Kudos to the USHMM team! On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > Just curious, did you use Hydra for this project, or just straight > Blacklight without Hydra? > > Esp if not Hydra, what tools did you end up using for indexing your > content into Solr? (Only SolrMarc, all your content was already avail in > Marc?) > > > On 12/11/2012 11:10 AM, Levy, Michael wrote: > >> I posted the message below on the Blacklight Development group, and I was >> encouraged to share with code4lib, so I'm reposting with some minor edits: >> >> I'd like to share a Blacklight implementation at the United States >> Holocaust Memorial Museum that is available at >> http://collections.ushmm.org/**search<http://collections.ushmm.org/search>It's been in use in-house for about a >> year, with constant improvements and additions. >> >> First, a tremendous thanks and kudos to all of the people involved in the >> Blacklight project. I'm so grateful to everyone who worked on the project >> and to those who have helped me with Blacklight, Ruby on Rails, and >> SolrMarc. >> >> The various collecting units at the Museum use very different fields, >> labels, vocabularies, and spellings. I had a lot of fun mapping them and >> thinking about what sorts of fields might work together for searching. The >> catalog records sources include: a commercial ILS; a commercial >> collections >> management system; two completely custom desktop database applications; a >> spreadsheet; and a custom MSSQL database application. In addition, we have >> a system that manages digitized assets that supplies some data. >> >> Selecting a project based on Ruby on Rails came at a cost, including the >> learning curve involved with RoR and, moreso, due to the process of having >> RoR established with our IT infrastructure group. (Thanks go to our IT >> group as well!) >> >> I looked at some other really fine open source projects as well as >> commercial products. Blacklight seemed optimal for our case because it >> easily deals with any kind of metadata sources and it was a mature system >> with a vibrant user/developer community. >> >> I'll highlight a few interesting features. >> >> Our collections management system supports relationships between records >> including parent/child type relationships, e.g. between collection and the >> items that comprise it. Here is a collection that has one archival >> (document) collection plus several objects: >> http://collections.ushmm.org/**search/catalog/irn508676<http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508676> >> We also have another parent/child type of relationship, where a group at >> the Museum catalogs victim or survivor lists. I could import those, and >> because there's enough metadata to link to the archival collection they >> are >> part of, I can link them together. For example, this archival collection >> http://collections.ushmm.org/**search/catalog/irn508286<http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508286>is linked to a number >> of names source catalog records at the bottom, and each of those is linked >> to the archival record as its source. These are done by doing a separate >> Solr search for each item to see whether it's got a parent or children to >> display near the bottom of the record. >> >> Many years ago the Museum developed a geographic database. One area where >> the various collecting units catalog disparately is in location naming. I >> simply turned the names into a Solr synonyms file and then I highlight the >> snippets in the index/list view. So that way, if you searched for L'viv >> and >> you got a hit on Lemberg or Lwow or L'vov, you'd know why you got it. Same >> with Munich, München, Muenchen, Munchen, and for Lodz/Litzmannstadt. (Some >> day would be nice to have the name expansion be switchable on or off.) >> >> Thumbnail (and larger) images from the archival records and objects come >> from the collections management system for the Museum objects. Also >> finding >> aids for archival ("Document") records are currently managed in the CMS >> system as doc, docx, or xls files and are delivered through Blacklight on >> the detail page. For the photos and the historical film, the thumbnails >> come from other sources based on the two custom desktop databases >> mentioned >> above. >> >> We have thousands of hours of oral history testimony in many languages >> viewable from the Blacklight detail page as mp4 or mp3 files. The easiest >> way to get to those is by limiting Record Type to Oral History, and Online >> to "Yes": >> http://collections.ushmm.org/**search/catalog?f[di_available]** >> []=Yes&f[record_type_facet][]=**Oral+History<http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog?f[di_available][]=Yes&f[record_type_facet][]=Oral+History> >> >> I welcome feedback regarding the user interface, bug reports, and any >> other >> ideas you have, on the list or offline. (Plus I hope to meet some of you >> at >> code4lib 2013.) >> >> Cheers! >> >> >>