<<<...the project draws text from our collections information system and images from the digital asset management system...>>>
Hi, Gail and Richard, Very impressive site! What collection information system and DAM system do you have? How do you draw text and images to your website after it went through Heather's review? Is import/export automatically done? Thanks, Nahoko Green Collections Automation Manager Chicago History Museum -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Morgan Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 1:37 PM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: Re: [MCN-L] V&A launches one million objects on line Thanks, David, for your positive reaction! We are using Sphinx (http://www.sphinxsearch.com) to manage the searching and clustering, closely coupled to a Django / MySQL backend. The Django application provides an API which returns JSON and uses Sphinx to deal with the searching. Then the frontend application is PHP Symfony and it makes API calls to the Django application. The nice thing is that we can then open up access to the Django app to provide the same API for everyone. best wishes, Richard Morgan >>> David Brewer <david.brewer at gmail.com> 15/09/09 3:42 PM >>> That seems like a good way to deal with the issue to me. I didn't realize that there were different types of entry points to the search engine. Thanks and have a good day, David Brewer Lead Systems Developer Second Story On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Gail Durbin <g.durbin at vam.ac.uk> wrote: > Dear David, > Thank you for your kind words. I am glad you like our new site. > > I was interested in your comments about the default setting and it has been a matter of some debate here. My original preference would have been "best quality records" but we have actually ended up with something more subtle than that - but perhaps too subtle if no one realises it! The default is determined by the way you choose to enter the site. If you go in via the browse you get "best quality records", if you go in via a heavy duty search you get "all records" and if you go in via a more lightweight search the you get "only records with images". I realise in making this decision we have made all sorts of assumptions about our visitors but they do have the power to change the options for themselves. > > We have tried to think about the range of our visitors from very serious academic researcher through to naive user and we also have in mind visitors who have no specialist museum vocabulary and people who want to use our collections for their own creative work where serendipitous connections may be appropriate. So the browse may supply some of these needs. > > I am sure Richard Morgan, who is behind the technical development, will answer the second half of your email. > > With best wishes > Gail > > Gail Durbin > Head of V&A Online > >>>> David Brewer <david.brewer at gmail.com> 14 September 2009 >>> > Congratulations on a very impressive collection search! It's quite > snappy, too, considering the amount of data being indexed. I > especially like the feature that lets you expand a search result row > in-line to get a larger image and description of the record. > > My only feedback is that depending on your primary audience for the > search engine, you might consider defaulting to "only records with > images" or even > "best quality records". A casual user of the site probably won't be > interested in records without images, and an expert user can be > expected to change this option if they really do need to search > everything. > > I would be very interested to find out what you are using for your > search backend. Is this a home-grown solution, or is it based on top > of an open source search backend such as Lucene or Xapian, or is it > built on top of a commercial search backend? > > Once again, great work. Your collection is inspiring. > > David Brewer > Lead Systems Developer > Second Story > > On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 10:40 AM, Gail Durbin <g.durbin at vam.ac.uk> wrote: >> 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. This message has been scanned for viruses by the >> MessageLabs Email Security System. >> _______________________________________________ >> You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) >> >> To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu >> >> To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: >> http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l >> >> The MCN-L archives can be found at: >> http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >> > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ > > ______________________________________________________________________ > This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. > 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. > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ > _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. 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. _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/
