Tag Archives: collections management systems

EODEM update 9

This is a very short post, to give a bit more information about release dates for EODEM importers and exporters in collections management systems.

  • EODEM will be included in the next release of Modes, version 1.6, due before the end of 2023.
  • Gallery Systems anticipate including EODEM in TMS Collections version 2024 (9.95), scheduled for release in May 2024.

I also gather that Axiell will be working on incorporating EODEM into Axiell Collections in 2024. And of course EODEM is already available in the current releases of MuseumPlus and musdb.

EODEM update 8 – launch

It’s been a while coming but … today, 1 September 2023, the CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group (DSWG) announced the launch of its Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model (EODEM) as a live, finalised standard. Specification files can be accessed via the project’s pages on the CIDOC website, and developers can obtain support via email.

The aim of EODEM is to save people working in museums from wasting their time continually cutting and pasting (or even worse, retyping) information between different collections management systems (CMSs) when they’re borrowing objects for exhibitions.

Continue reading EODEM update 8 – launch

EODEM update 7 – public beta

I’m delighted to announce that the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model (EODEM) public beta was released today, 22 May 2022, with an announcement made during a workshop for software vendors at the 2021 [sic] CIDOC conference. Specification files can be accessed via the project’s pages on the CIDOC website.

We now hope that vendors and suppliers of museum collections management systems and related software will help us test the model by starting to implement EODEM exporters and importers in their software. As well as the resources available form the specification page, you can obtain support via email, and we have a (currently very quiet) Slack workspace. And if you wish to get more involved in the finalisation of the standard by joining our monthly meetings, please get in touch with me via the contacts page on this site.

EODEM update 6

Work on the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model, EODEM, continues, and we’ll be hosting two workshops during the CIDOC annual conference, in a few days’ time.

We invite developers and suppliers of museum collections management systems to a vendors’ workshop at 14:00-17:30 EEST on Sunday 22 May 2022. The workshop will be hybrid: both online, and in Tallinn, Estonia. It will introduce the EODEM standard, mark its formal release as a public beta, discuss the challenges likely to be met in its implementation – and hopefully identify some solutions to those challenges.

If you develop or supply collections management software for museums, we hope to see you at the workshop; if you know someone who develops or supplies such systems, please pass this information on to them. Attendance is free of charge, and is independent of attendance at the rest of the conference. To reserve a place, please contact me.

If you’re attending the conference, and would simply like to learn more about EODEM, then please come to the CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group’s session at 16:00 EEST on Tuesday 24 May; again, this will be hybrid, both online and in Tallinn.

EODEM update 5

Development of the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model (EODEM) reached an important milestone yesterday with the formal release of version 1.1 of the LIDO data-sharing standard. This is significant because EODEM is defined as a profile of LIDO – that is, an EODEM record comprises a fixed sub-set of LIDO data elements and values. And this in turn means that, if a collections management system vendor implements a LIDO 1.1 importer or exporter, they will have done the bulk of the work required to produce an EODEM importer or exporter.

Continue reading EODEM update 5

EODEM update 1

I was very pleased to hear EODEM referred to last week,1 during the third Balboa Park Online Collaborative webinar on Dreaming of a New Collections Management System (a really interesting series, well worth watching if you haven’t already, and have the time). But then, as it was Richard Light speaking, and he’s been hard at work recently on building an EODEM importer / exporter for MODES, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising – but this made we realise it’s time to share where we are with the EODEM project.

Continue reading EODEM update 1
  1. EODEM is the CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group’s project to create an Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model, and see it implemented in collections management systems worldwide – but then, you knew that. []

What is EODEM?

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I’ve been very quiet over the last year: I haven’t really been able to face social media since the pandemic started. But when I have tweeted, it’s usually been about conferences – and I’ve been making much of something called EODEM. This post is to explain what EODEM is, and why I think it’s important.

Continue reading What is EODEM?

Collections Trust 2020: systems, interoperability and aggregators

Conferences have not been the same this year: I’ve particularly missed the opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues, and the random conversations and encounters in queues that compensate for the quality of the coffee one is waiting for. We have been left with the formal proceedings, and I wanted to say something about the papers presented at the (comparatively) recent Collections Trust conference, held online over two half-days on 1 and 2 October 2020.

Continue reading Collections Trust 2020: systems, interoperability and aggregators

Send me your loan forms!

We’re coming up to the autumn conference season, and once again I’ll be going to the annual conference of CIDOC, the international committee for documentation that forms part of ICOM, the International Council of Museums – this year it’s in Heraklion, in Crete. Before the conference proper, I’ll be running a workshop on Sunday 30 September, along with colleagues from CIDOC’s Documentation Standards Working Group, for developers of digital collections management systems, focussed on the development of ‘EODEM’, an Exhibition Object Digital Exchange Mechanism.

We plan to kick off the development of a mechanism that lets users of different collections management systems share as easily as possible the information about their objects, and those objects’ requirements, that is needed when objects are lent from one institution to another. The lender should be able to just press a button to share the data, and the borrower just press another to import it into their system. This would eliminate a huge amount of the retyping that goes on when different museums exchange information about objects that they are lending and borrowing.

First, though, we need to identify the information that museums need to share. We’ll base the core information that identifies and describes the objects themselves on an existing standard, Object ID; but we need to know what information museums needs to share about borrowed objects’ requirements.

And here’s where I hope you can help us: the easiest way to do this will be for us to look at the information different museums request when they borrow objects. This is often requested using a ‘loan object information request form’, which the lending museum is asked to fill in for each object, giving its environmental needs, minimum security levels, etc. We’d like you to send us a copy of your museum’s ‘loan object information request form’ (blank, of course: we really don’t need sensitive individual object information, just the empty form so we can understand what you need to know). Drop me a line in the comments box at the foot of this page, and I’ll email you an address you can send the form to.

Once we have the forms, my colleagues and I will collate them all, draw up a list of the different pieces of information museums are asking for, and pass it to the system developers to incorporate into EODEM.

If all goes according to plan, future generations of registrars, exhibition organisers, and documentation staff will be forever in your debt!

One month, five events

July was a busy month – so busy, that I’ve only now finished writing up notes from the five different conferences, workshops and meetings that I attended in just over three weeks. But why spend so much time out of the office? Continue reading One month, five events