Development of iNQUIRE prototype site for the RKD

Earlier this year we were honoured to work with the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) to develop a prototype site for them to allow online access to some of their magnificent artwork collection. Located in The Hague, the RKD is home to the largest art history center in the world, specializing in documentation, archives, and books on Western art from the late Middle Ages until the modern era. Much of their content has been digitized and is available on the RKD website, with their main aim being to collect, categorize, and make art research available, most notably in the field of Dutch Masters.

The prototype site developed by Armadillo uses iNQUIRE, our digital discovery framework, to deliver a fast and fluid search and discovery experience. The site makes use of extensive facet and tag based searching in both Dutch and English. Naturally the site also leverages the IIIF Image API.

iNQUIRE RKD Prototype Search Page
iNQUIRE RKD Prototype Search Page
iNQUIRE RKD Prototype Detail Page
iNQUIRE RKD Prototype Detail Page

Museums Association Conference and Exhibition 2017: Microsoft Surface Studio Videos

Thanks to everyone who visited our stand at the Museums Association Conference and Exhibition 2017, it was great catching up with old friends and making some new acquaintances. A big thanks must go to Microsoft for the loan of a brand new Surface Studio, which allowed us to demonstrate the Saint John’s Bible Turning the Pages in 4K UHD, needless to say it looked stunning! We made some short videos at the conference, and also back at the office as we couldn’t resist trying some of our older Turning the Pages books on the Surface Studio to see how they looked, again the superb quality of the screen really gave them a new lease of life.

iNQUIRE Now Available on GitHub

iNQUIRE is a digital research platform, designed to surface any digital repository using any metadata schema. Coded in ASP.NET MVC and with a responsive HTML5/Knockout frontend, it utilises the power of a Solr index via RESTful requests. It’s a customisable framework designed to fast-track your digital access ambitions, whatever file formats, schemas and repositories you use. Now supporting the IIIF Presentation API and Image API. The code has now been made available  on GibHub.

Bodleian Digital Library Launched

The Bodleian Library have launched their new unified digital collections platform, Digital.Bodleian, powered by iNQUIRE. For the first time, it is possible to search and browse the Bodleian’s online special collections via a single interface. The site was launched at an event in the new Weston Library, with a lecture by Bruno Racine, president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (whose Gallica is a well-established giant of digital library collections), and a speech by BDLSS’s own Lucie Burgess. Go and have a have a look at the Digital.Bodleian website!