Ching-hsien Wang
Manager, Libraries & Archives System Support Branch
Smithsonian Insitution
Keith Jeffers
Director, IT Services
National Library of Australia
Making Square Pegs Fit: A Case Study for a Common Search Center for Libraries, Archives and Museums Collections (Wang)
The Smithsonian Institution recently launched a new Collections Search Center which is a one-stop searching tool for the public to discover Smithsonian holdings from multiple libraries, archives and museums. Using open source software, the Smithsonian has created an Enterprise Digital Asset Network that supports faceted searching and data repurposing Web services. This fast growing system currently includes 2.3 million object records from more than 20 Smithsonian databases with diverse disciplines and specialties. This presentation will discuss how the project started, methodology and technology used, challenges encountered, and our future direction.
Developing Trove: The Policy and Technical Challenges (Jeffers)
In September 2008 the National Library of Australia embarked on a project to integrate its eight national discovery services. The integrated service, branded “Trove,” was formally released in November 2009 after six months as a beta service and is now a full production service. Trove is not only replacing the eight legacy services, but is improving the discovery experience for the Australian public and researchers by including more content and by allowing users to engage with the content. This presentation will describe the policy and technical challenges which were faced by the Library during this project, and will outline the Library’s plans for the further development of Trove.