In 2018 all six museums that are a part of National Historical Museums moved in to the same database. Since then, the museum’s old online search services have been available to the public pending the development of the a new shared search interface based on the new database.
Now the first version of the new Search the collections is open to the public. In the new search service you can search the collections of the Economy museum, the Hallwyl museum, the Swedish History Museum, the Royal Armoury, Skokloster Castle and Tumba Paper Mill Museum. The collections from our newest museum, the Swedish Holocaust Museum, will also be searchable as the objects are acquired and registered. In Serach the collections you can find paintings, coins, medals, weapons, furniture, costumes, letters, curch art and Sweden’s largest collection of archeological material.
All the information in the database is free to use and all media is licensed under open Creative Commons licenses, wish means that anyone can download and reuse images of the museum’s objects and environments.
Technical improvements
New Search the collections has several technical solutions that improve the digital accessibility to the collections managed by the National Historical Museums. Each record in the database has a persistent identifier based on a globally unique ID. Links that lead to the records in the old search services will be taken care of and redirected when the old services are closed.
New Search the collections is based on the search platform Solr, which enables a modern and intuitive search behavior and provides fast searches. The new interface offers several different filter functions which, in combination with a powerful free text search, give the inexperienced user easy ways into the digital collections, without renouncing the advanced search possibilities that an experienced user wants.
Digital accessibility to the collections
New Search the collections is the foundation for digital accessibility to the collections at the National Historical Museums. It is the home for the digital collections and the source you can refer to. Now that this foundation is in place, we continue to work on spreading collection information, knowledge and media from Search in the collections to external search services, databases and platforms for open and available cultural heritage data. By delivering our data to more platforms than just our own, we make it easier for users to find the material and explore it in a larger context of other information.
Further development
Currently, it is possible to search for objects and media in Search the collections . Several other object types and datasets is to be added, for example archaeological contexts, museums accessions, people, places and historical events. New datasets, search filters, hit lists and functions that improve the interface will be added continuously. Visit Search the collections often to discover new functions.
The old search services
The museums’ old search services have not been updated since 2018 and the information may therefore be out of date. eMuseumPlus, which is the old search service of the Royal Armoury, the Hallwyl Museum and Skokloster Castle, will be closed before the turn of the year. The Swedish History Museum’s old search service will continue to be available online until all archaeological information is searchable in the new search interface.
Visit the new Search the collections.
(The search interface and the information in the database is all in Swedish. Please use your web browser to translate.)
