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Jun 25, 2026

Heratio Help Center article. Category: Discovery & Browse.

Browse by Genre User Guide

Overview

Browse by Genre organises the published holdings by the genres and forms they carry. It surfaces the genre and document-form access points already attached to your published records - the genres under which the most records sit - as "ways into the collection", so you can start from a genre rather than from a search box. Genres are shown as a frequency-sized cloud and a ranked list; each one shows how many published records carry it and links straight to those records. Open it at /genres. It completes the taxonomy-browse set alongside Explore by Theme (which groups by subject) and Browse by Place (which groups by geography).

What it does

Browse by Genre reads the genre access points already attached to your published records and ranks them by how many records carry each one:

  • The busiest genres become the largest chips in the cloud - the collection's genre/form "ways in".
  • Each genre shows its published-record count.
  • Opening a genre lists the published records of it, with links to each record and a one-click route into the full browse for that genre.

Only published records are counted and shown. Genres update automatically as records are described with genre access points and made public - there is nothing to configure or generate. No vocabulary is built in: the genre names come entirely from your own catalogue.

How to use it

  1. Go to /genres.
  2. Browse the cloud - larger names carry more published records - or use the ranked All genres by frequency list below it.
  3. Click a genre name to open it.
  4. On a genre page you will see:
    • The genre's label and, where the catalogue holds one, a short scope note.
    • The total number of published records of the genre.
    • A paginated list of those records, each linking to the record in full.
    • A Browse all of this genre button that opens the main browse page pre-filtered to this genre, where you can apply further filters (creator, subject, place, media, level, and so on).
  5. Use the page links at the bottom of a genre to move through long lists.

Machine-readable genre list

A read-only JSON list of the genres is available at /genres.json for reuse in other tools and integrations. It is CORS-open and cacheable, and returns each genre's id, label, published-record count, and links. No record content or unpublished material is exposed.

Good to know

  • Published only. Genres are built from published records, so the counts match what the public can actually open.
  • It stays current. Genre rankings and record lists are computed on the fly from the live catalogue, so they reflect the collection as it is right now.
  • It completes the browse set. Where Explore by Theme groups records by subject, Browse by Place groups them by geography, and Discoveries / Research Leads show AI-found links between records, Browse by Genre groups records by genre and form - different ways to find related material.