Searching and accessing collections

To be highly useful, collections need to be accessible to researchers—whether those researchers are 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 end users 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, and across one or many collections. CONTENTdm also auto-generates search terms based on existing metadata.

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. CONTENTdm Web Templates are easily localized to support languages other than English.

Create predefined searches and custom search pages with CONTENTdm’s Custom Query and Results. If you have archival images, you can provide one-click access to high-resolution JPEG, TIFF or MrSID images.

Save items for reference and presentations

End-users can save any media type and its metadata as a link in their CONTENTdm Favorites for presentations or reference. Items added to My Favorites are links to items within collections rather than the actual images. Items may be added to My Favorites whenever you search or browse a CONTENTdm collection. CONTENTdm Favorites may also be saved as HTML pages and sent to other CONTENTdm users who can view the items as long as they have Web access to the CONTENTdm server. Create custom slide shows of Favorites, view and rearrange images or compare two images.

Items saved as Favorites