Discover

Exhibit Discover (/discover) is an exploration and curation hub that connects storytellers, educators, and researchers directly to tens of thousands of digitised cultural heritage artefacts from the world's leading libraries, archives, and museums.

With built-in AI semantic search, faceted media filtering, and 1-click curation, Discover eliminates the friction of hunting down raw IIIF manifest links across disconnected institutional catalogues.

Key Capabilities

Federated Collection Access: Instantly search items across world-renowned cultural institutions, including the British Library, Bodleian Libraries (Oxford), Cambridge University Library, University of St Andrews, Europeana, Internet Archive, the Getty, Smithsonian Institution, Vatican Library, and more.
Multimodal Media Search: Find high-resolution zoomable 2D images, interactive 3D models (.glb), archival audio recordings, and historical video footage.
AI Semantic & Vector Search: Search by natural language concepts, themes, and historical contexts powered by Google Vertex AI embeddings.
Entity & Topic Browsing: Explore controlled subject tags cross-referenced with Wikidata entities (QIDs).
1-Click Curation: Launch discovered items straight into the Exhibit Editor with a single click.

Searching Collections

Navigate to /discover from the top navigation bar.

Figure 1: Searching and filtering cultural heritage collections in Exhibit Discover

1. Keyword & Semantic Search

Type your query into the search bar at the top of the page. Discover supports both exact keyword matching and semantic concept discovery:

Specific Objects: "Attic neck amphora", "Gutenberg Bible", "Book of Kells"
Themes & Subjects: "Renaissance astronomy", "Ancient Greek music", "Botanical illustrations"
Materials & Formats: "Gold leaf manuscript", "Terracotta sculpture", "Stereoscopic photography"

When searching with natural language phrases, Discover uses vector embeddings to understand the underlying historical or aesthetic intent, returning relevant cultural artefacts even if your exact keywords do not appear in the title.

2. Filtering by Media Type

Use the media format tabs above the search results to narrow your query:

Filter	Description	Content Examples
All	Complete federated results across all formats	All digitised collection items
Images	High-resolution, deep-zoom 2D imagery via IIIF Image API	Illuminated manuscripts, maps, paintings, photographs
3D Models	Interactive glTF Binary (`.glb`) 3D objects	Sculptures, ceramics, fossils, museum specimens
Video	Streaming video canvases and documentary clips	Historical film, archaeological scans, lectures
Audio	Streaming audio recordings and musical compositions	Oral histories, ancient musical reconstructions, field recordings

3. Filtering by Institution

Use the Organisation dropdown to restrict results to a specific contributing repository or university (e.g. University of St Andrews, British Library, Bodleian Libraries). Each result card displays the contributing institution's badge and links directly back to their official catalogue record.

4. Topic & Tag Exploration

Discover continuously analyses collections using multimodal AI to extract and link common subject concepts:

Alphabetical Topic Browser: Jump by letter (A–Z, 0–9) to explore verified subject tags.
Tag Badges: Select any tag badge on an item card to instantly execute a filtered search across all items sharing that historical or thematic classification.

Curating into Exhibits

Once you find an item you want to include in an exhibit, Discover provides two streamlined workflows:

Figure 2: 1-click Add to Exhibit and Copy Manifest controls on a discovered item

Option A: 1-Click "Add to Exhibit" (Recommended)

On any item card, select the Add to Exhibit button.
Discover opens the Exhibit Editor at /exhibits/create, automatically importing the item's verified IIIF manifest.
You can immediately begin framing details, writing narrative commentary, and choosing your presentation template.

Option B: Copy Manifest URL

Select the Copy (clipboard) button on the item card.
The direct IIIF Presentation manifest URL is copied to your clipboard.
Paste the URL into the Add Item dialogue of any existing exhibit you are currently editing, or use it in external IIIF viewers (Mirador, Universal Viewer, Clover).

How Collections Are Indexed

On exhibit.so, the Discover search index aggregates public manifests contributed by partner institutions, public community exhibits, and open-access collections. Public exhibits created on Exhibit that are marked Public and allow duplication may be indexed to help other educators and researchers discover your work.