museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

21
www.museum-digital.de don't dream it …

Upload: museum-digital

Post on 12-Jan-2015

609 views

Category:

Education


1 download

DESCRIPTION

Presentation introducing the German project museum-digital to czech-museum. Given in Prague September 30, 2009

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

www.museum-digital.de

don't dream it …

Page 2: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

www.museum-digital.de

museum-digital

is an initiative that started February 2009 in Sachsen-

Anhalt (one of the federal states in Germany)

Page 3: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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“

Page 4: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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)“

Page 5: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 6: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 7: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 8: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 9: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 10: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 11: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

www.museum-digital.de

who presents which information

(online databases analysed)

Page 12: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

www.museum-digital.de

who presents which information

(„minimum“ found – with the help of interpol and others)

Page 13: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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 …

Page 14: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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.

Page 15: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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)

Page 16: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 17: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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).

Page 18: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 19: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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

Page 20: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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 !

Page 21: museum-digital: making participation in europeana possible

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]