Located on the ancient Silk Road in Chinese Central Asia, Dunhuang was a central destination for many nineteenth and twentieth century archeological expeditions. These expeditions dispersed tens of thousands of manuscripts and artifacts from Dunhuang and other Silk Road sites to libraries and collections around the world. One Dunhuang site, Cave 17, alone yielded 40,000 manuscripts now split between the National Library of China, the British Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg, and other smaller collections.

In 1994, the International Dunhuang Project, or IDP, was founded as an collaborative international effort to address the problems of cataloging and conserving these important artifacts. Centered at the British Library, IDP works to improve access to the various collections and promote research. In 1997, IDP began a program of digitizing the various collections; IDP's Web site, launched in 1998, has become an important venue for IDP to disseminate these images of scrolls, tablets, textiles and other objects.

As IDP expanded its online presence, the organization recognized the need to develop a more sophisticated Web site and asked Dynamic Diagrams to help. With IDP, we examined the ways that different users might navigate the collections. Some scholars might be looking for a specific scroll to study for their research. Others might be experts in a particular language or subject. At the same time, non-scholars might want to see where different sites were on a map, see historical photos of the digs, and find out more about them.

This made it important to show each item in several contexts — geographical (where it was found), historical (how it was found and where it is archived now), and scholarly (its actual date and meaning). The interface also had to successfully present many types of images, including maps, historic photos, thumbnail images in an index, and full size images of specific artifacts.

Knowing that the IDP database was a work in progress, we framed a design strategy that could evolve with the site. We placed all the site navigation menus at the top of the page to allow for flexible presentation of different types of information below them. We then created core layouts for the most important page types. For text-based pages our design allows IDP staff to easily flow in content. For the map and artifact pages, our designs couple images with descriptive text and special navigational options unique to viewing them.

An artifact page, for example, presents data about each artifact on the left and a large digitized image on the right. Thumbnail images at the bottom of the page show alternate views of the artifact. Depending on the artifact, these alternate views may include front and back views, close-ups of important details, and sequential images of long scrolls. The current view is indicated by a bar. All a user has to do to see an alternate view is click on its thumbnail.