What are we asking Collections Management Systems to do today?

The content of my slides for a  brief presentation given at a workshop for collections management system developers on the use of software tools in documentation, held at the CIDOC 2018 conference, Heraklion, on 29 September 2018.

Comply with standards

  • E.g.:
    • CCO
    • CDWA
    • CIDOC-CRM
    • Europeana Data Model
    • Spectrum
    • CHIN
  • + national legislation and frameworks
  • + controlled vocabularies
    • Chenhall
    • SHIC
    • Getty (AAT, ULAN, TGN, CONA)
  • Etc. …

Manage collections

  • Procedures – e.g. Spectrum 5:
    • Primary procedures
      • Object entry
      • Acquisition and accessioning
      • Location and movement control
      • Inventory
      • Cataloguing
      • Object exit
      • Loans in (borrowing objects)
      • Loans out (lending objects)
      • Documentation planning
    • Other procedures
      • Condition checking and technical assessment
      • Collections care and conservation
      • Valuation
      • Insurance and indemnity
      • Emergency planning for collections
      • Damage and loss
      • Deaccessioning and disposal
      • Rights management
      • Reproduction
      • Use of collections
      • Collection review
      • Audit
  • Recording procedures
    • Stage reached
    • Authorisation
    • Populate reports
  • Or: Active workflow management
    • Define workflows and business rules in system
    • Workflow (data / authorisations required) embedded within system and user interface

Environmental monitoring

  • Record environmental data from monitors
  • Report on environmental data
    • Including visualisations
  • Integrate data
    • Building plans
    • Object data

Catalogue collections

Types of ‘object’

  • Physical objects
  • Born-digital objects
  • Conceptual objects
  • Library material
  • Archive material
  • Audio-visual material
  • Digital surrogates
  • Intangible cultural heritage

Contextual material

  • Agents (people and organisations)
  • Cultures
  • Places
  • Bibliography
  • Events
  • Sites
  • Vessels (boats / ships)
  • Historical information generated by collections management activities
    • Location histories
    • Loan histories
    • Use of collections
    • Exhibition histories
    • Operation histories
    • Research histories
    • Display histories
    • Publication histories (print, online, social media)
    • Conservation histories
    • Examination histories

Rich object information

  • Record attributions and/or authorities for individual assertions
  • Record detailed provenances as qualified links to authorities

Manage multimedia assets

  • Analogue
    • Still photography (negative, positive print, positive transparency)
    • Audio
    • Video
    • 3-dimensional reproductions
  • Digital (DAMS)
    • Still photography
    • Audio
    • Video
    • 3-dimensional models
  • Connect analogue originals to digital surrogates
  • Manage derivative generation
  • Import / export metadata from / to multimedia files
  • Record and manage media licences
    • Incoming (acquired by museum)
    • Outgoing (issued by museum)
  • Circulate loan images (prints, transparencies)
  • Manage media sales and downloads

Publish data

  • Internal
    • Reports
    • Data exports (word processor, spreadsheet)
    • Website (intranet)
  • External
    • Website (internet)
      • Static collection pages
      • Dynamic collection pages
      • Additional stories and groups
      • Managing web content
    • Content management systems
    • Blogs
    • Data aggregators → system integration …

Manage user-generated content

  • Feedback
  • Crowdsourcing

Integrate with other systems (interoperability)

  • Exports
    • Data dumps (CSV, XML, JSON)
    • APIs
    • Standard protocols (Z39.50, OAI-PMH)
    • Linked (Open) Data
    • Metadata standards (Dublin Core, LIDO, CIDOC-CRM)
  • Imports
    • Linked data authorities