A previous article on another digi blog illustrated how the commercial arms of the British Library and British Museum seemed to produce more efficient and innovative websites for users to browse and buy their digital wares.
Following on from this, Christie’s the Auctioneers have an excellent website which allowed potential customers and interested bystanders to browse the collections they sell, such as the the recently sold Yves St Laurent collection of art. You can visit the various lots via the Christie’s calendar of events.
As well as being well designed, there are plenty of easy-to-use functions to allow buyers to navigate through the images, including a slide rule which allows them to determine the price, and a plenty of meaningful categories (eg. painting, jewellery, furniture) which make it simple to navigate through the many thousands of images in each collection.
Again, certain public sector sites, for whatever kind of digital content, could take a leaf out of commercial sector’s book.