Alterian Web Content Management System (CMS)

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council

The British Museum

The British Museum implemented Alterian Content Manager as part of a number of new web initiatives. The new British Museum website incorporates a full re-design, and allows unprecedented access to the Museum’s collections online, including both data and images. The implementation of Content Manager has helped the Museum build and develop its web presence providing more efficient management and publication facilities. In addition, it allows for a more collaborative and dynamic approach to the web publication process.

Content Manager works alongside a bespoke publication engine and service bus commissioned from Atkins allowing the Museum to display its extensive collections to a wide online audience and integrate information effectively from other information systems. The Museum's collection database incorporates rich terminology resources to support searching using controlled terms. The solution incorporates the Museum’s ISO 2788 thesauri and includes relationships such as synonym, broader/narrower term and related term. So, for example, it is possible to retrieve “cups” and “flagons” by searching for "vessel".

The British Museum’s website currently sustains over 100 million hits per year. In the first phase, the Museum has made over 270,000 objects in its collection accessible online, many with accompanying images. The Museum will continue to publish records and images from its departmental collections during 2008 – 09. The website serves not only a large audience but also a very diverse one. The main website currently provides an effective way for visitors to plan their visits, discover what is happening at the Museum and to find out more about its most popular objects using the Explore section of the site. This uses data migrated from the former award-winning Collection Multimedia Public Access System (COMPASS). Along with the regular site visitor who requires information on the museum itself, there is another important group of website users; academics and curators, who require powerful investigative search capabilities to allow them to explore the collection.

“The Museum’s new website provides an exciting and intuitive insight into the Museum’s activities and allows anyone to explore the Museum’s wider collection through the internet. A primary goal was to provide unparalleled web access to the Museum’s extensive collection by building an interface to the Museum’s collection database system. Anyone, anywhere in the world who has internet access, can view our collection whether for research, inspiration or simply general interest,” Dominic Oldman, Deputy Head of IS, The British Museum commented.

“Alterian's easy to use and intuitive web content management system allows non-technical users to take control of website content” said David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian: “The British Museum now has the tools it needs to keep its site live and dynamic and display its wealth of artifacts in a timely and efficient style.”