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
For updates on all Science Museum news and events sign up to our free e-newsletter at www.sciencemuseum.org.uk
This e-mail and attachments are intended for the named addressee only and are confidential. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately, delete the message from your computer system and destroy any copies. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and may not reflect the views of the National Museum of Science & Industry. This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
****************************************************************
For mcg information visit the mcg website at
http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
To manage your subscription to this email list visit
http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
|