search using these facets.

I'm not actually interested in ALL OF the items about England. I am only interested in PICTURES of England. So, I am going to limit my search by choosing the "jpg" format that will limit all of the results to jpg images (the only image file we've uploaded in this particular exhibit). I also want to limit my search to pictures whose location is defined as England (rather than merely being about England). 

 You will see that there are 16 images that are about England and that were taken in the geographical place called England. 

We've winnowed 495 results to 16 specific results with two clicks.(and we can continue to winnow if we want). 

And this is where Spotlight gets really powerful. WE CAN NOW SAVE THIS SEARCH AS A BROWSE CATEGORY, which basically means, we can create a "container" for all of the pictures of England taken in England and it will look like a page of items to our viewers. If we ever add more pictures taken in England, Spotlight will automatically sift them into this container.

To save our search and create a browse category, we choose the limits to our search. In the image below, I've 1. limited the search to images 2. limited the search to the geographical place called England (pictures taken in England) 3. Click "Save this search"

A new box appears. I'm going to name this search (or Container), "England Example" and then I'm going to click "Save."

Now, when I go to Dashboard > Curation > Browse, you can see the new category listed among the others. To make this category useful, I will need to check the box on the left-hand side to make it public.

You can rearrange and make your browse categories public and private by checking (public) or unchecking (private) the checkbox on the left. You can rearrange the categories by grabbing the arrangement bar on the left and moving the category up or down. 

Now that we have uploaded items into our exhibit, and now that we have created browse categories, we are now ready to create FEATURE PAGES.