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Dear all. This is an issue we've been thinking about at the National Maritime Museum for a while now. We have catalogues for museum collection and library/ manuscript collections, we also have a search which runs across our CMS based 'main' site. At the moment they're all separate. We have worked through various options for integration. Though nothing is live. Without wishing to state the obvious, in our experience it's technically doable to integrate searches across systems with transparent, open architectures; but when you start trying to integrate proprietary front ends to proprietary systems (especially, in our experience, library opacs) it quickly starts to become more difficult (and that tends to mean expensive). Interestingly, a few people have started rolling out integrated searches across their various catalogues: the British Library, the Library of Congress and the National Archives have all done this in about the last year. As for synchronising the navigation of an online collections site (of whatever format) and your 'main' website, clearly it's relatively straight-forward to use the same look and feel, but as using the same 'options' in the nav on your, say, events page, and on one of your online collections site pages, might be quite a different matter. Another thing I'd be interested in - don't know if anyone knows of any - would be any specific user (or usability) research, into what punters would find most useful - specifically, do they want integrated searching between regular and collections web pages, and do they want integrated nav between them too? Cheers James ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Watson Digital Collections Manager Digital Media Team National Maritime Museum Greenwich London SE10 9NF [log in to unmask] 020 8312 8506 http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -----Original Message----- From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ben Lobo Sent: 13 June 2007 01:04 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Integration of Museum brochureware site & searchable online collections 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/> > > ************************************************** For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk ************************************************** ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. 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