What a difference

10 years makes

But where to from here?

Adrian KingstonDigital Collections Senior Analyst

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa@adriankingston

@tepapacolonline

Global EMu User Conference 15-17 Oct 2014

Washington, DC

Introduction: Te Papa

• 1865 - Colonial Museum founded

• 1907 - Renamed Dominion Museum

• 1972 - National Museum

• 1936 - National Art Gallery opened

• 1992 - National Museum and National Art Gallery

Merged

• 1998 - Te Papa opened

• 1.3 million visitors a year

+ While not huge by international standards (2-3 million

objects) we’re pretty diverse.

+ Art – Zoology

+ DNA analysis to repatriation of human remains

+ We are a team of three who work across the

organisation

+ 120 users

Introduction: Te Papa

Wellington Harbour, 1894, James Nairn

Oil on panel

Gift of Miss Mary Newton, 1939

Milford Sound, 1883, Burton Brothers

Black and white gelatin glass negative

Mere pounamu (greenstone hand club), Unknown maker

kawakawa, inanga, muka

Cloak, Unknown maker, Circa 1870

wool, plant fibre

Gift of Te Aia Mataiapo, 1872

Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris)

land snail (Allodiscus kakano B. Marshall & Barker, 2008; holotype)

collected by Alan Beu, 1957

Single crape fern (Leptopteris hymenophylloides (A.Rich.) C.Presl)

Collected by Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander, 1769

The beginning

200

5

What we had

• A mess

• A single Collection Management System, but obsolete,

inadequate

• Poor data standards

• Fragmented processes

• Paper based, isolated processes

• No digital media management

• “Private” data sets

The plan

• Implemented KE EMu

• Wanted all collection related information and processes in a single system

• All collection related media managed, with long-term access and preservation in mind

• Digital collection items managed appropriately

• Rights and licences managed in EMu

• Where possible, consistent description across collections

Why centralise?

• No more lost/duplicated/out-of-synch data (well, less)

• No data silos

• Transparency & accountability

• Improved standards, processes

• Consistent collection management

• Consistent collection information management

• About collections, not format

• Strong but simple content framework

• Single focus for data preservation

• One system to support, and sustain

• One system to train in, learn to use

• Efficient content creation, access & publication

• Creates appropriate ownership of content creation

What does our EMu do: the usual,

objectsDescribe and manage physical Collections

• Art

• Photography

• Archives

• NZ History

• Pacific Cultures

• Taonga Maori

• Entomology

• Marine mammals

• Land Mammals

• Birds

• Fish

• Insects

• Plants

• Etc

Places

Controlled Vocabulary

PeoplePhysical objectsPhysical objectsPhysical objects

Taxon

What does it do: the usual,

processesManage and record collection processes

• Acquisition

• Deaccession

• Lending & borrowing

• Storage

• Movements

• Conservation

• Damage

• Tissue sampling

• Authority control

• Provenance

• Taxonomic identification

• Collection events

• Species distribution

• Record arguments

Places

Controlled Vocabulary

People

Locations

Acquisition

Loans ConservationDeaccession

Receipts, reports,

agreements

Physical objectsPhysical objectsPhysical objects

Taxon

But wait, there’s more

Alcohol management

Rights management & licencing

Born digital collections & digitised collections

Repatriation of koiwi tangata

(human remains)

Simple framework & process for publishing online

Crates, forms, frames

Props

Ourspace

Digital Preservation

CIDOC CRMPlaces

Controlled Vocabulary

People

Locations

Digital Media

Acquisition

Loans ConservationDeaccession

Movements

Receipts, reports,

agreements

Alcohol Management

Physical objectsPhysical objectsPhysical objects

Taxon

Exhibition management

On floor interactives

Exhibition sites

Collections Online

OAI-PMH

Conceptual objects

Indigenous description

Publications

Repatriation

Narratives

Digital objectsDigital objects

Rights management

Research

Digital objects

*NOT EVEN REMOTELY TO SCALE, OR TO BE CONSIDERED ACCURATE OR USEFUL

Whoa.

That looks complicated.

And kinda boring.

Lets do more!

200

8

New conceptual framework

• Making EMu a Collection Information System, not just a Collection Management System

• Manages semantic, meaningful relationships across records from all modules

• Based on ISO 21127:2006 CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model

• Addition of relationship types, i.e., how is a concept, person or place related to an object: e.g. “depicts”, “influenced”, “refers to”

• Previously hidden relationships are now visible, and browseable

• Significant conceptual change, but is now part of normal cataloguing processes

Cataloguing for access, not just collections

management

It isn’t just for us, it’s for them.

