museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible
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Presentation introducing the German project museum-digital to czech-museum. Given in Prague September 30, 2009TRANSCRIPT
www.museum-digital.de
don't dream it …
www.museum-digital.de
museum-digital
is an initiative that started February 2009 in Sachsen-
Anhalt (one of the federal states in Germany)
www.museum-digital.de
museum-digital
is an initiative that started February 2009 in Sachsen-
Anhalt (one of the federal states in Germany)
6 member-museums of the regional (Federal State)
museum association founded the „Working Group
Digitisation“
www.museum-digital.de
museum-digital
is an initiative that started February 2009 in Sachsen-
Anhalt (one of the federal states in Germany)
6 member-museums of the regional (Federal State)
museum association founded the „Working Group
Digitisation“
Defined aim of the working group:
„To find out how it is possible that – in accordance with
the actual conditions and limitations of the museums –
information about museum-objects could be made
visible in the internet collectively. And: How can this be
done in a way that each (!) museum of the federal state
can take part and in a way that – if a museum likes it –
the object-information can be integrated into national
and international portals (europeana)“
www.museum-digital.de
„To find out how it is possible that – in accordance with the actual conditions and
limitations of the museums – information about museum-objects could be made
visible in the internet collectively. And: How can this be done in a way that each (!)
museum of the federal state can take part and in a way that – if a museum likes it –
the object-information can be integrated into national and international portals
(europeana)“
Step 1: we analysed conditions and limitations
www.museum-digital.de
„To find out how it is possible that – in accordance with the actual conditions and
limitations of the museums – information about museum-objects could be made
visible in the internet collectively. And: How can this be done in a way that each (!)
museum of the federal state can take part and in a way that – if a museum likes it –
the object-information can be integrated into national and international portals
(europeana)“
Step 1: we analysed conditions and limitations
Step 2: we analysed who is presenting which information in which way
www.museum-digital.de
„To find out how it is possible that – in accordance with the actual conditions and
limitations of the museums – information about museum-objects could be made
visible in the internet collectively. And: How can this be done in a way that each (!)
museum of the federal state can take part and in a way that – if a museum likes it –
the object-information can be integrated into national and international portals
(europeana)“
Step 1: we analysed conditions and limitations
Step 2: we analysed who is presenting which information in which way
Step 3: we analysed data formats that are able to bring very different objects together
www.museum-digital.de
„To find out how it is possible that – in accordance with the actual conditions and
limitations of the museums – information about museum-objects could be made
visible in the internet collectively. And: How can this be done in a way that each (!)
museum of the federal state can take part and in a way that – if a museum likes it –
the object-information can be integrated into national and international portals
(europeana)“
Step 1: we analysed conditions and limitations
Step 2: we analysed who is presenting which information in which way
Step 3: we analysed data formats that are able to bring very different objects together
Step 4: we analysed necessities for data-integration into europeana
www.museum-digital.de
conditions and limitations
conditions in the six museums that started museum-digital ?
how to find answers ?
1. museums brought their database along
2. museums described their data creation situation
3. museums described their overall situation
www.museum-digital.de
conditions and limitations
• Databases: Paradox, dBase2, Access, No database
• No time to do extra work
• No money to employ someone for inventarisation
• No objects available in the internet
• No experience in web – technology
• No one had object data for all of his objects
• Very few had images of their objects connected to database
conditions in the six museums that started museum-digital
www.museum-digital.de
who presents which information
(online databases analysed)
www.museum-digital.de
who presents which information
(„minimum“ found – with the help of interpol and others)
www.museum-digital.de
who presents which information
result of investigation – only 8 fields (name of object, ….) are used by everyone
can we put all information we like to present into these 8 fields ?
can we present the needed information
… and …
www.museum-digital.de
can we put all information we like to present into these 8 fields ?
Each museum should send all information about at least 5 of it‘s objects including at (least) one
photograph. The museum should record how much time it took to collect these data/image(s). The objects
should be of a great variety. We invited other museums to take part in this exercise.
can we present the needed information
… and …
how to find answers ?
result:
It took between 3 minutes and 3 hours to gather the information / take a photograph for a single object !
We needed a few more fields (like: links, literature, …) to tell what we wanted to tell
The original data (from database or card or from a list) is often not directly usable. It is written either for specialists or there is no text at all. It is full of abbreviations, typing errors … All texts have to be checked.
www.museum-digital.de
looking for a data format
We compared available data-formats. Decision was for museumdat.xml
Reasoning:
We are no library.
We have absolutely disperse information.
We want to be able to export not only to europeana.
Museumdat is more and more widely used in Germany.
Europeana accepted already museumdat.xml – data (from Germany and Sweden)
www.museum-digital.de
looking for a data format
specifics of museumdat.xml
1) It differentiates between display and index fields. Example:“late bronce age” Display-1300 to -700 IndexGotthold Ephraim Lessing DisplayLessing, Gotthold Ephraim Index
2) It is event-oriented. Example:A trap was “produced”A book was “published”A biological type was “first described”An archaelogical artefact was “found” at a certain time at a certain place by a certain actor
good for all kinds of objects good for all kinds of museums
www.museum-digital.de
necessities for integration into europeana
Consequence:
We „misused“ museumdat (which was made for data harvesting) and used it as foundation for
structuring our database. So it is quite easy to export data in museumdat.xml
We send these data to Athena and Athena transforms them into ESE for europeana (Good that we
don‘t have to do that).
www.museum-digital.de
how to get data into the system
Because those without database should also be able to take part we decided to construct a „single
object“ solution first:- A museum fills out a form (in Word) or- A museum gets a password and fills out a web-form- A third person corrects the information and puts it into the database
Because those with database (whatever kind of database) should be able to take part we decided then
to construct a “mass import” solution:-museums send a CSV-File in a predefined structure
This makes it easy for the museums to participate
Because we realised that museums often have either pictures that are directly made for inventarisation
purposes (with numbers … on it) or pictures that are made for publication purposes (print quality –
museums not always have secured the right to publish such pictures in the internet) we conducted a
workshop on object-photography.
Image-Quality improved very much
www.museum-digital.de
much more important
we realised that europeana only collects metadata, links and thumbnails
europeana needs a place to link to
we created that place
www.museum-digital.de
www.museum-digital.de/san
our website for presentation, motivation, inspiration
Previous way to put the question: how can we take part in europeana
New way to put the question: how can we let europeana work for us
europeana and more !
www.museum-digital.de
Thank you …
Dr. Stefan Rohde-Enslin Working Group Digitisation of the museum-association of Sachsen-Anhalt (Germany) and Institute for Museum Research (SMB-PK)[email protected]