Describing Collections So Visitors Can Find Them:

A sampling of ways to get materials on-line

Amanda Focke, Rice University

afocke@rice.edu

What are my options if I have…

No software budget, no IT support? A small software budget, some IT

support?No software budget, good IT support?A software budget, little IT support?What if we’re ready to try non-traditional

Web 2.0 approaches?

No software budget, no IT support?

Contribute your metadata and image files to existing projects which host materials for you, such as: Portal to Texas History

http://texashistory.unt.edu/ Museum of Houston

Site hosts Dublin Core metadata and image files related to Houston History, run by Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, hosted at Rice University.

http://www.museumofhouston.org/ We’ll also discuss Web 2.0 options later.

Small software budget, small IT staff?

Traditional database with content management software Structure your own data in a common database

(Access, FileMakerPro) Couple it with a content management system, such as

Cold Fusion (proprietary) or Plone (open source) Have an IT person to put it together in a nice web

presence (Staff costs) You can contract IT services to help set this up and

maintain it as needed if you don’t have enough in-house IT.

Small software budget, some IT support? Museum database template exporting XML On-line Archive of

California (OAC) Digital Asset

management Database (DAMD) built on FileMaker Pro

Exports to easily shareable XML formats such as METS

Use tool to share materials on your own site

FREE to cultural organizations

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/moac/

Small software budget, some IT support Past Perfect software

http://www.museumsoftware.com/ Turnkey system for internal management plus web

presence– circa $870 plus $420 for Virtual Exhibit module

Investment is in the software, would not require sophisticated IT to keep it running.

“The company was founded in 1996 with the mission to create affordable software products for museums. Our major software package is PastPerfect Museum Software. In addition we have Virtual Exhibit, a web site design program, and other add-on products including Multi-media, Imaging, Scatter/Gather, and Barcode Printing. . .6000 museum clients worldwide.”

Catalog archives, art, archaeology, geology, historic objects, library materials, music collections, natural history, oral histories, and photographs

Past Perfect 4.0 Art Object data entry screen

Past Perfect Virtual Exhibit example

Institutional Repositories (IR)

CONTENTdm software cost and purchased IT support cost

DSpace no software cost but potential for high IT staff cost

CONTENTdm

A turnkey proprietary on-line content management system which looks quite good on-line straight out of the box and is commonly used.

Buy software and support, host on your own website.

Allen County Community Album http://contentdm.acpl.lib.in.us/index.php(CONTENTdm software)

Allen County Community Album (CONTENTdm software)

Browse screen

Allen County Community Album (CONTENTdm)

Item screen

Content DM data entry

Examples of ContentDM working screens from http://www.contentdm.com/help4/acq-station/entering4.html

CONTENTdm internal search screen

CONTENTdm collection admin screens

DSpace and other open source IRs

Open Source, so the software code is available free. The investment here is IT staff time to set up and administer the system on your website.

Tech support comes from the community of users, often via listserv communications, blogs, wikis. (You can’t “buy” support, you rely on the community.)

Code can be edited / tweaked to your liking (as long as you have the skills to edit the code).

Other open source IRs: Greenstone Fedora And more…

DSpace cont.

DSpace uses Dublin Core for the data structure. It houses many kinds of file formats. It is Open Archives Initiative (OAI) compliant. It does some preservation tasks with the files,

such as running check-sum reports. Item descriptions can currently be entered via a

form, but to enter full descriptions takes a two step process – a little clunky.

DSpace data entry form

How Rice gets around DSpace’s clunky entry process / form

DSpace administrator does a batch upload of digital files & data from a spreadsheet

Once on-line, getting the word out

Share finding aids with a consortia such as Texas Archival Resources On-line Hosts archival finding aids posted in EAD format http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/about.html

Share your materials with relevant consortia using OAI Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative http://www.thdi.org/ See also initiatives for your type of museum

No software budget, no IT help, but interested in a Web 2.0 social tagging research project?

“steve: the art museum social tagging project” Participate in this project researching social

tagging for museum collections, which will share its findings with traditional metadata community

http://www.steve.museum/index.php Upload image files and descriptions, then let the

users apply tags. Steve staff conducts research, funded in part by an IMLS grant.

steve: the art museum social tagging projecthttp://www.steve.museum/

steve: the art museum social tagging projecthttp://www.steve.museum/

Join the steve discussion groupDownload the free tagging tool (software)

and participate!

No IT help, no budget, and interested in a more casual, Web 2.0 site?

For image files, try Flickr http://www.flickr.com/

Pros: It’s free! It’s easy! Your audience can interact! See Library of Congress’ pilot at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/collections/72157601355524315/

Cons: Not formally part of museum domain, doesn’t have a research agenda

Flickr

Flickr

Tags & CommentsCollections & SetsMaps & GeotaggingFlickr GroupsThe Commons

http://www.flickr.com/commons

Flickr Tags & Comments

Flickr collections and sets

Flickr Maps and geotagging

Flickr Groups

Mayborn Museum in Waco, TX http://www.flickr.com/groups/maybornmuseum/

Flickr Commons