towards a common danish infrastructure

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Towards a common Danish infrastructure for collections

management, aggregation and dissemination

Christian Ertmann-Christiansen & Henrik Jarl Hansen

Sharing is caring: Digitized cultural heritage for all

11. November 2011

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Towards a common Danish IT infrastructure for museums- the next generation

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Sharing and caring Sharing• Business processes• Standards and practices• It development efforts• Source code• Content• IPR

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Shared business processes The five pillars of museum administration• Research

• Collection

• Registration (collections management)

• Preservation / conservation

• Dissemination

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Shared business processes

Sharing is the law of the land

§ 11 State and state subsidized museums shall report objects and documentation to the national registries of cultural history or art history.

§ 39 The minister of culture keeps a registry of cultural history and a registry of works of art. The minister makes the registries accessible to the public and relevant authorities.

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Shared standards and practices

Building on prior work• A history of cooperation• A previous collections management system

(DMI)• A national standard (Danish Museums’

Documentation Standard)• An online registry of art history developed at

the National Gallery

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Shared standards and practices

Room for improvement• Establishing the registry of cultural history• Abolishing manual processes

- Doing away with redundant labor- Complete digital workflow- Avoiding on site software maintenance

• Deliver collections management to museums as a service in a web browser

• Published knowledge is immediately accessible to all

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Shared IT Architecture

The solution• One shared online system providing three

services- Regin (collections management and reporting)- Art Index Denmark (art registry)- Museums Collections (cultural history)

• One shared database• Shared source: open source software• Tools for sharing: content for museums’ web

sites drawn dynamically from the database

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Shared efforts

Usability and user-driven development• Usability tests• Workshops• User feedback from support hotline, teaching

courses and meetings

• Greenland• Faroe Islands

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Shared IT ArchitectureRegin Museums

’ Collectio

ns

Service layer

Database

Art Index Denmark

Foreign system

Xml-import/export

og webservices

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History

• Winter 2003 requirements specification• February 2004 first version of the system

• Regin & Museums’ Collections

• Autumn 2004 version 1.1• Spring 2005 version 1.2

• XML import/export

• Spring 2007 version 2.0• Integration of Art Index Denmark• Web services

• Autumn 2011 version 2.2• Improved security and user-request changes

• Spring 2014: The new museum database

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Shared security

• Accessibility 24/7/365 (99.7%)• Redundancy

Disks Power supply Network But: not the museums’ internet connections

• Monitoring• Incident response 24/7/365• Backup daily• Professional service provider

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Sharing content

Regin

Museums’

Collections

Servicelag

Museums’Database

Art Index Denmark

Libraries’Database

Archives’Database

Servicelag

Servicelag

ArchaeologyDatabase

Servicelag

Artists in Skagen

A regional history

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Sharing content• 115 collections in Museums’ Collections• 68 collections in Art Index Denmark• 9 museums in Regon (= Regin Greenland)• 10 museums in Regfo (= Regin Faroe Islands)

• 143,000 works of art in Art Index Denmark• 71,000 with photos

• 2.3 mio. objects and 142,000 case files published in the Museums’ Collections

• 423,000 with photos

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Challenges

• Sustainability

• Getting everyone on board

• IPR

• International accessibility (Europeana)

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The backgroundanalysis and report

A new initiative on a common it-infrastructure • The work is in line with the national IT-strategy• Working Group commissioned by The Ministry of

Culture (2010-2011)• to analyze the museums collection management

systems and • to present a proposal for a national IT-

infrastructure• Participants: National Museum, National Art Gallery,

Odense City Museums, Thorvaldsen’s Museum, Heritage Agency and Agency for Libraries and Media (chair)

• Report April 2011• Heritage Agency has been tasked to manage the

process towards the new common system for collections management

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The new infrastructure is (also) a reaction to

Trends• Increased cost pressures on museums IT

budgets• The establishment of the ”National IT service”

has generally meant fewer IT staff at the state museums and institutions

• An increasingly diversified IT landscape as the museums develop local solutions

• Use of unnecessary resources by lack of scale of joint procurement

• Fewer recourses in general in cultural institutions

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The task The Heritage Agency has been tasked: • To consolidate the museum’s collections

management systems towards a common infrastructure

• The consolidation is implemented by following the recommendations to modernize the current Regin system plus add functionality for object location solutions and digital resources

• To establish a new joint museum database to include all the museums central records.

