Join - South West Collections Explorer

Explore. Engage. Excite.

South West Collections Explorer opens a digital window onto museum collections. It is a one-stop shop for museum collections in the south west.

Your visitors can search across all collections or just within one museum’s collection. You can save and share your discoveries, engage in dialogue with the participating museums, and browse collections by theme.

Explore all collections, discover a deeper history and find artefacts usually reserved to the archives

Engage with participating museums, researchers and museum visitor of all ages

Excite a growing community by sharing collections, discoveries and more

Whether a visitor is searching for information about the South West’s natural history, looking for Roman remains for a school project, or searching for research materials, South West Collections Explorer can help. Gathering objects together puts the combined resources of several South West museums at visitors’ fingertips to help them find the useful, the wonderful and the surprising.

Information found is easily shared on social media or downloaded for future use.

Creating collections lets visitors create their own personal online resource to use and share with friends, hobbyists, classes and colleagues.

Museum visitors

Museum visitors can deepen their engagement by finding out more about objects and exhibits which spark their interest. A ‘My collections’ area is for visitors to save and share their favourite objects in themes and groups.

A group of visitors using tablets in the museum

Community groups

Community and educational groups are able to browse collections by themes, providing a rich source of inspiration and creativity.

Researchers

Researchers can search thousands of records across the south west and benefit from a researcher- friendly ‘hide collections’ feature.

Museum curators

Museum staff can engage in dialogue about artefacts, create themed collections, add to and share knowledge and information about collections, and digitise exhibitions. The API and widgets give easy ways to embed your collections data in other websites and apps.

A laptop showing the collections website

Making collections available to all

Search collections across the south west.
Museum collections from the south west are all in one place. The depth of the search function across all collections provides professional researchers, casual browsers and museum visitors with a wealth of results.

Lively and engaging results

Records can include embedded YouTube videos, Soundcloud audio files, SketchFab 3D scans and links to external websites including online shops. Object data can be updated each quarter with new and amended records and images.

Widgets

Widgets allow the creation of web code to capture selected object data. The code snippet can then be used elsewhere to give another website a window into the collections with minimal effort.

API

The API allows museums and others to extract object data and embed it in other websites or digital products. The API can provide a data feed to external resources and is fully documented.

Bespoke South West Collections Explorer subsite

Having a South West Collections Explorer subsite gives a branded collections web presence which carries over the institution’s look and feel. It needs minimum resources to create an effective online tool.

Add Your Museum's Collection

Collections Explorer is a wonderful way to showcase responses from visitors. It validates their knowledge and experience. And it’s a way of using the words of relatively small groups to illuminate – again, to all kinds of people - how relevant this museum and our collections are today.

Ruth Gidley, Community Participation Officer

South West Collections Explorer is a valuable platform for providing digital access to our collections. We have used it to showcase a selection of star items from across our holdings. It has helped us to reach audiences who do not engage with museum objects in more traditional ways.

Amal Khreisheh, Curator of Archaeology

See it in action

One-off charge

Standard

£ 150 (excluding vat)

Content featured in South West Collections Explorer and findable as a digital resource. Provide object data and linked images to have your collections visible, searchable and collected in the main website.

Ideal for small collections, larger collections seeking to maximise their visibility and those needing a web resource without the commitment of a full website.

What’s included:

Data and images added to South West Collections Explorer
Included in search
Make your collections visible and have a digital promotional tool
an be found, used, and shared by visitors in ‘My Collections’
Include links to online shops and other resources
Use the API or widgets to feature your collections in other websites or apps
Add new records each quarter

One-off charge

Full collections website

£ 2,500 (excluding vat)

Everything included in the Standard membership plus a complete sub-site connected to South West Collections Explorer giving you the benefits of a branded collections website combined with the findability of a larger website.

Ideal for Larger collections, museums wanting their own branded collections website and specialist collections.

What’s included: as standard, plus..

Branding – logo, background colours choice of fonts
Apply your own domain name eg: collections.mymuseum.org.uk
Directly link to your own branded records and search results online and in gallery
Enhance your web presence with a linked online collections database
Engage with visitors through comments and sharing
Create supporting pages using WordPress

Get in touch

If you’d like to know more please contact us. We aim to reply to all enquiries within five working days.

Fill in the online form or call 01392 265303 or 01392 265983

Cultural collections. Created by you, curated by everyone.