I remember when all this was fields

Nick PooleChief ExecutiveCollections Trust

http://vintagedocumentation.tumblr.com

#vintagedocumentation

http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-PRM-Artefact-Documentation.html

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/community/whalestrandings/blog/2013/02/13/100-years-of-stranding-records-at-nhm?fromGateway=true

SPECTRUM Facts & Figures

• 26,000 licensed users

• 40 countries

• 8 languages

• 19 SPECTRUM Partner systems

• Core part of Museum Accreditation in the UK

STANDARD

WORLDWIDE COMMUNITY (26,000)

COMPLIANCE(19)

GUIDANCEPDF/XML/PRINT+ SCHEMA

NEW IDEAS

http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/spectrum

SPECTRUM-i

• An international Committee

• Made up of SPECTRUM National Partners

• Developing the roadmap for SPECTRUM 5.0

• Undertaking research into the value & impact of SPECTRUM

• Providing support to new countries

• Developing an international community of practice

SPECTRUM 5.0

• Due for publication in Spring 2016

• Comprehensive revision

• Developed in partnership with Axiell & KE Emu Users

• Aiming to provide a futureproof standard

• Available free of charge

• Costs supported by SPECTRUM Partners & SPECTRUM-i

The road ahead

The 10 key challenges for documentation in the years

ahead

Challenges

Mission

Advocacy

IOT

Digitisation

DAM

COPE

Richness

UGC

Mobility

Knowledge

Core Mission and Purpose

MONEY PEOPLE STUFF

MISSION & PURPOSE

COLLECTING POLICY

PRACTICES, PROCEDURES AND SYSTEMS

PEOPLE AND SKILLS

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Core Mission and Purpose

MONEY PEOPLE STUFF

MISSION & PURPOSE

COLLECTING POLICY

PRACTICES, PROCEDURES AND SYSTEMS

PEOPLE AND SKILLS

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

The advocacy gap

• We have internalised the ‘back office’ mentality

• No museum can or should run without investing in documentation and collections management

• Short-term, tangible cost offset against long-term, intangible benefit

• We have to become better champions for the work, which means building both evidence and influence

‘Create Once, Publish Everywhere’

• If collections and collections-based information are to play their part in enhancing and extending the visitor experience, they need to be discoverable and usable outside the museum and its website

• ‘COPE’ is an approach to developing collections information and collections-related content that supports:

• Collections care• Collections discovery & re-use• Learning and intepretation• Visitor engagement

COPE in practice, from this...

COLLECTIONSDOCUMENTATION

DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

INFORMATION / RECORDS

SYSTEMS OF RECORD

SYSTEMS OF ENGAGEMENT

USER CHANNELS & PLATFORMSBYOD

Museum website

Gallery interactives

Social media

Aggregators

To this...

Collections Content &

systems

Mobile

Social

Website

OnsiteBYOD

Wearable

Something new!

‘Choose a CMS’ database

http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/choose-a-cms

‘Choose a DAMS’

Due at the end of this month!

Digital Asset Management

• Launched SPECTRUM DAM in 2013

• Providing guidance on how to manage photographs, scans and recordings alongside the collection

• Launched SPECTRUM DAM Partners Scheme in 2014, validating software providers who can demonstrate they work with collections systems

• Integrating DAM fully into SPECTRUM 5.0

• http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/spectrum/spectrum-digital-asset-management

Protecting the richness

• The risk of COPE is that it becomes reductive

• We need to find better ways of modelling the richness, contextuality and interconnections in our collections-related knowledge

• Rebuilding the SPECTRUM Units of Information using the CIDOC CRM

• Promoting the development of applications and functionality which promote the creation of semantically-rich documentation and the use of semantic references to augment the cataloguing process

Solving UGC

• The acquisition, management and re-use of User Generated Content is not a solved problem in museums

• Most UGC implementations remain peripheral, without a structured approach to assessing the knowledge, internalising it or assimilating it into the museum’s own knowledge

• If our museums are becoming more open, participatory and inclusive, but our documentation isn’t, real change & relevance won’t happen

• Large-scale participatory crowdsourcing is about to become a real movement in museums…

Looking ahead to IoT

• To an extent, our business is the forensic re-creation of the connection between an object and its informational content

• What are the implications for our business when the things we acquire come encoded with all of the information about their design, function, purpose and use?

• The sheer volume of data about things is set to increase hugely

• How do we deal with integrity, authenticity and provenance of material and its associated knowledge in an Internet of Things which is inherently changeable?

http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-PRM-Artefact-Documentation.html

Keep in touch

• We offer several ways of keeping in touch with our work and with each other

– Collections Management LinkedIn community (8,900 members)

– Fortnightly email newsletter

– www.twitter.com/collectiontrust

– www.facebook.com/collectionstrust

– www.slideshare.net/collectionstrust

Thankyou!

Thanks to KE Emu Users, KE and Axiell for all of your

support, ideas and hard work