Last week I visited both Historic Houses Trust and the Australian Museum to tell them about the project.
On Tuesday 26th October I met with Megan Martin, Head Librarian and Jenny Olsen, Vernon Database Administrator in the pleasant surrounds of the Caroline Simpson Library behind the Mint in Macquarie Street, Sydney. Historic Houses Trust is a small organisation but they were interested in sharing their collections through this project. The Historic Houses Trust website already has examples of collection level descriptions in areas such as wall coverings, floor coverings and garden ornaments. An important component of this project is using the Museum Metadata Exchange and Australian National Data Service to point to already existing material. The cross linking of your data will increase it’s ranking in Google and aid discovery, including of your own website.
On Wednesday 27th October I visited the Australian Museum. Here I followed Site Co-ordinator Dion Pieta through a maze of stairs, corridors and side doors to find a meeting room. The presentation was attended by Stan Florek, Collections Officer, Amanda Reynolds Manager Cultural Collections and Community Engagement, Yvonne Carrillo-Huffman, Collections Officer, Melanie van Olffen, Collections Officer, Peter Dadswell, Volunteer and Dion Peita, Collections Coordinator.
Again the Australian Museum already have a lot of material both on their Website and in other formats which is suitable for the MME. The Museum have been doing a lot of work digitising their Pacific collection and are keen to give it a higher profile. As mentioned above the cross linking of this data will increase it’s ranking in Google and help aid discovery.
The Australian Museum are also keen to contribute to thesaurus development. The Powerhouse has not traditionally collected in the area of indigenous cultures and so the Powerhouse Museum Object Name Thesaurus is underdeveloped in this area. We will be very keen to have contributions from the Australian Museum.
Image credits: Palm leaf comb and Trochus shell carved by convicts, New Caledonia: Collection Powerhouse Museum
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