Work is underway to revitalize the West Beyond the West portal to better assist users in discovering British Columbia’s rich digital treasures. Here’s how it will work:
- In partnership with Canadiana.org, West Beyond the West will utilize the Canadiana Discovery Portal’s API (application programming interface) to perform a scoped search of the Canadiana metadata index. What this means is that every time a user performs a search from the West Beyond the West portal they will gain access to all the BC related digital collections available through Canadiana. See a complete list of Canadiana contributors here.
- In addition, the BC Digitization Coalition is working to increase the number of collections indexed in Canadiana by taking on the work of transforming select BC digital collection metadata into Canadiana’s CMR format, thereby further enriching the WBTW portal with exciting local collections.
- The Coalition will also be launching a hosted instance of the Digital Collection Builder (DCB) this year. In addition to providing a simple and cost effective digital collection hosting service for smaller memory institutions, the DCB will have built-in the ability to export metadata in the Canadiana CMR format for ease of ingesting into the Canadiana search engine.
Planned Services - 2012
To learn more about these upcoming services see the Final Report of the Portal Working Group.
Want to have your institution’s digital collections discoverable in the West Beyond the West Portal? Contact us for more information.