Tutorial -- Entering Citations
The Citation we are editing in this step is the citation for the primary subject of this metadata record, aka the "main resource."
As you can see, something is different with this panel. The Citation panel does not have any editable element controls. Instead the panel is showing us a view of some the citation's elements. Why is this?
A full metadata record may contain many different citations. This one is for the primary resource of the metadata record. Others identify various external resource that were used or referenced by the project or product defined by this metadata record. These will be entered from other Edit Window sections such as the citation for a keyword thesaurus or the citation for a taxonomic classification system.
All citations share the same format. Thus what is shown here for the main resource citation applies to all Citation panels wherever they appear in mdEditor. Because all citations share the same format, they are edited from a Citation Edit Window. Therefore, when editing any Citation object, you will leave the Edit Window section you are on when you click the Edit button on the Panel Title Bar (or the one at the bottom of the Citation panel), make your edits, then return to the initial Edit Window section by clicking the Back to Main button in the Secondary Sidebar when finished.
Citation has only one required element in mdJSON, Title. Since the main resource Citation Title is also the metadata record Title and that has already been defined, technically there are no missing Citation elements. We could skip editing Citation and still meet minimal requirements; however Citation is so widely used throughout mdEditor let's jump in and edit a non-required element.
Edit the main resource Citation
- Click either the Edit button on the Panel Title Bar or the one at the bottom of the panel.
You should now be looking at the Citation edit window as shown in the image above. Notice the Edit Window title has changed from "Editing My First Metadata Record" to "Editing Citation"; also the path on the Breadcrumb Bar confirms that you have navigated to the Citation branch of the Main Edit Window.
From working with Resource Types earlier in this exercise you are already familiar with the array-panel control used for entering Alternate Title elements, so let's enter a few Alternate Titles now.
Enter Alternate Titles
- Click either Add Alternate Title button
- Enter an Alternate Title. I entered "First Alternate."
- Enter a second Alternate Title
- Click the Back to Main button in the Secondary Sidebar when you have finish entering your Alternate Titles.
Clicking Back to Main ends editing of the Citation object and, as expected, returns you to Edit Window Main.
There are several other ways to return to Edit Window Main.
- Click Main in the Breadcrumb Bar path.
- Click the browser's "back" button (you may also need to refresh the window before seeing your changes).
Click the button for "My First Metadata Record" in the Primary Sidebar.
All three of these methods, as well as the Back to Main button, will preserve your entries as you navigate away from the Edit Window Citation section.
So let's see what happened back in Main ...
