Hi Bryan,
I recently helped to integrate a CALM for Archives catalogue into the
British Postal Museum and Archive's site (http://postalheritage.org.uk/).
It's much more than a brochureware site - it's a Plone-based CMS with tons
of content including, for example, the Phillips Collection of British
Victorian stamps (http://postalheritage.org.uk/phillips) - but we did face
the sort of issues with regards to separate searches and consistent
navigation that you're referring to.
We had to do quite a lot of customization work with CALM to maintain the
overall look and feel of the site which was a challenge technically but it
was well worth the effort, especially for the usability benefits that
followed on from providing a consistent user experience.
With regards to resolving the issue of two search boxes, it wasn't
technically possible to combine the catalogue search with the sitewide
search in a sensible and usable way within the scope of the project so we
opted to maintain both searches and make the distinction between the two as
clear to users as possible to avoid confusion.
As far as I know, there hasn't been any feedback to suggest that the
presence of the two search boxes causes any significant usability problems.
I hope this is useful.
Regards,
Ben
--
Ben Lobo
Application Developer
Adaptive Technologies Ltd.
+44 (0)1273 728128
http://www.adaptivetechnologies.com
On 6/12/07, Bryan Wills <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> At the London Transport Museum, we will shortly be putting more of our
> collections online, including a 6000 strong poster/artwork collection
> and a re-branded photographic collection consisting 15,000 images.
>
> Many existing Museum sites with online collections have a brochureware
> site and a link to one or more separate searchable collection resources
> - Many times the two are separate, often with different navigation. Has
> any out there successfully combined the two? Same navigation with deep
> access to collection materials.
>
> If so, how did you resolve potentially having two search boxes?
>
> Have Museums deliberately stayed away from this integration for
> technical reasons or usability reasons?
>
> I would be very interested if any one has any experience or evaluation
> to support integration of brochureware site & online collections or
> experience to support that the opposite is true.
>
> Thanks Bryan
>
> Bryan Wills
> Head of Digital Resources
> London Transport Museum
> 39 Wellington Street
> Covent Garden, London
> Tel : 02075657288
> Email [log in to unmask]
> Web http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk <http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/>
>
>
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