A few minutes ago the following email arrived with some details. Bottom Line. It was built using open-source technology.
The E-Mail Reads:
In implementing this new Collections Search Center, the Smithsonian reviewed a number of commercial and open-source products. The functional requirements included the support of faceted metadata searching, Boolean / simple search logic, synonym/stemming matching, proximity matching, customizable relevance ranking, and highlighting display capability. This system will need to support a wide range of documents and objects from libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs). In the end, the Smithsonian selected the open-source Lucene/Solr indexing software for the project.
The Lucene/Solr search engine has offered the Smithsonian a flexible and scalable indexing environment to support the fast growing online collections served in the new search center. The Smithsonian has refined and enhanced the online display by programming in a Java environment. MARC records and SQL data from more then 40 data sources and databases were extracted and mapped to a common data format and ingested into the Lucene/Solr index. Future data ingests are planned from other data sources with different formats. We developed a Smithsonian Metadata Model which is designed to handle a large variety of data from different database from library, archives and Museum systems and subject expertise from art to natural and space sciences.
We do not currently support OAI at this point.
Thanks for the answer and to Sarah T. for getting it to us in an expedited manner.
To access the mobile version, you can use the same URL: http://collections.si.edu/ and it should automatically recognize and redirect to the correct version. If it doesn't work or you want to go direct, click here.
The FreePint Family is a family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success.
'FreePint... provides most of my professional development because it won't come through work and [other resources] just don't cut it.'
FUMSI Forum: Do you have a research question? Post it to the FUMSI Forum, where professionals share Q&A and useful tips on how to Find, Use, Manage and Share Information. It's free.
FreePint Shop:
VIP LiveWire:
