Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) -- Cross Catalog Searching Center

The SIRIS Cross Catalog Searching Center is a new feature for online Smithsonian content. As described on the main search page, the catalog allows users to search the 1.7 million records from all the various museums, libraries, research centers, and archives of the Smithsonian.

For my initial search, I looked up "elephant". I chose to search only for "documents" with images, and I received 283 results. The results are sortable by title or relevancy. They are also viewable by list, which includes metadata about the objects such as title, medium, and subject headings, or by grid, which shows the images. With the grid view, the metadata can be obtained by selecting an image. The provided metadata depends entirely from which museum the object originated and the whims of the cataloguer and digitizer. Unfortunately, other than the category for "data source," there is no information provided about the digital object.

Some images can be enlarged -- for example, the image to the left from the American History Archive Center can be enlarged from 371 x 573 pixels to 582 x 900 pixels. I think the scan is quite good -- you can clearly see the stains on the pages and the type font. Other images, such as a series of scanned stereo photonegatives (example at right) from same archive, are only 400 x 300 pixels when viewed and would probably be needed to be seen in person for research purposes.

The SIRIS Cross Catalog has definitely borrowed its "look" from Google. There does not seem to be a way to refine a search through categories such as date ranges, media type, or museum location until after a broad search is conducted. For instance, after entering "elephant," I can then sort my results by place, culture, and so forth. If the Smithsonian wants the catalog to be a one-stop search place for users (probably not, as each museum has its own catalog), then they need to add more search features to the main page. The site, while it has the appearance of being scholarly, with not a lot of design frills and quite a bit of metadata, requires some effort to narrow down the search to a specific topic or image. I would imagine this site would be ideal for someone who wants to search for a single topic that may be found across a wide range of subject areas. There is, however, no guarantee that the resulting electronic images will be useable beyond references for further research.