museum documentation today and tomorrow (and possibly the ...€¦ · new ideas: create once,...

Museum Documentation Today and Tomorrow (and possibly the day after that too...)

Nick Poole

CEO, Collections Trust

Contents

• Introduction

• What is a collection anyway...?

• How our organisations are changing

• What is Documentation?

• Trust and Trustability

• Strategic Collections Management

• SPECTRUM, COPE and the CRM

• The future of Documentation

• Further reading

About the Collections Trust

• Working with 23,000 museums in 18 countries worldwide

– Connecting people with collections

– Supporting professional development

– Building digital capacity

– Demonstrating the value of Collections Management

• We want to help as many museums as possible give as many people as possible the chance to learn about themselves and the world around them.

Discover Refine Manage Deliver Engage Improve

Acquisition

Strategic Planning

Research

Interpretation Collections

Management

Environmental Control

Integrated Pest Management

Integrated Risk Management

Collections Development

Disaster Planning & Resilience

Conservation

Loans & Mobility

Exhibition Planning

Digital Content

Web/mobile

Audience Engagement

Strategic Marketing

Outreach

Education/ Learning Support

Commerce/ retail

Fundraising

Business administration

Key Performance Indicators

Process improvement

Cost reduction

Collections Trust core competencies

Digitisation

Digital Asset Management

Licensing/IPR

Documentation

The Collections Trust’s role

What is a Collection?

Physical Collections


Administrative Information




Collections-based

Knowledge




Collections-based

Knowledge


Narratives



Digital Assets

Collections-based

Knowledge


Narratives



Digital Assets

Collections-based

Knowledge


Narratives

Physical surrogates (3D print)

Our changing role...

The role of museums has always been a balance between physical protection and facilitating access

We’re replacing access with activism, relevance, engagement & participation

To become relevant, the museum has to become responsive

The ‘traditional’ museum...

Most cultural organisations operate in ‘vertical’ silos

Education Management Collections Retail IT

The ‘responsive’ museum...

The visitor is

king

Collections

Learning

Retail

Online

Visitor Services

Facilities

Social

Mobile

It’s about finding the fastest, simplest way of giving people meaningful, emotional experiences

Not about partitioning peoples lives, but about letting them express the kind of connection they want to make (including being left alone & not having to connect to anything!)

I am...

A mum

A teacher

A casual gamer

Cold

Bored

An expert

What is Documentation?

Documentation is the process by which we record a set of assertions about a given thing in our collections...


What is it?

Where is it?

What is it made of?

Who owns it?

Why do we have it?

What is it connected to?

Who collected it? Where was it

found?

How big is it?

How much is it worth?


What is it?

Where is it?

What is it made of?

Who owns it?

Why do we have it?

What is it connected to?

Who collected it? Where was it

found?

How big is it?

How much is it worth?

Why should I care?

What does it mean?

What story does it tell?

What is its context?

How do I relate to it?

What makes it unique?

What does it help me

understand? Is it ethical/

political/ moral?


Our visitors must be free to wander the paths we create, create their own, or tell us why a path is broken and should lead somewhere else...


The aim of documentation is not the creation of fixed points, but to facilitate the museum in reflecting the changing nature of knowledge & understanding about our collections.


In a connected world, knowledge flows freely between contexts and communities, becoming greater & more valuable as it travels.

In the real world, museums remain among the most trusted civic institutions, more than banks, politicians, broadcasters, teachers and the church.

In a world of hyper-connected information, trust is a currency

Museums are rich in trust because of professionalism and accountability – which are expressed through Documentation, Conservation & Collections Management

The critical transition....

FROM

TO “I have status

because I am a museum...”

“I have status because of what I know, what I share and what I enable.”

Strategic Collections Management

• Not about practice for its own sake, but about designing an organisation that works well & works together

• Making decisions based on the needs of the audience and the organisation

• Ensuring effective management based on the right balance of skills, resources, systems and processes...

Users Politics Funding Culture

Organisation’s Mission Statement



Collections Management Policy




Care Use Learn Develop






People Processes Systems Info






Evaluation & improvement






Evaluation & improvement

Rich, meaningful experiences for users

The core elements of SPECTRUM

• SPECTRUM helps museums review their work with their collections, celebrate good practice and identify opportunities to improve!

• SPECTRUM Standard including translations/ localisations, SPECTRUM Digital Asset Management, the SPECTRUM Schema and the Archive of previous versions of SPECTRUM

• SPECTRUM Labs, including new ideas and potential applications of the SPECTRUM Standard

• SPECTRUM Resources which support the application of the standard

• SPECTRUM Community which includes anyone who uses the standard nationally or internationally

STANDARD

WORLDWIDE COMMUNITY (7,600)

COMPLIANCE (23,000)

GUIDANCE PDF/XML/PRINT

+ SCHEMA

NEW IDEAS

SPECTRUM Facts & Figures

• 8,000 licensed users

• 23,000 museums using SPECTRUM Compliant™ systems

• 17 SPECTRUM Partner systems

• Translations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Flanders, Germany

• Active communities in the Nordic countries

• Under development in Qatar and China

http://standards.collectionslink.org.uk

http://standards.collectionslink.org.uk/

http://www.vocman.com/cultureGrid

http://www.vocman.com/cultureGrid

New ideas: Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE)

• An object record is a nugget of digital content

• Able to be re-flowed dynamically across platforms

• Prepared for responsive design

• Collections that are mobile, social and in the Cloud

• “Get your content ready to travel anywhere, because it’s going to go everywhere” (thanks to Paul Rowe, Vernon Systems)!

New ideas: Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE)

SPECTRUM & the CIDOC CRM

CIDOC CRM

LIDO, ESE, ?

Abstraction layer

Collections

management layer

Data interchange layer

By mapping up to CIDOC CRM from SPECTRUM, we can support COPE by

supporting a richer & more future-proof data interchange layer

ENTRY-LEVEL ACADEMIC MID-CAREER LEADERSHIP LEGACY

CORE VALUES Integrity, accountability, openness, honesty, diversity, efficiency

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Housekeeping, handling, packing

Collections theory, research, documentation

Environment, IPM, security, labelling etc.

Strategic CM, Collections

development

Organisational knowledge

transfer, research

MANAGEMENT Time-

management Project

Management

PPM, Risk, HR, Finance,

Marketing

Strategic planning, advocacy

Continuity planning

SUBJECT EXPERTISE

Broad interest General subject

focus Practice-based

expertise

Specialist academic

knowledge

Subject knowledge

transfer

SOFT SKILLS Mentoring, facilitation, negotiation, communication, networking

Developing integrated skills

The future of Documentation?

There is a golden thread that connects the card-index cataloguing of the 1970’s with the world of linked open data

Documentation is about much more than cataloguing objects, it is what allows those objects to tell and re-tell their stories

In a connected world, it is the professionalism and accountability of our documentation & collections care which give us our trusted status

Practical Guides

• A Practical Guide to Collections Management

• A Practical Guide to Documentation

• Both available from Collections Trust (RRP £24.99)

• www.collectionslink.org.uk/shop

http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/shop

Thankyou!

www.collectionslink.org.uk/spectrum

@NickPoole1

These slides online at http://www.slideshare.net/nickpoole

http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/spectrum

http://www.slideshare.net/nickpoole

museum documentation today and tomorrow (and possibly the ...€¦ · new ideas: create once,...

Documents