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亞洲太平洋地區 (Chinese Traditional) 變更
CONTENTdm : Overview : End user experience

End user experience

Searching and accessing collections

To be useful, collections need to be accessible to researchers—whether those researchers are grade school students searching the Web, or sophisticated users of your password-protected intranet. Search features must be easy to use and return results rapidly.

CONTENTdm enables you to create predefined queries and customized interfaces to collections, and returns search results in less than one second from collections containing more than a million items. Search results provide one-click access to images, documents, audio or video files, and their associated metadata. End users who are unfamiliar with a collection can simply browse, rather than formulate specific searches. Zoom and pan features enable end users to see any image in more detail.

High-powered search features

Flexible search features include Dublin Core and Latin-1 character set support; Boolean operators; and a powerful advanced search option for users to search by defined fields, across all fields, by proximity, by date and across one or many collections. CONTENTdm also auto-generates search terms based on existing metadata.

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Advanced search page

CONTENTdm Web Templates provide flexibility for customization of collection Web sites and search results pages so data can be viewed in ways that best suit your collection. You can easily localize CONTENTdm Web Templates to support languages other than English. Currently, Web Templates are available in English, French, Spanish and German and can be localized to support other languages.

You also can easily create predefined searches and custom search pages with CONTENTdm’s Custom Query and Results. This enables collection professionals to follow a few simple steps to set up search queries that are appropriate for a collection and end user audience. This can be used to simplify discovery of a very large collection or to suggest discovery pathways based on experience.

Save items for reference and presentations

End users can save any media type and its metadata in their CONTENTdm favorites for presentations or reference. Items added to My Favorites are links to items within collections rather than the actual images so they are never out of date. Items may be added to My Favorites whenever you search or browse a CONTENTdm collection. CONTENTdm favorites also may be saved as HTML pages and sent to other CONTENTdm end users who can view the items as long as they have Web access to the CONTENTdm server. You also can create custom slide shows of favorites, view and rearrange images or compare two images.

My Favorites files have many uses. Instructors can distribute the digital items to students or post links on a Web site in support of other curriculum materials. Also, My Favorites files can be directly linked from course management software systems. My Favorites also can be used to create a shopping cart for submission to eCommerce systems. This allows organizations to retain unique identifiers for each item and ensure orders are filled correctly.

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Items saved as favorites

CONTENTdm also provides an easy to use “reference URL” for all items. This unique URL can be generated for any item when browsing or searching a collection. You can record this persistent, short URL for future use, ensuring accurate and consistent citation. This link always returns to the original digital file and metadata within the collection so context is maintained.