Whoever they are.

Collections Online

• We’ve had collections available online now for a

number of years, all data and media coming from EMu

• 500,000 collection items 12,000 people, 5000 places,

subjects etc

• Ability to browse through related items, people,

taxonomy, subjects etc, because that structure and

data exists in EMu

• *NEW* Responsive website

• Highlighted problems with being able to show such rich

data on all types of device

• More to do

• Co screen shots

Narratives

• Museums aren’t just a repository of objects, we’re a

generator of knowledge, stories etc.

• Our stories and theirs

• Research and stories are managed in relation to the other

information

× Online, the more we use it, the more we want it to do

× Very template driven

× Not very flexible in terms of layout

× Need to learn from other forms of tech

× Their stories - need ingest from web

• Narrative example

Thesaurus

We use:

• Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus

• Getty Thesaurus of Geographic names

• Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, Subjects

Because:

• They already exist and used all over the world

• Excellent partnerships, we are on the GRI ITWG

• Provides hierarchical browsing, “alternates” and “used for” terms, scope notes, and lots of other content we didn’t have to create

However:

• Thesaurus management in EMu not perfect, took development, needs a lot more

• Has taken six years of cataloguing to get content to the richness it currently has, but a long way to go

Local thesauri

• Māori and Pacific terms not covered well in AAT, yet

• Sometimes the western understanding of a concept is different to that under Mātauranga Māori

• Need to catalogue in English and indigenous languages for appropriate description, and make access and understanding easier

• Hope to contribute back to AAT, improving the description of Tāonga Māori in collections around the world

• Need systems to exchange data between EMu and the GRI

• Maori term page, pounamu

Exhibitions

• All in-house exhibitions have branded Minisites

delivered from EMu

• Some on floor interactives delivered via EMu

• Exhibition development and management using

exhibition items

• Now working on text and label development in EMu

• Add arts te papa screen shot

Getting out there

• Collections Online is a great base for exploring and learning about Te Papa’s collections, however

• Te Papa doesn’t hold all knowledge

• Partnerships make our collections available from other places, and also allow the public to find information from across institutions

• Not all are directly connected to EMu, but all content comes from there

• We track what’s been used where in EMu

• We link to other sources as much as possible

201

3

Adkin diary transcription

• Crowdsourcing diary transcriptions

• Using existing tech as much as possible as no budget

• Just testing the waters

• Using narratives, collections online, Google Docs and

Forms.

• Need to look at crowdsourcing, or student sourcing for

image preparation

• It’s a hack, but we’ve got a lot of transcription done

If you love something, let it free

• Open access image release

• 30,000 high resolution images available via No Known

Copyright Restrictions or CC BY-NC-ND

• Downloadable content identified via Rights module info

• Images accessed via Imu

• Strict security

• Up to 45,000 images available now

• 6000 downloads in 4 months

“Images of what our

cities used to be like are

always useful in the

discussions about urban

form and current

change”

“Great image! Will

probably put it on a

canvas bag for myself.

Thank you!”

“To send to my boss.

She loves cats.”

“Sharing image on

facebook with a friend

who likes penguins”

“Background image for

twitter profile”

“Kia ora! I might use it in a

presentation in Kopenhagen on

Polynesian Voyaging this year and

possibly in my dissertation/an

article as well. Great to have

access to historic images like this

online!!!”

“Show it to my editor in

chief. If she agrees we

will ask for the licence to

use it in our general

interest magazine.”

“a class project”

“This will be used to create

tasteful photo art”

“will use for a gif :)”

“Favourite tree, and I like

herbarium collections”

“I am a composition instructor at Kent

State University (in Ohio/USA)-I use

multi-modality constantly & find images

such as these layer a depth not often

found elsewhere. Further, my courses

are always centered around social

issues-and thus, history, from many

perspectives, comes into play.”

“Lecture at Tate Britain”

“Article in monthly Member

journal about addition of Trans-

Tasman cable 1 & 2 to the

IPENZ Engineering Heritage

Register”

“I'm writing about tongan tapa,

I'm an Auckland university

student and would like to use

this image to illustrate my

academic project online.

