Viewshare

Viewshare offers a flexible way for cultural heritage organization offer interactive views of collections and collection data. Built on the open source Recollection platform, the tool excels at creating maps, timelines, and faceted navigation based on the rich metadata that accompanies cultural heritage materials.  The resulting visualizations offer the public new ways to interact with collection material and to think about them within the larger context of space and time. After uploading collections data (using MS Excel spreadsheets, XML MODS records, Dublin Core Data from an OAI Open Archives Initiative end point, and some Instances of ContentDM) curators can manipulate that data, select from a range of view options and then produce views that can be embedded into existing websites or shared. The site offers an excellent screencast that describes the thinking behind the tool and its functionality. 

For museum professionals, Viewshare's ease of use is extraordinary and the results are impressive. Without the aid of web developers or interactive designers, content experts from any type of institution can create attractive, flexible ways for visitors to experience an institutions collections and holdings.  Moreover, the Library of Congress makes Viewshare available as a free service (accounts can be requested through the website).