Thanks for that Jeremy,

Startrow was marked as optional in our opensearch description, but required by the RSS template. I've fixed that bug. Also, in response to Frankie's suggestion, I've added dc:type for type of object (painting, grommet, model etc.) and dc:subject for the name of the collection (Fine Art, Bedford Lemere, Atlantic Worlds etc.) There doesn't seem to be much out there by way of guidance on DC for collections records, so I'm following PNDS and suggestions from a hardcopy of a 2001 report by CIMI, which has tons of examples of records in DC but doesn't seem to be available online any more.

Following up on what Seb said, this is not particularly difficult to set up. I've tried to design our collections system so that the bits that do the searching are completely separate from the views that list the object records, so that I can output the results as HTML, JSON or XML as need be. A little more about that here
http://eatyourgreens.org.uk/archives/2007/11/how_to_make_aja.html
By the way, JSON is way, way easier to publish than XML when you have descriptions like ours :)

After reading Mike Ellis's blog post (http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2008/04/01/rss-search-results/) I had a non-validating, badly formed XML feed up in about 15 minutes. There was about another two days reading this week to figure out what is and isn't legal in XML leading to the current version, which should work in even the strictest RSS readers. http://feedvalidator.org was invaluable for sorting out RSS errors. I also discovered along the way that it's really easy to publish a feed which isn't proper RSS - in our case mostly by including accented characters or punctuation from Word documents.

As Seb said, the really interesting thing is that we've opened up the summary metadata for our objects with very little work on our part.

Cheers
Jim

Jim O'Donnell
Senior Web Developer
National Maritime Museum
Park Row
Greenwich 
London  SE10 9NF

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>-----Original Message-----
>From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On 
>Behalf Of Ottevanger, Jeremy
>Sent: 11 April 2008 11:51
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: OpenSearch and RSS at the National Maritime Museum
>
>Great work, Jim. Time for us to follow (yet again).
>
>I get an error, though: 
>********************
>Internet Explorer cannot display this feed 
> 
>   This feed contains code errors. 
>     Go back to the previous page. 
> 
>     More information 
>
>The following tags were not closed: rss, channel.
> Line: 0 Character: 0
>
>*********************
>http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/requestHandlers/doQuickSearch.
>cfm?searc
>hterm=midshipman&startrow=&format=rss 
>
>
>Looking in Mozilla and checking the source, it looks like an error is
>stopping the feed from being written completely before it's flushed:
>
><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>
><rss version="2.0"
>xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
>xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
>xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
>xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
>  <channel>
>  <title>midshipman - National Maritime Museum Collections
>Online</title>
> 
><link>http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/requestHandlers/doQuickS
>earch.cfm
>?searchterm=midshipman&amp;authority=category&amp;category=&amp
>;startrow
>=</link>
>  <description><![CDATA[]]></description>
>  <copyright>National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London</copyright>
>
>  <atom:link
>href="http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/requestHandlers/doQuickS
>earch.cfm
>?searchterm=midshipman&amp;authority=category&amp;category=&amp
>;startrow
>=&amp;format=rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
>  <openSearch:totalResults>132</openSearch:totalResults>
>  <openSearch:startIndex></openSearch:startIndex> 
>  <openSearch:itemsPerPage>20</openSearch:itemsPerPage> 
>  The value "" cannot be converted to a number 
>
>
>....and that's it. Hence IE's error. Turns out that it's because the
>value for statrow is missing from the URL - putting "1" in there fixed
>it.
>
>
>I'm trying to figure out just how much value of the OpenSearch part
>would offer us(as with many sites, most of our pages have a site-wide
>search box anyway), but your use of it for collections-specific search
>is a possible answer. And the other thing, of course, is that 
>the really
>cool thing you've done is the RSS part, not the OpenSearch part -
>likewise Perry's work in Bolton. Your data is now out in the wild.
>You've taken a sensible approach to structuring your data, 
>mixing DC and
>RSS, and it looks like a good model to follow. Now let's see the
>mashups!
>
>Cheers, Jeremy
>
>
>
>
>Jeremy Ottevanger
>Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
>Museum of London Group
>46 Eagle Wharf Road
>London. N1 7ED
>Tel: 020 7410 2207
>Fax: 020 7600 1058
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>www.museumoflondon.org.uk
>Museum of London is changing; our lower galleries will be 
>closed while they undergo a major new development. Visit 
>www.museumoflondon.org.uk to find out more.
>London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped 
>the city we see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning
>Before printing, please think about the environment
>
>
>


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