Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

EMu on the WebPast, Present and

FutureAlex Fell

KE Software

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Past

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

KE TexHTML

• 1993-4 (ish). About the time the first browsers were developed.

• One of the first web interfaces to a database.• Cutting edge for it's time.• Became very complex over the course of it's lifetime.

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

KE TexHTML – Victoria Parliament

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Present

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Texxmlserver and PHP

• Developed initially in 2001.• Aimed to simplify web development by using existing

technologies (XML over HTTP and PHP).• “Standard Interface” customisable by the customer.• “Custom Interface” to allow more complex pages to be

developed by KE Staff and external developers.

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

“Standard” PHP Interface

• Presents a configurable, catalogue-centric view.• Very quick to set up, so a collection can be on the web very

soon after going live with EMu.• Limited amount of customisation available.• Common (shared) presentation layer makes extensive changes

hard because all users of the standard interface may be affected.

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

“Custom” PHP Interface

• Page design and operation not at all defined.• Pages can be made to any brief, so no limit on design or

functionality.• Because no design / layout work is done for you, pages take

longer to produce and complex pages often require a developer.• Many of our older customers now use plenty of the custom

interface as part of their sites.

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

KE Mapper

• Gives a spacial representation to the collection.• Plots items on a map.• Most easily applied to Natural History collection as locality

information (lat / long etc.) comprises part of the collection information.

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

KE Mapper

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Object Locator• Like the mapper, but displayes the current location of objects on a

map of the museum.• Requires location records to be supplemented with spacial

information, but uses existing location database.

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Object Locator

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

KE Portal• Draws data from several separate databases.• Interface with many different databases (Texpress or otherwise)• GBIF, OAI, DiGiR, Darwin Core schemas supported.• In use at OZCAM, and of course, Manchester Museums

Unwrapped.

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

KE Portal – www.ozcam.gov.au

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

KE Portal – Unwrapped

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Future

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

PHP 5• Opportunity to re-write “Standard” and “Custom” interfaces (and

rename them)?• Break apart from the one-size-fits-all Standard Interface model?

Is ease of use balanced by extensibility in a shared code base?

• What should happen to existing PHP 4 interface?• Backwards compatibility?

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

JDBC• Working driver in development, in use with KE Vitalware• Better interface with database• Easier to use than PHP?• More transferable than PHP?

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Web 2.0?(what is it?)

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Community contributed information or narratives

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Narratives, descriptive keywords, opinions & comments(still narratives?)

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

Issues• What gets contributed?• Does it require museum approval?• If so, how should this be presented to the museum?• If not, what's the worst that could happen?• Should it be stored in EMu?

Collections Management Museums

EMu on the Web – Past, Present and Future

EMu on the WebPast, Present and

Future