A collection management system for museums A-Z (Art to Zoology)

Chris Hoffman and Marlita KahnUniversity of California, Berkeley

UC Berkeley’s collection management systems

CollectionSpace How to learn more

Specimen Management System for California Herbaria (SMASCH) (University & Jepson

Herbaria) PAHMA Collections (BNHM Consortium, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology) SAGE (UC Botanical Garden) UCMP Specimen Database (BNHM Consortium, UC Museum of Paleontology) Essig Specimen Database (BNHM Consortium, Essig) MVZ/Arctos Specimen Database (BNHM Consortium, MVZ) Biocode Specimen Database (BNHM Consortium) HERC Specimen Database (BNHM Consortium, HERC) History of Art Visual Resource Collection (HAVRC) (Department of History of Art) Slide & Photograph Image Retrieval Online (SPIRO) (Architecture Visual Resources

Library) CineFiles (Pacific Film Archives) Berkeley Language Center’s Archival Catalog & Circulation System (Berkeley Language

Center) Plus … Bancroft Special Collections and many others

Campus supports a broad range of collections, from Art to Zoology, but …

Too many aging legacy systems◦ Millions of objects, artifacts, specimens◦ Managed in about 20 different collection

management systems◦ Running on about 15 hardware platforms◦ Maintained by about 10 different technology

groups, with various degrees of technical experience

Inconsistent decision-making Insufficient and inadequate funding models

in a time when university funding is challenged

Does this sound familiar?

The beginning of a campus-wide structure for planning and decision-making

Collection Management

Systems

Taxonomy and Thesauri

Outreach and Data Sharing

Digital Assets and Content

Education

Archives and Libraries

Field Data Collection

Field Station Sensor Network

Exhibitions

Molecular Lab Information

Management

Geospatial Services

Criteria and weights◦ 40% Functionality◦ 30% Business case and sustainability◦ 30% Technology and architecture

Formal scorecard Natural history and other campus collections BNHM-IST Steering Committee decision to

adopt CollectionSpace BNHM Directors sign agreement

… is the key to sustainability!

Within the BNHM-IST Partnership Across campus Across UC system Nationally and internationally

CollectionSpace is an open source/open community web-based application for

the description, management, and dissemination of museum collections

information – from artifacts and archival materials to exhibitions and storage.

http://www.collectionspace.org

http://wiki.collectionspace.org

A platform for sharing collections information

Designed to address the needs of all museum domains from cultural heritage to natural science collections

Highly customizable and configurable Web-based Interoperable Local or hosted deployments Communities of practice

Focus on sustainability from inception An emerging foundation-like partnership Communities, collaboration, and consortia Consortial fund-raising Working with vendors and service providers Exploring boundaries (libraries, archives,

museums) Beyond higher education

No exotic technologies: just the Web HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Open source: Java, MySQL, JBoss, jQuery Web services (REST) and plug-in

architecture; enable data sharing and interoperability

Accessible: Works great with keyboard and assistive technologies

Addresses functional expectations for enterprise-class services ◦ secure, scalable, efficient

Web-services approach enables◦ re-use across multiple domain-specific activities

such as cataloging, accession, loans, controlled-vocabularies, etc. Each domain has specific needs, but share much

Art History may not need Stratigraphic-location

◦ mash-ups …and new applications not yet envisioned

Today:◦ Prevalence of content-centric applications◦Re-use is a necessity

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a natural platform upon which to build◦ Provides rich, flexible functionality

CMIS standards adoption (OASIS) -> emerging as abstraction layer

ECM ≠ WCM (web-content management)

For real SOA re-use:◦ Must align contracts (minimum requirement for

SOA to make sense in enterprise)◦ Should reuse code to save costs (realistic ideal)◦ May share actual deployments (hard: must align

schedules, ESBs, SLAs, cost models, etc.) None of this happens naturally, or for free

◦ Requires investment◦ Requires governance

How to do this in higher ed and across consortial projects?◦ No top-down authority as in industry

Schema model for a customized service deployment

HerbariaHerbaria

UCJEPSUCJEPS

Visual ResourceCollection

s

Visual ResourceCollection

s

History of Art VRC

History of Art VRC

Bridges services and UI layers Supports configuration and extensions

◦ hide/rename field names to match museum use◦ specify controlled-vocabularies and authorities

Allows integration with other systems via plug-ins and APIs

Integrated with CollectionSpace 1.x-2.0 planning

Principles for a campus-wide approach◦ Aggressive, agile, 80-20 approach◦ Careful resource planning◦ Resource commitments◦ Template-driven and document-driven◦ Paired deployments◦ Accelerated deployment timelines

