Dear Perian, Thank you for sharing a real-world use case with us. It's going to be really interesting how the new site shapes up against these sorts of sophisticated searches.
One of the features we're most excited about in this release is that we're making available the taxonomy information from our Collections Management System in the web interface. We've done this in two places. On the full record page, there are now a list of "explore related objects" links which bring back objects with the same taxonomy term. We also added in a "Narrow your results" feature on the search results page which shows the most commonly occuring taxonomy terms for a set of search results. So the good news is that we've now got a working model for sharing the subjects, categories, places etc. online. As the site develops we'll be going to look at other ways of enriching that information further. We've done a fair bit of work (not yet released) on text mining technologies so that we can cluster objects around categories suggested by the free-text information in the catalogue records. And we're also looking at collective intelligence, seeing how those categories might be suggested by the behaviour of users on the site. best wishes, Richard Morgan >>> "Perian Sully" <psully at magnes.org> 15/09/2009 17:09 >>> Dear Gail: My merry band of costume historians use the V&A's website regularly, and they were very excited by this release. I haven't had a chance to browse through, but I noticed that one of the limitations that was present on the old site is still present in this iteration (or appears to be). Basically, we tend to do large search groups within a narrow era. For example, when looking for costumes from the late-18th century, it's easy to specify the date range, but we often have to search separately "dress", "gown", "textile", "shoes", "pet-en-lair", "chemise", "grande habit", "caracao", etc. when really a broader category search within that date range would be helpful. Does your database backend have an option for field groups, subject, or category searches, so that a range of items can be retrieved in one swoop? Really, really looking forward to fishing through your collections again. Best, ~Perian Perian Sully Collections Information Manager Web Programs Strategist The Magnes Berkeley, CA -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Gail Durbin Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 10:41 AM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] V&A launches one million objects on line Some of you may have seen this on Twitter but if not this is just to let you know that the V&A has launched a Beta version of Search the Collections where we have moved from 55,000 object records on line to over a million. The temporary address is www.vam.ac.uk/cis-online . There is still a way to go but we would welcome comments and ways to improve what we have there now. The technical work for this has been done by Richard Morgan, the V&A web technical manager, and his team and he will be able to answer any of the more technical questions. Mark Hook on the content side has worked with the designers, The Other Media, on the user interface. Our Collections records staff under Heather Caven have done a lot of work preparing the records to go live. The project has been about using what we already had so the project draws text from our collections information system and images from the digital asset management system and aims to make the presentation and functionality as user friendly as possible. We have tried to make sure visitors see the best records first. And as information is added to our records so the site will get better. We are working on making the browse function smoother, introducing text mining, making the mapping function work more accurately and adding some less conventional options to the browse. There will be an API and we hope to add an element of crowd sourcing. In the longer term there will be saved searches, lightboxes and more linking, among other things, but some of these items will have to wait until we have completed our more general website redesign in the Autumn of 2010. For now it feels like we have made a major digital leap forward which is good for visitors and provides a foundation for many other web facilities. Gail Durbin Head of V&A Online ______________________________________________________________________ Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design Until 18 October 2009 at V&A South Kensington Admission Free Wonderland - Fairytales, Myths and Legends from Around the World 26 September 2009 - 10 January 2010 at the V&A Museum of Childhood Admission free Keep in touch - visit www.vam.ac.uk and sign up for our regular e-newsletter - --------------------------------------------------------------- The information contained in this message is confidential and intended only for the individual named above. If you are not the intended recipient, or responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying, or disclosure of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us by telephone on 020 7942 2353. 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For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design Until 18 October 2009 at V&A South Kensington Admission Free Wonderland - Fairytales, Myths and Legends from Around the World 26 September 2009 - 10 January 2010 at the V&A Museum of Childhood Admission free Keep in touch - visit www.vam.ac.uk and sign up for our regular e-newsletter - --------------------------------------------------------------- The information contained in this message is confidential and intended only for the individual named above. If you are not the intended recipient, or responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying, or disclosure of this information is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us by telephone on 020 7942 2353. This message has been scanned for viruses by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