• The new museum database are based on a new common conceptual data model

• To involve the museums in the consolidation and modernisation work.


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The work in progress We work towards common goals• The new system will need a new name

• Suggestions are very welcome The new data model must be compliant with

international standards like CIDOC CRM The data model must accommodate the union, not just

the intersection, of the metadata schemas it is based upon

The data model should be “future proof” (e.g. new art and media types)

• However, it is essential that the same museum object is recorded in the same way, whoever registers• But the approach may be different (resp. “case

registration” vs. “object registration”


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Project organisation

Steering committee

Steering committee

Data model WG

Data model WG

IT coordination

group

IT coordination

groupReference

group

Reference group

Ad hoc groups

Ad hoc groups

KUAS Project team

KUAS Project team


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Steering committee

Steering committee

Data model WG

Data model WG

IT coordination

group

IT coordination

groupReference

group

Reference group

Ad hoc groups

Ad hoc groups

KUAS Project team

KUAS Project team

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The data model WG Task • The WG (skilled users) will contribute to the

development of the new, common conceptual data model to accommodate data from the Regin, GenReg, Globus/Corpus and other.

• The work is estimated to take ½ year. Participants • Bodil Frandsen, Nordjyllands Historical Museum• Jens Toftgaard, Odense City Museums• Kim Brasen, National Art Museum• Rikke Ruhe, National Museum• Mette Høj, Roskilde Museum • NN, TMS – museum Facilitation• Process consultant• Metadata specialist

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Reference Group - an invitation

Task• The task is to follow the development of the of the new

data model and to give input to the development process

• We aim for a broad representation from different museum categories and sizes

• We want an open and involving process Output• The group should provide relevant input to the data

model WG and to the development of the model Participants• We invite 15-20 representatives from the museums to

join the group (please give me feedback) • We also plan 2-3 introductory meetings around the

country

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Steering committee

Steering committee

Data model WG

Data model WG

IT coordination

group

IT coordination

groupReference

group

Reference group

Ad hoc groups

Ad hoc groups

KUAS Project team

KUAS Project team

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It-coordination group Task• The WG (it-management) will become responsible for

coordinating the consolidation and converging towards a new common it infrastructure seen from the it-business side.

• CollectionSpace

Participants• Jes Gjørup, National Museum• Steen Weidemann, National Museum• Kim Gundersen, National Art Museum • Axel Kellermann, National Art Museum • Jacob Riddersholm Wang, Odense City Museums• NN, TMS museum

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Main steps

The process is estimated to take 3 yearsPhases• The new data model • Have a closer look on CollectionSpace to see if the

system can be completely or partially included as part of the solution

• Specification process• Development and technical installation of the new

system• Other special applications (for larger museums)

• Location system and media files (digital resources)• Conversion of data from the Regin system • Broader consolidation process

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Other topics Digital resources • Ting Community• Cultural Heritage Archive Opens System

(CHAOS) Development• International standards

• CIDOC CRM (data model)• Lido Schema (Athena) (sharing)• Europeana data model (EDM) (sharing)

• Open source • Semantic web• Cloud computing

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The economyThe total cost is estimated at 21,5 million DKK (2011 -2018)• Development costs over the first 3 years approx

13.5 million DKK• Operation and maintenance over the next 5

years approx 8 million DKK. Financing• The development is financed from central funds

(ministry)• The subsequent operation (and further

development?) will involve payment• There are more models for financing• The decision will be made before 2014, when

the system becomes operational

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Status

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Kick off meeting 28. September • Introduction for the WG’s

Invitation to tender for the consultancy assignments• Description of tasks New IT project model • Ministry of Digitisation• Next step is to adopt a new project model and to

report the project to a new IT board

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Keywords for the process

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• Modernisation • Innovation • Co operation • User involvement• Consolidation • Engagement • Communication • Sharing

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Next step: see you in the cloud

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More information

www.kulturarv.dk

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Contact

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[email protected] [email protected]

http://www.kulturarv.dk/kid http://www.kulturarv.dk/mussam

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