Collections (*)

Collections group together subsets of data in IATE pertaining to specific projects or subdomains, simplifying data management.

On this page, you will find the following sections:

Read more on user groups and access rights.

COLLECTION TYPE

There are three types of collections:

  • Related to subject area: used for thematic collections.
  • Related to project management: used for projects. Indicate the project year in the name of the project collection, if relevant. If the year cannot be put in the collection name, include at least the starting year in the description field. You can also explain the status of the project (ongoing, finished, etc.) in the description field. If relevant, indicate the mandatory or non-mandatory nature of the project in the collection name and description.
  • Miscellaneous: used for various administrative purposes: deletion, post-adoption updates, excluded entries, permanently confidential entries, candidate entries for a project, multi-domain termbases, etc.
ADD A NEW COLLECTION

To create a collection:

  • Go to the ‘Management’ menu .
  • Click on the ‘Collections’ tab.
  • Click on ‘Add new collection’.

You can also create a collection directly when creating or updating an entry via the Collections field.

The collection creation form has the following fields:

  • Institution (mandatory): selecting ‘EU’ is also possible;
  • Language (mandatory): MUL means that the collection is multilingual;
  • Short name for the collection (mandatory): It must be unique and no longer than 70 characters. Hyphens, minus signs, en-dashs and em-dashes are not allowed;
  • Year (optional);
  • Description (mandatory): The collection description should be in English or French, and its content should be transparent for other users (max. 2 500 characters);
  • Type (mandatory). It can be project management-related, subject area-related, or miscellaneous. Each collection type is displayed in a different colour;
  • Protection;
  • Confidentiality.
A collection ID is automatically assigned to a newly created collection.
Collections that may be useful to external IATE users should be marked as ‘Not confidential’.
NAMING RULES

The name of a collection follows this pattern:

INSTITUTION CODE (Institution or EU)-MUL/LANG CODE-
SHORT NAME (free text, max. 70 characters, no hyphens)-YEAR (optional)

Examples:

  • Consilium-FI-Toy Safety
  • EP-MUL-EP Political bodies
  • CdT-MUL-REACH&CLP-2008
  • EU-MUL-TOPONOMY_CYPRUS
A duplicate detection mechanism for the collection name will be launched to avoid having more than one collection with the same name.
FINDING EXISTING COLLECTIONS

On the ‘Collections’ management page, you can launch a textual search by collection name. For more search options, click on the ‘Open expanded search’ button. From this window, you can narrow down your search with the following criteria:

  • collection ID;
  • collection name – searches for a ‘partial string’;
  • collection description – searches for a ‘partial string’;
  • language;
  • institution which created the collection;
  • type (related to project management, related to subject area, or miscellaneous);
  • creation date (created before, created after);
  • confidentiality.

The results list can be sorted alphabetically, and by creation date, collection ID and type.

The icon next to each collection indicates if a collection contains entries (an empty page means there are no entries in the collection, while a page with writing on it means it does contain entries).

A lock icon indicates that a collection is protected (the lock is closed if strict protection is applied, and open if loose protection is in place).

A star indicates that only Administrators from the specific institution can modify entries belonging to that collection.

You can export a list of all collections or of a set of collections following a collections search from the expanded search. By default, the export is launched after core hours. The export file contains the main metadata on the collections, and is retrieved from the ‘Asynchronous requests’ tab.

You can also search for a set of collections and obtain a list of the entries those collections contain by clicking on ‘Search entries by collection’ on the ‘Collections’ management page. A results page will open in a separate tab. You can find more information on the dedicated page for searching by collection.

INCLUDING AN ENTRY IN A COLLECTION

When viewing or creating an entry, you can search for a collection and add it to the entry by clicking the plus icon. You can also remove collections from an entry by clicking on the minus icon.

It is possible to link protected entries to any collection via the batch operation window. However, only users with the right to modify the protected entry or those from the institution that created the collection (and have access to batch operations for collections) can undo this action.

FINDING ENTRIES THAT BELONG TO A COLLECTION

You can manage and search for collections on the ‘Collections’ management page. In the results list, you can view the number of entries linked to the selected collection by clicking on the ‘Show more’ button and then:

  • ‘Expand’ to display the full list of entry IDs, or
  • ‘View’ or the ‘List of linked entries’ button to get the entries in the form of a results list.
BATCH-LINKING COLLECTIONS

You can link or unlink an existing collection to/from multiple entries or levels at once.

To do this:

  • go to the ‘Collections’ management page,
  • click on ‘Start batch operation’,
  • search for the desired collection(s),
  • once found, click the plus icon.

Then choose the operation type, which is either ‘Link’ or ‘Unlink’. Select the entries for the batch operation and specify the operation level: language-independent level (LIL), language level (LL) or term level (TL). For LL, select the language to which the collection should be linked. For TL, first select the language and then the terms to which the collection should be linked.

Protected entries can also be linked to any collection.

To prevent system overload, limit batch link/unlink operations to a maximum of 300 entries at a time.
MODIFYING AND DELETING COLLECTIONS

You can only modify and delete collections from the ‘Collections’ management page.

To modify an entry:

  • run a search,
  • click the ‘Show more’ button,
  • click the ‘Edit’ button, and
  • once you have made necessary changes, click ‘Confirm change’.

Changes are allowed in the following fields:

  • Language
  • Short name
  • Year
  • Description
  • Type
Any changes made to a collection will be audited (under development).

Administrators can delete collections (by running a search on the ‘Collections’ management page, clicking on the ‘Show more’ button, and then clicking on the red X). A collection can be deleted only if it is empty, i.e. if no entries are linked to it. Therefore, before deleting a collection that has entries linked to it, those entries first have to be unlinked. This can be done by running an unlinking batch operation or by removing the link to a collection from the entries one-by-one.

PROTECTION OF COLLECTIONS

Administrators can also protect collections. There are no technical restrictions: any administrator can protect any collection. Best practices apply and administrators should not protect collections that were not created by their institution.

There are two protection categories, giving different editing rights:

  • Administrators in the specific institution: only administrators belonging to the institution that created the protected collection will be able to modify content belonging to that collection, or
  • Users in the specific institution: any user with editing rights belonging to the institution that created the protected collection can modify content belonging to that collection.

There are two protection modes, applying to different levels:

  • Strict mode blocks the whole level to which the collection is attached and all the levels below, irrespective of the owner of the data. If a strictly protected collection is attached at LIL, it blocks the whole entry.
For strict protection to take effect, the institution that created the protected collection must be the institution owning the level where the strict collection is applied.
  • Loose mode only blocks the level where the collection is attached and the levels below that belong to the institution that created the protected collection (data from other owners will not be blocked).
A lock icon next to the collection name shows that it is protected. A closed lock indicates strict protection; an open lock indicates loose protection.

You can also choose whether protection cascades to sub-levels or not.

CONFIDENTIALITY OF COLLECTIONS

By default, all collections are created as confidential . This means that the collection name will not be visible for external or non-logged in users. Despite the collection itself being confidential, the entries in the collection are still visible to all users (unless they have been set as confidential too or to pre-IATE, or none of the terms have been validated).

Collections that may be useful to external users of IATE should be marked as ‘Not confidential’ . This will enable public users to refine their search with a collection filter, to search by collection, and to export the content of specific collections via the Download IATE feature.
(*) User groups and access rights

Check below which IATE users can create, delete and modify IATE collections:

User groupCreateDeleteModify
EXTERNAL USERNoNoNo
BASIC USERNoNoNo
 TRANSLATORYesNoYes
TERMINOLOGISTYesNoYes
ADMINISTRATORYesYesYes

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