| By Gale Staff |
We’re excited to announce that Phase 2 enhancements for our Document Viewer are now live, building on the success of the first phase we rolled out last year. These enhancements are designed to improve the user experience for Gale Primary Sources, Gale Literature Criticism, Gale Literature: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale Digital Scholar Lab, and Gale Literature: Something About the Author.
In Phase 2, we focused on two main areas:
1. Revamping heavily used and high-impact features
2. Adding new ways to view content
Improved Features for a More Intuitive Experience
We’ve refreshed some existing features to make them more user-friendly and intuitive:
- Image and Text (OCR) View: For researchers who need to view the transcript behind the document facsimile, we’ve redesigned the buttons for Document Image and Plain Text (OCR) to provide clearer view options: (1) Image, (2) Both Image and Text, and (3) Text Only [OCR].
- Article Only and Full Page View: Gale historical newspaper and periodical content is indexed at the article level, ensuring that researchers retrieve the precise article from their search results, rather than having to browse through an issue to find what they are looking for. That said, many researchers need to view the article in its original context, and we’ve restyled the toggle from Article to Full Page View to improve the usability of this feature.
- Go to Other Issues: For researchers who need to browse through multiple issues of a newspaper or periodical title, we’ve redesigned the “Go to Other Issues” feature to include the volume/issue metadata of the previous and next issues (e.g., date, issue number) so that users navigating the content this way know what to expect.
- Improved Mobile Experience: Users who access our content on a phone or an iPad will enjoy an improved document view, which devotes more screen real estate to the document itself while still providing easy access to document tools.
New Ways to View Content
We’ve also introduced new ways to view primary source content, enhancing the overall research experience and encouraging new discoveries:
- Book View: Researchers can view documents in a two-page spread, which replicates the experience of reading the original book, newspaper issue, or manuscript.
- Thumbnail View: Researchers can browse thumbnail images of all pages, offering a bird’s-eye view of the entire document. This is especially helpful for documents with highly visual and/or illustrated content and allows users to discover content they might otherwise miss in a traditional page view. (Please note: Currently, this feature is available only in Gale Primary Sources products and the Gale Digital Scholar Lab.)
We’re confident these enhancements will provide a richer, more streamlined research experience, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on how we might continue to improve. Please send any questions or other input to [email protected].
Learn more about the Phase 1 enhancements on our blog: Document Viewer Updates Improve Discoveries in Gale Primary Sources.