Historical Event-based Access To Museum Collections / quote 8 of 8
Limitation of faceted search systems
Although museum collections and their accompanying information are becoming available in digital forms, search is often limited to keyword search and browsing through predefined facets[1]. These access methods are not optimal; in keyword search, for example, it is not clear how the retrieved results are related to each other as they are simply presented in a list. Specifying a search query through facets resolves this problem, as it enables users to specify which relations they find relevant. However, facet browsing is often limited in that there is usually one set of facets that may not provide sufficiently finegrained access to all artefacts. Most museum collections, for example, are searchable through facets that describe meta-data that is available for every object such as title, year, artist, technique, dimensions and object id, but users may also want to search via locations that play a role in the object (for example because a location is depicted in the artwork, or because the birthplace of the artist might be relevant)