Thanks, Mia and Mike.

Our target users are 'general public' - everyone from pupils/students/teachers to academic researchers, to family history researchers, to people just wanting to find out more about East Lothian, and about what we have in our collections. So the search tools will need to be very intuitive. Currently none of the databases is online, we respond to queries, so we don't really have much information about how our potential users might use the search tools. We do have a clear idea of the kind of information they want though, and who the current users are - though we hope to 'grow' our users with this portal.

The Historic Environment Record uses a map interface, and we will definitely want to retain that for a map search. We'd also like timelines and browsable themes/subjects - anything that will help people explore our material.

So we've got a lot to ask of our future contractors! Especially as there has been no mapping between the databases yet. I'm trying to look at this as something to really get stuck into, rather than quailing in front of ...

Thanks again,
Helen

-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ridge Mia
Sent: 07 December 2010 16:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Briefing for a 'portal' tender ... any tips?

Helen Bleck wrote:

> Here at East Lothian Council the heritage services (Archaeology,
Archives,
> Museums and Local History) are teaming up in a new centre currently
being
> built in Haddington - the John Gray Centre. We'd like to be able to
make
> their individual databases (Historic Environment Record, CALM
catalogue,
> open source database and various small databases, some on Access,
> respectively) all searchable online through a single 'portal' or
gateway,
> and we'd like users to be able to choose an individual database to
search,
> or to search all simultaneously. I've recently joined the Museums team
to
> try and help make the portal happen, and I'm looking for any advice or
> tips from others who've done something similar.

A question that might help clarify your list to Santa - who are your
users? There's no point creating a highly structured search if your
users are the general public, and possibly even if the audience is
researchers. Do people who currently use the resources refine their
queries in any way - by source of material (e.g. library, archive,
museum) or by record type, or are they searching for a term (e.g. a
person or place name) and happy to work with what comes back?

Also, are you looking only at text searches, or can visitors browse via
subjects, indexes, timelines or maps?

> One of our main concerns is that the databases and their tables/fields
are
> all quite different, and the different services have over time used
> different thesauri for classifying content - it will take some fairly
> sophisticated search methods to search them all effectively.

And it'll require resources to map terms (thesauri as well as field
names) between them, if that hasn't already been done.

cheers, Mia

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