I took the opportunity to formally present the MME project to staff at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and Museum Victoria (MV) while Lynne was in Melbourne last week.
On Thursday (14/10) we went to ACMI where we met with Michael Perry, Head of Media Technology (and MME Site coordinator) and Nick Richardson, Collections and Access Manager. The meeting went well and even though ACMI are in the midst of a collection re-valuation, they were enthusiastic about their involvement in the project and especially interested in the establishment of an Australian Object thesaurus.
On Friday (15/10) Lynne and I presented the MME to Museum Victoria staff and again the project was very well received. While the Museum already has many collection descriptions it can modify for inclusion in the MME, Curators were also keen to develop some new collection groupings and descriptions specifically tailored to a research and academic audience.
The issue of how all the data required for a Full Collection Description could be stored the Museum’s CMS, EMu, was also raised during the meeting. As many of the missing fields like a second description field and a URL for an online link, could be useful for other purposes, the possibility of modifying EMu in the future to accommodate this data was discussed. The potential involvement other EMu sites, contributing to the MME, in this conversation was also considered.
As with other sites we’ve visited, the Object thesaurus component of the project generated much interest and the ability to vote for terms was greeted with great enthusiasm by several people!
Since last week’s meeting at Museum Victoria, Ely Wallis, Manager, Online Collections, has organised fortnightly meetings for those involved in the MME, and Curators expect to have a initial list of 50 collections selected for the MME in about a fortnight.
Image Credit: Objects from Matchbox Collection Powerhouse Museum Collection
We here at History SA are also interested in having a conversation about modifying the Narratives module to encompass all the CLD fields. Fields like URL and second description field would be very useful for us long term also. Is this something that could become part of the wider MME Project given that a number of us use EMu for collection management?
Hi Kristy,
Thanks for asking this question. We are *very* interested in stimulating this exchange and where possible drawing people into giving insights and feedback. Lynne (when she draws breath from her visits to Melbourne and Brisbane) is going to develop some information about how KEMu is being used at the Powerhouse. It would be ideal if other organisations contribute to this discussion, whether they are KEMu users or other collection system users. What we all want to know is how museums are structuring this data in their collection systems – and – ideally a little more about how they see they would like to make the collection level data available online via their own websites. If you’ve some thoughts already on this front, please share them with the site coordinators, and if possible through the MMESiteCoord Google Group so it can be widely seen. Alternatively we’d welcome a blog post from a participant outside of the project team on this topic too (it’s in everyone’s interests let’s say to get this ball rolling)… hint hint
Best wishes, Ingrid