Transcript The Development of the Ceramics and Glass website

The Development of the
Ceramics and Glass website
Mia Ridge
Museum Systems Team
Museum of London
Topics
• Designing and developing the
website
• How to get the most out of the site
• Questions
Designing and developing
the website
• In-house development
• Site Goals
• Design Challenges
• Site Infrastructure
• Design and development
Museum Systems Team
• In-house IT team
• Design and develop bespoke application
for recording, analysing and presenting
archaeological or museum information
• Design and develop database-driven
websites
Site Goals
• Enable access to the collection
• Provide for specialist and general
audiences
• Increase knowledge and understanding of
the collection
Design Challenges
• Different audiences, different goals
– General public
– Researchers and specialists
• Dynamic content
– Complex relationships between:
– Categories
– Object records
– Other records
Site Infrastructure
• Static content:
– extended texts (stored externally)
– Regional study
– Site report, ‘about’ section
• Dynamic content:
– object records
– subject authority records
– images
– publications
Technical Infrastructure
• MM server (database)
– day-to-day Collections Management System,
holds data in own format
• Staging server (database/web server)
– runs extraction scripts as queries against MM
database, holds development version of data
structures and scripts and static pages
• Live server (database/web server)
– the version you see on the internet
Extraction Process
MultiMimsy Server
(Oracle)
Extraction scripts
(SQL queries)
Staging Server
(SQL Server/web server)
Staging server runs extraction scripts against MultiMimsy server:
•Scripts are a set of SQL queries,
•Results stored in database tables on staging server
Website processes
• User requests a page
• ASP scripts receive request, translate into
queries into site database
• ASP scripts filter, collate and present
results of queries as web pages
Design and development
• Consultation with target audiences
• Consultation with cataloguing team and
curators
• Design site architecture and navigation
– Iterative process, taking into account
audience needs, structure of data
• Design presentation of objects, categories,
publications, images, and their
relationships
How to get the most out of
the site
• Browsing
– Catalogue
– Publications
• Searching
– Object search
– Subject search
– Publication search
Future Directions
• More links to similar collections
– Regional study reports
– Exchange links with similar collections
• Information on makers
– Individuals, manufacturers, designers
• Glossary
• Featured or type reference objects
• Audience evaluation and feedback