Testing the Europeana Search Widget

Disclaimer: I work for Europeana. But this is still great and I would have blogged about it anyway!

I was prompted by a new blog post from my former Kew colleague Anna Saltmarsh – Plants to pixels: enhancing access to Kew’s herbarium collections – to have a closer look at the Europeana search widget. It can deliver targeted search results directly on external pages – everything from private blogs to institutional data provider websites. There’s a really handy wizard that lets you create your own widget, with different themes and styles to suit most needs. Crusially though you can also tap into the power of the Europeana API to control what is displayed and what your users can then search for.

Here’s an example of the code that allows you to quickly and easily search Kew’s content, in this case looking for palms:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.europeana.eu/portal/themes/default/js/eu/europeana/min/EuSearchWidget.min.js?sw=true&query=palm&qf=DATA_PROVIDER:{Royal+Botanic+Gardens%2C+Kew}&withResults=true&theme=dark&v=2"></script>

And a live example, looking at user-contributed content to the Europeana 1914-18 project: