Supporting public browsing of an art gallery collections database

Abstract

Increased public awareness and usage of the Web suggests that a commensurate Web presence is required from providers of cultural heritage information such as Galleries and Museums. While galleries have traditionally supplied goal-driven search facilities to specialists, they must now provide browsing and query facilities to casual users, with less precise information seeking requirements. Hypertext systems provide an appropriate technology to support the networks of associations required in order to provide path-based browsing. Requirements are twofold: browsing support for the users; and authoring support in the creation of pathways. In our prototype, we combine techniques from Hypertext and Information Retrieval to provide access to artifacts drawn from the costume collection of the Manchester City Art Gallery. We provide similarity based browsing, using terms from the artifacts’ metadata to calculate similarities. The approach is simple, yet effective as the results of a user evaluation show.