Lead by Informatics Services team in IST-Data Services

Interaction with CollectionSpace developers Interaction with other CollectionSpace

deployment teams Data analysis and migration with functional

experts (open source ETL tools) Templates and documentation Testing and feedback to developers

DwC DescriptioncatalogNumber object_number accession.accession_id An identifier (preferably unique) for the record within the data

set or collection.institutionCodecollectionCode

responsible_department i.inst_name The name (or acronym) in use by the institution having custody of the object(s) or information referred to in the record.

collectionCode collection i.inst_name The name, acronym, coden, or initialism identifying the collection or data set from which the record was derived.

decimalLatitude field_loc_lat_decimal accession.loc_lat_decimal

The geographic latitude (in decimal degrees, using the spatial reference system given in geodeticDatum) of the geographic center of a Location. Positive values are north of the Equator, negative values are south of it. Legal values lie between -90 and 90, inclusive.

decimalLongitude field_loc_long_decimal accession.loc_long_decimal

The geographic longitude (in decimal degrees, using the spatial reference system given in geodeticDatum) of the geographic center of a Location. Positive values are east of the Greenwich Meridian, negative values are west of it. Legal values lie between -180 and 180, inclusive.

year monthday

field_collection_date_earliest

accession.early_jdate (calc) The four-digit year, month, or day in which the Event occurred,

according to the Common Era Calendar.

And so on… … … …

Univ. & JepsonHerbariaDwC

DwC

DwC

+ Paleo Extension

+ Cultural Extension

Standards-based

publishing portals

(DarwinCore, TAPIR, IPT)

Standards-based

publishing portals

(DarwinCore, TAPIR, IPT)

DwC

The University and Jepson Herbaria

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology University and Jepson Herbaria

Has extensive and extensible functionality to serve all museum domains and sizes

Campus-wide efficiencies Excellence for core missions True community-source and open-source

solution Consortial community-based approach to

funding and financial sustainability

CollectionSpace Release 1.0 (summer 2010) Core procedures: object entry, acquisition, cataloging, loans in, loans

out, and retrospective documentation. Vocabulary control, media handling, configuration, security, and

documentation.

Pilot deployments Domains from Anthropology to Life Science to Cultural Heritage Community-driven templates and experience (data migrations…)

CollectionSpace 2.0 Goals: Stability, usability, and sustainability Expand baseline functionality Increase documentation Optimize software for service providers Implement CollectionSpace (community) sustainability plan

We would like to:• Learn more about your institution’s needs• Help you gain support for implementation

of CollectionSpace within your organization • Build a sustainable community of users and

contributors

http://www.collectionspace.org

http://wiki.collectionspace.org

https://wikihub.berkeley.edu/display/istds/Informatics+Services

chris.hoffman@berkeley.edumarlita@berkeley.edu

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology

University and Jepson Herbaria

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<ns2:collectionobjects_naturalhistory xmlns:ns2="http://collectionspace.org/services/collectionobject/domain/naturalhistory" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://collectionspace.org/services/collectionobject/domain/naturalhistory http://collectionspace.org/services/collectionobject/domain/collectionobjects_naturalhistory.xsd">

<fieldLocLongDecimal>-122.019440</fieldLocLongDecimal>

<fieldLocLatDecimal>38.436390</fieldLocLatDecimal>

<catalogDate>Mar 07, 1997</catalogDate>

<fieldLocState>CA</fieldLocState>

<phenology>Flowering/Fruiting</phenology>

<fieldCollectionDateLatest>May 06, 1891</fieldCollectionDateLatest>

<fieldCollectionDateEarliest>May 02, 1891</fieldCollectionDateEarliest>

<fieldLocCounty>Solano</fieldLocCounty>

<fieldLocCountry>USA</fieldLocCountry>

<fieldCollector>W. L. Jepson</fieldCollector>

<fieldCollectionDate>May 2 1891-May 6 1891</fieldCollectionDate>

</ns2:collectionobjects_naturalhistory>

--a108dfc0-5a62-49c9-bbcb-557aace48ddf

label: collectionobjects_common

Content-Type: application/xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<ns2:collectionobjects_common xmlns:ns2="http://collectionspace.org/services/collectionobject" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://collectionspace.org/services/collectionobject http://services.collectionspace.org/collectionobject/collectionobjects_common.xsd">

<otherNumberType>collector number</otherNumberType>

<otherNumber>14079</otherNumber>

<responsibleDepartments>

<responsibleDepartment>university-of-california-herbarium</responsibleDepartment>

</responsibleDepartments>

<objectNumber>UC18876</objectNumber>

<title>Sidalcea keckii Wiggins</title>

<briefDescription>Mounted on Paper</briefDescription>

<dateAssociation>catalog date</dateAssociation>

<comments>North-Western Solano, California</comments>

</ns2:collectionobjects_common>