IST-Data Services Blog

The Informatics Services team recently released the results of two major projects: a major redesign and refactoring of CineFiles and the new Botanical Garden Plant Propagation Information web site. Hot off the presses, iNews has published an article (Campus collections: New systems for education and outreach) describing the systems and the importance of collaborative teams to their success.

UC Berkeley is home to numerous world-class museums, visual resource collections, archives, and other collecting institutions. While campus museums have always placed a strong emphasis on the stewarding and safekeeping of these collections and on fostering collections-based research, increasingly their role in education and public service has grown. Recently, IST released two systems that highlight this trend: CineFiles (for the PFA Library and Film Study Center within the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive) and the Botanical Garden Plant Propagation Information web system (for the UC Botanical Garden).

On October 6, the CollectionSpace project team announced the 0.2 release of the community source collection management system.  As the news item states, this release:

allows users to login to the system, create a new intake record, and auto-fill intake and object identification numbers. Information groups within data entry screens can be collapsed and expanded to maximize screen efficiency (use the plus/minus signs to the left of the information group name; e.g. object identification information). Updates to the object, create new main page, and find/edit main page are also incorporated into this release.

Equally important, this release demonstrates that the project team is gaining momentum towards the version 1 release in June 2010.  The next release is intended to continue accelerating the pace of development and will include:

an expansion of the ID service to include a choice of sequential identification numbers; the first version of the vocabulary service, which will provide access to controlled lists; and support for acquisition.

Also tantalizing, the UCB services team is working on some of the important schema customization and multi-tenancy capabilities for the system.

Collections Trust, the organization behind Spectrum, has released version 3.2 of the UK Museum Documentation Standard.  According to an announcement dated September 8, 2009, from Gordon McKenna (International Development Manager for Collections Trust),

The new version has been updated to include further support for Revisiting Collections, an innovative methodology to help museums create services and exhibitions for diverse audiences. Other changes in the new edition include the revision of the Sources of Help and Advice sections, which include updated links to websites and publications providing further information on aspects of Collections Management.

The Revisiting Collections methodology is worth looking at more closely.  According to the web site

http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/increase_access/revisiting_collections/

Revisiting Collections … supports museums and archives to open up their collections for scrutiny by community groups and external experts and to reveal and capture histories hitherto hidden or ignored. A key strength of Revisiting Collections is that it provides a framework for embedding these new voices and their perspectives on objects and records directly within a museum or archive service’s catalogues and finding aids: ensuring that they become part of the story about the collections that is recorded and made accessible to all.

Collections Trust then has taken on the challenge of how to incorporate community (and other) annotations into the collection management system in a way that honors the contributor while protecting the information record of the museum.  The Revisiting Collections site includes toolkits and guides for museums and archives to use in their own efforts to explore bringing in such content.  While Spectrum is a documentation standard and not a specification for a collection management system, it is very refreshing to see an organization like this provide practical advice and tangible tools for the kinds of problems that museums, archives and libraries are facing on the ground today.

The CollectionSpace project team has released version 0.1 of its open-source collection management system for museums. This Hello World release focuses on tying the technology layers together around the function of basic object entry. Those interested in collections are encouraged to experiment with the Hello World release and provide feedback to the project team. CollectionSpace is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Read the iNews article for more information:

http://inews.berkeley.edu/articles/Aug2009/CollectionSpace

Also worth noting, Carl Goodman and Megan Forbes (of Museum of the Moving Image) recently visited the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles) and the the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  Their presentations are hosted on the CollectionSpace wiki and provide a great overview of where CollectionSpace is right now.  Here’s a link to the Getty presentation:

http://wiki.collectionspace.org/display/collectionspace/Getty+Presentation+July+2009

It’s great to see this first version which focuses on technical integration.  IST will work closely with the CollectionSpace project team, as well as with campus museums, to ensure that this solution will be one that helps us manage, study, and share the world-class collections for which UC Berkeley is responsible.