As part of our Future Museum master plan, Auckland Museum is updating its online collection database. Our aim to broaden and deepen visitors' engagement with the Museum's collections by making our digital records easier to find and more interesting to use.
Our journey into a more engaging digital future is happening in phases, so that we can meet priorities at the earliest opportunity.
You're witnessing the beta release
This is the beta release of our updated collections database. Over the coming weeks, we'll be steadily improving the behind-the-scenes functionality, and adding new images and records.
This update responds to two challenges:
- Providing online access to the public collections catalogue available as one encyclopaedic collection with a single search interface.
- Enabling direct access to live public collections catalogue as Linked Open Data.
What's new?
A single point of entry to our collections
We've redesigned our collections homepage. It now gives you a single point of entry to the collections via a keyword search, topic pages, and search highlights.
If you'd like to jump straight in, start with the keyword search which provides consistent access accross all collections and departments. If you'd prefer to explore, try our topic pages and search highlights for a guided tour of selected parts of the collections.
Improved records pages
Our record pages include new features to help guide you through the collections. You'll discover tags and searchable links for improved navigation and to demonstrate how the collection records are connected.
A lot of our data is open. You can download records and searches and then transform them, learn from them, and share them with others. We think this acccess to the raw data will be a big help to researchers.
More improvements on the horizon
We have exciting plans to improve our digital collections and will tell you about changes as they happen. Your feedback can help us to make good decisions; please contact us with your comments.