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'Something that should be emphasized in this discussion is the OPAC vendors' role. They have the ability to massively improve the situation by adopting best practices and implementing standards-based solutions that are accessible easy to integrate.' I agree with Danny here. We were discussing integration, transparency, visibility to search engines and the whole thing with a large library system (including opac) vendor earlier this year, and were basically stonewalled. They were totally amazed when we asked for persistent durable URL's for the catalogue records. It's a sad truth that functionality of vendor-supplied opacs have moved on very little since they were launched in the mainstream in the 1980s. Perhaps this would be an opportunity for united advocacy towards the system vendors? Perhaps something for the MLA or MDA? Once again, this is an area where the digital library guys are well ahead of us (Google: Opacs suck). Re: Google searches for museum collections, as Jim O'Donnell said on an earlier post, we set something up last year in-house to search our collections, and there's also this: http://www.museumcollections.org.uk/mc/index.asp which will, I'm sure, be familiar to list subscribers. There's certainly potential there. 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 Danny Hope Sent: 14 June 2007 11:12 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Integration of Museum brochureware site & searchable online collections On 6/13/07, David Ellis <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > The Museum Software Foundation (MSF) have been working on a Federated > Search project > http://museumsoftwarefoundation.org/cb/sharedProjectInfo.do?proj_id=8. We > have been using google style search techniques to index databases directly, > and provide extremely fast retrieval rates. The technology we are using > scales to billions of records and makes building search infrastructure very > easy. Inspired by this, I've setup an aggregated museum search in Google Coop: http://tinyurl.com/28c7xl Right now it searches across 10-20 museums. If you volunteer, you can add more sites to the list. This would be much more powerful if OPAC vendors would do a better job when it comes to accessibility. Something that should be emphasized in this discussion is the OPAC vendors' role. They have the ability to massively improve the situation by adopting best practices and implementing standards-based solutions that are accessible easy to integrate. -- Regards, Danny Hope http://hobointernet.com +44 (0)845 230 3760 ************************************************** 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. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ ************************************************** For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk **************************************************