Search vs filter

One of the big decisions I am working on for this project is deciding which keywords are for filtering and which will just be for search. 

My preliminary list has over 130 descriptors. That's way too many to work well for filters, but filtering is part of the essential plan for the site. 

So, I need to sort the keywords into groups, decide which are important to use in filters, which might be extraneous, and which we should still use in the metadata for searchability. I'm narrowing down which I think need to be used in the filters with help from staff via card sorting.

I also have started sketching a very preliminary wireframe, those famed boxes and arrows, to explain how I'm thinking about the design. It's helpful to have this when I explain what I want done with my index cards.

Preliminary pencil sketch

What I'm finding as I do this is that it's actually quite hard to group some of these concepts and determining which are important isn't always clearcut. 

In my first pass through the index cards, I created a group I called "purpose" which contained concepts related to how a type of technology might be used. Included in this group were keywords like "research", "preservation", and "virtual tour". 

Now, those might be terms that are useful as filters or not. They may be better left to search. But a conversation my supervisor had today with a potential client highlights how having those types of keywords could be valuable. The people she was talking to wanted to be able to create virtual tours of the library and the different spaces there. Since a virtual tour could be done in VR, panographic images, 360 images, and maybe other options, being able to search and find previous projects that are virtual tours would be helpful. 

So, I'm still sorting and resorting keywords, gathering data, and really thinking about how they might be used. Hopefully I'll have a clear idea by the end of next week so I can move on to designing the interface.