Further to my recent post on RFID, Mobile phones and Gallery information I have another approach that I would be interested to hear comments on.
The objective is to enable visitors to the gallery to be able to go quickly and easily to web content related to the section of the gallery they are in. The web environment will be structured in some ways to mirror the layout of the gallery, with the case and theme narrative labels reproduced as web 'pages', but with a high degree of navigable connectivity, and these would be the entry points from the gallery (rather than the object by object labels - records for these will also be available but as one type of secondary layers from the narrative labels).
My new idea is to have at the bottom of the case narrative labels and theme narrative labels some text that suggests a search that will find that page. Not a hyper link but just a 2 or 3 word standard search engine search. For example the Inuit Fishing label may say Search for: Horniman Inuit Fishing with some appropriate icons to make it clear that we mean search in google, bing, etc (one for the designers). We would then have SEO optimised the Inuit Fishing label 'page' to such a high degree that it came up first or first page in the resulting search result.
At the Horniman we are fortunate in that Horniman is quite a distinctive word and will act as a high impact filter, obviously that isn't going to work so well for all institutions.
What appeals about this approach is that it uses a behaviour that users are already completely familiar with, the cost is low, the technology reach, stability and life expectancy is high and it is pretty low impact in the gallery for those who just want to enjoy the experience in the gallery.
I am calling it a Strong Search approach.
What do people think?
Jonathan
Jonathan Whitson Cloud
Documentation Manager
Horniman Museum and Gardens
Study Collections Centre
Tel. +44 (0)20 8858 8232
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