Thanks”

“to use in creating 3D

objects for virtual art

collection”

“Comparison with other

Nassaria species and figuring in

publication of new species from

New Caledonia for comparative

reasons.”

“Not sure”

TODAY

Sector changes

• Museums increasingly acknowledging importance of

opening up & letting go, sharing authority,

encouraging re-use

• Alignment of content creation processes, multiple

channels

• New forms of publishing

• Linked data

• New forms of collecting

• Changing perspectives on what a collection is

• Stories more important than ever

• Need to be available where people are, on whatever

device they want

• All great stuff, but it means there is more to manage

• Our team is actually smaller, but we are doing more

New-ish things we’re

looking at

(and would like help

with)

Digital Asset Management &

Preservation• Museums have to work with software designed for other sectors

• Preservation not yet a big consideration for DAMS

• Digital collection items should be managed by the collection

system

• In some cases digitised collections may become collection items

Basic DAM functionality, item description

Single authoritative source, clear relationships

Object info is kept on object, image info kept with image

Repositories, layers of access

Conservation module for preservation actions etc

× Open Archival Information System OAIS model- SIPs, AIPs &

DIPs

× Integrated tools for fixity, format validation and analysis

× More efficient workflows

× The dreaded “non-collection” media

Collecting Intangible Heritage

• No longer just about collecting static, physical objects

• Similar issues with “collecting contemporary”

• Most will probably be digital

• Games, ideas, dance, language, stories, rituals…

“Conceptual” description model in place

Not separate systems for separate formats

Rights management includes indigenous rights

Digital description and management

Similar to born digital art works? Similar to analogue

media?

× Is lacking existing process, rather than tech

× Future representation?

User generated/contributed content

• Co-created, user generated, user contributed, I see it

as a spectrum

• Comments, downloads, stories, dis/likes, new works,

images, video

• Could be used to collect low- or high-tech interaction

• Users expect to interact more, shouldn’t we put effort

into preserving that?

× Ingest from web

× User expectation and museum literacy

× Our expectation, what is useful/important?

Object “use”

• Already record that collections have been used in exhibitions,

loans etc., but what about all the other uses?

• Need to surface this to management, but I think more

importantly, to the rest of staff, particularly curators

• Digital life of an object, more significant than physical?

What does the system need next?

• All interaction with a collection item

• Likes, comments, tweets, stories, experiences

• Reuse of items

• Google analytics, Addthis, social media tools

• Tracking downloads and use of images

• Need to pull it all together, and keep a history

• Use as targets, need to change how/what we measure to be

useful

Record “Quality”

• We need smarter ways of seeing the collection as a

whole, and looking for patterns

• Automated measure of record quality based on smart

indicators

• Accessibility as a measure, e.g. rights cleared?

• Put it right up front, in front of the staff, and the public

• Would allow us to plan digitisation programmes, at risk

items, help with auditing

• Compare against Object use

The intertubes

The intertubes

Crates, forms, frames

Props

Ourspace

Digital Preservation

CIDOC CRMPlaces

Controlled Vocabulary

People

Locations

Digital Media

Acquisition

Loans ConservationDeaccession

Movements

Receipts, reports, agreements

Alcohol Management

Physical objectsPhysical objectsPhysical objects

Taxon

Exhibition management

On floor interactives

Exhibition sites

OAI-PMH

Conceptual objects

Indigenous description

Publications

Repatriation

Narratives

Digital objectsDigital objects

Rights management

Research

Digital objects

*NOT EVEN REMOTELY TO SCALE, OR TO BE CONSIDERED ACCURATE

OR USEFUL

Twitter

Facebook

Wikipedia

Wikimedia

AppsTe Papa App Ingress Field Notes

Reddit

Google form

Google Sheets

Analytics

Collections Online

Arts Te PapaArts Te PapaArts Te PapaArts Te PapaArts Te Papa

Minisite

Google Analytics

AddThisAddThis

So

• We’ve done a lot, and it’s been great

• But there are a lot of hacks, and workarounds,

particularly as budgets have decreased

• We are constantly having to defend EMu limitations

against increased digital expectations

• We’ve pushed EMu a lot

• We’re starting to get worried about complexity and

sustainability

• We have a very large mobile project coming up which

is going to push us even further

Technology, society and

public expectation is

changing faster than the

organisation, staff, and

EMu

Are we expecting too

much from a single

system?

Dunno.