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Features

Web Catalogue Pages
The web catalogue consists of a search page, a results display page, an object detail page, and an image page. There are also numerous administrative pages (behind the scenes) for setting security, permissions, importing, configuring, and indexing your data for fast searching.
Look and Feel
We can configure your MuseumHosting web site to closely (maybe not exactly) match the look, feel, and style of your institution's principal web site. You can have a customized header, footer, and side navigation panel for all your museum web catalog pages.
Custom Text
Don't like the wording of a button? Or a prompt? A sentence or paragraph? All text words and sentences in the web catalogue are customizable.
Data
The data to be used in your web catalogue can be any subset of your current museum collections management database. You determine which data and images to send us. Sensitive data (appraisals data, object location data, human osteological material, and the like) are best omitted from a public catalogue. However, if desired, these records can be included and access controlled via security measures described below.
Public vs Private
Want a private-only web catalogue? Or a semi-public or semi-private catalogue? Security features permit limiting the pages, collections, and fields that visitors can search or view. Visitors can be assigned a user account and password. Permissions can then be configured to limit what they can search on and view. Or, don't configure any security settings and make the data fully public.
Security
Configure security settings for private or partial-private web catalogue to control access to pages, collections, and fields. You control who has searching or reporting access to specific fields. Collection level security is already in place for when multiple collections are implemented. (Multiple Collection functionality is planned.)
Fields
Fields can be given any name. Fields can store up to 65,535 characters/bytes of data. Multi-valued fields are handled with any delimiter in your data.
Browse
User doesn't know where to start? Browse allows the visitor to peruse the entire collection. Nothing to search on! Just start browsing the collection. More suitable for smaller collections than large ones. Only suitable for completely public catalogues.
Basic Search
You will determine which fields are searchable, and how they are to be searched. Whether they are keyword, term, or ID searchable. Search values can be selected by the visitor from a pick list on the search window (best only for fields with few terms), or from a pick list in a pop-up window (best for fields with numerous terms).
Advanced Search
Advanced search builds on all the functionality of Basic Search. The researcher can use one, several, or many fields in their search. Logical boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT, are incorporated into searches that also allow for exact matching and substring (contains, or LIKE) queries. Furthermore, NULL searching permits the researcher to locate objects in the collection for which no data value has been assigned to specific fields.
Date Field Searching
Search objects by year limiting by lower and upper bound dates.
Term Field Searching
Search objects choosing terms from a list of the terms actually used in your data.
Display Formats
Search results can be displayed in list format (vertical with image thumbnails and summary description) or in "lightbox" format (image thumbnails with caption below). Some visitors may only want to view five or ten records at a time. Others may have super fast internet connections and want to see twenty-five to fifty records and thumbnails at a time. The visitor has control over how their search results are displayed.
Sort Results
Don't like the way the search results sort? The web visitor can sort by any field(s) (that you choose) in your database. "Natural" sorting on the Accession Number, or Object ID field has been implemented.
Jump To
The user can quickly navigate to specific records, even when the search results in thousands of hits. A "Jump/GoTo" button lets them specify the record or page number to view.
Detail Links
On the detail page, you can specify which fields have their data terms hyperlinked. Allow your visitors to click on the term and instantly initiate a new search so as to rapidly navigate and explore your collections data.
Data Entry
Create, edit, and delete object records on-line without the need for data imports. The beginnings of a simple Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS) or Collections Management System (CMS).
Vocabulary Control
Allow the use of controlled (non-hierarchical organization, or "pick-lists") vocabulary in data entry. A necessary component of a data entry module.

Features Under Development

Lists
For private web catalogues, researchers will want to save searches as lists. Lists can be either static (keys are saved) or dynamic (query is saved). List functionality will permit manual editing, re-ordering, and management/organization of lists by user staff/researchers. List operations including intersect, union, and deletion, will be added to give staff and researchers more control to ask meaningful questions of the data.

Features Planned

Keyword Search
Don't know which field to search on, but know the word? The MuseumHosting web catalogue can be configured to perform a keyword search across one, several, or all of your data fields. If desired, stop lists and synonym lists are available for you to configure.
Multiple Collections
Presently, MuseumHosting only handles a single collection. Multiple collections will allow the web visitor to search across however many, or few, collections they choose to query from your institutional data.