1. Organization of the descriptions

MantaJ! comprises 6 main description types and 7 secondary description types, the difference being that the 6 main descriptions can be recalled inside the Front-End by assigning a menu item to them.

1.1 Main description tabs

The main description tabs are the following:

• Creators (ref. standard ISAAR)
• Holders (ref. standard IDIAH)
• Elements (ref. standard ISAD(G))
• Functinos (ref. standard ISDF)
• Categories (non-standard and still a bit under development)
• References (bibliography/weblography)

Each of this description is associated to a menu item view (list of fields related to a single record, if an element has a digital image/folder associated to it, it will be shown here) and to a collection view (list of items shown as a table).
For the first four menu item it is possible to choose which field to show (both at item and collection view).
By default, empty fields are not shown (NOTE that the date format fields, such as the record created and revised date, are never empty, so if you don't want them to appear in the Front-End you have to set it in the menu parameters).

1.2 Secondary description tabs

The secondary description tabs are the following:

• Places (to enter details about recurrent places related to the documents)
• Registry (to keep record of persons/families/corp. bodies related to the documents, both as creator/holder or with other roles)
• Digital images (to relate elements to digital images)
• Correlations (to relate elements to other elements)
• Mandates (to relate creators and/or holders to legal mandates)
• Levels (levels of description must be defined here and ca be of any type)
• Functions rel. (to relate functions to other functions or creators/persons/etc...)

The record inserted in the secondary description tabs can be recalled inside the main description tabs and will appear inside the Front-End description following this schema:

• link on Title/Name (opens a pop-up with the details of the place/registry/etc...), folleowd by
• a second field (typically simple text), followed by
• link on the fixed label "info" (opens a pop-up with the details of the relation)

1.3 Why main and secondary descriptions?

First of all some main descriptions are really long and the idea was to separate some of the fields foreseen by the international standard and to have the chance of adding some additional extra-standard details without enlarging further the main tabs.

Second of all there are some fields that can be shared through different elements and whose description may deserve a separate in-depth examination. E.g. if a document has been written inside an ancient castle, that eventually does not exist anymore, this info could be simply inserted in the Abstract field of the Element tab, but it could also be recorded inside the Places tab, adding web-sites and sources specifically dedicated to this special place and other place description -> then if there are other documents that share this place, it will be easy to recall it by simply using the drop-down Places grid, inside Elements.