Comment 2 for bug 1815815

I gave this a quick test, and the new dropdown seems confusing to me. I don't think it will be obvious to the user why there are two dropdowns for "scope" (broadly construed) or why certain entries appear in one dropdown rather than the other. In the standard case, where no library groups or location groups are configured, we get a new "Where" dropdown in the searchbar containing a "No Restrictions" entry and one or more entries under Search Scope; I think the average user will not know what this stuff means. The Search Scope options also seem unnecessary when the Location dropdown already lets you adjust search scope in a straightforward way; it's confusing to provide the same option in two different ways.

A few possibilities come to mind:

1. Provide the option for a unified dropdown, similar to the current Location dropdown which combines org units and location groups. I don't know if this is technically possible, but I feel like in many common use cases, the new approach exposes complexity to the user that ought to remain hidden.

2. Make the content of the Where dropdown configurable, e.g. make it possible to exclude Search Scope from the dropdown.

3. Provide an option in config.tt2 to suppress the Where dropdown entirely in the main searchbar. (It can already be suppressed on advanced search, where you're more likely to want to expose it.)

I hope this doesn't sound too negative! I think library groups are a great feature. I'll try to make time for more testing, since my consortium has relatively intricate scoping requirements.