Robert, Stephen, I may have responded to the question about location and inventory control data out of context. We do not publish the locations of objects at the NMAI's Cultural Resources Center on our collections webpage. We have published data about what exhibits or areas of the museums our objects are located in or were displayed in. We often have visitors who ask us, "Where can I see 'insert tribal name here' objects?" We would like to offer our visitors the ability to create their own unique tribally oriented museum tours.
Jane -----Original Message----- From: Robert Sanderson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2017 1:25 PM To: [email protected]; Sledge, Jane <[email protected]>; 'van Leusen, P.M.' <[email protected]>; 'George Bruseker' <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] NEW ISSUE using CRM Thanks Stephen! Can you point me to any data published in this way on the web today? I think we all agree that it would be nice to have from a research point of view, but if institutions are unwilling to _actually_ do it (and our experience to date suggests that to be the case) then while the effort might be minimal and the potential large, the net result is still zero. Rob On 10/3/17, 9:32 AM, "Stephen Stead" <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Rob There is lots of potential research that could be done if the movement data was available from many institutions. For example on average how often do objects move, is there a relationship between moves and condition or material, how many moves does it take to organise an exhibit, what are the hidden costs of conservation interventions, what are the bandwidth requirements of RFID installations, should investment be made in specialist handling technology, who (and when) should training involve, breakage rates and so on. The additional effort required to make this data available is minimal, the potential for new insight large so yes I would make the data available. Rgds SdS Stephen Stead Tel +44 20 8668 3075 Mob +44 7802 755 013 E-mail [email protected] LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/steads/ -----Original Message----- From: Crm-sig [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert Sanderson Sent: 03 October 2017 16:47 To: Sledge, Jane <[email protected]>; 'van Leusen, P.M.' <[email protected]>; George Bruseker <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] NEW ISSUE using CRM Dear Jane, Martijn, Thank you for the descriptions! Yes, we also (of course) track the locations of things internally … without knowing where things are there would be chaos, as you say. However, for the purposes of publicly available Linked Open Data descriptions of your objects, would you publish descriptions of those moves on the web or are they internal only? Or to put it another way … would you go to the effort of describing all of the move related activities in publicly available CIDOC-CRM? Thanks! Rob On 10/3/17, 7:30 AM, "Crm-sig on behalf of Sledge, Jane" <[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> wrote: Between 1999 to 2004, the National Museum of the American Indian moved over 850,000 items (archaeological and ethnographical) as well as 100,000 ethnographic images (photographs, glass plate negatives, etc) and archival materials from an old museum warehouse in the Bronx to NMAI’s newly built Cultural Resources Center in Suitland Maryland. There was no transfer of custody for the movement of these items—it was a massive move. We tracked via a barcoding system items being moved for digital imaging, a conservation review and if needed conservation, packing into appropriate sized boxes, the placement of the boxes into larger recyclable storage units which we called kivas, and the movement of the kivas using many trucks to the Cultural Resources Center. We tracked the handlers of the items at every step of the way—who lifted the item off the shelf, who imaged the item, who did the conservation review, etc. We also tracked the date and time that each of these steps occurred. We then used the same process to unpack, reassess, rehouse, and move the items into their new compact storage unit locations. This move is described at http://nmai.si.edu/explore/collections/moving/ We continue to track all items in our possession, on loan to us, and our loans to others with the same level of detail. We use the location system to let visitors know what items are on view in our two museum facilities (DC and New York) and where else they may be viewed—on loan to other museums. We know what items are in our conservation lab being prepared for exhibit, who moved the items there and when they were moved. Tracking items is critical for accountability. We have an inventory policy that requires us to find and account for 5000 randomly generated catalogue numbers a year as well as selections of archival items. Jane ____________________________________________ Jane Sledge Associate Director for Collections and Operations Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian [email protected] | (202) 633-6789 | (202) 320-1676 AmericanIndian.si.edu From: Crm-sig [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of van Leusen, P.M. Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2017 6:44 AM To: George Bruseker <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] NEW ISSUE using CRM Hi Rob, I recently dealt with such a move, where some 1200 crates with archaeological materials were moved from their assigned shelf positions in storage building A, to temporary storage in building B, to their (hopefully) final destination to new shelf and stack positions in building C. All buildings were part of the same National Archaeological Museum of the Sibaritide (in south Italy). I was only responsible for part of the latter move (B to C), which required a lot of checking of what had been put where in building B by the moving company - resulting in one 'lost' crate that we still have to trace in our records - and some repackaging into new crates to allow placement in the new stacks of building C. In both building A and C, there was a system in place to record temporary removals of crates for specialist studies, and for permanently moving finds from one crate to another. Without such records chaos would quickly come to reign, as I have seen happen in other similar archaeology storage buildings.... Martijn On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 12:05 PM, George Bruseker <[email protected]> wrote: Dear all, I don’t know of CRM encoded data with this information, but internal movement is traced in almost any major collections management system that I know of. The one I am most familiar with is the Emu system owned, now, by Axiell. It generates automatic internal movement records when registrars authorize the moment around the museum who carried it out and why. An example would be that the object is moved from storage to conservation lab for work and then back. This happened in the Museum of Islamic Art, so I guess it would be a use case for art objects. I also seem to recall some major projects of moving collections (perhaps of the Field Museum that uses Emu), where the work was to get everything from old storage A to new storage b. This was crucial provenance information because it helps them know why something may have gone missing and or what happened to it along the way (how was it packed, in what truck did it go). Here again what happened in reality was, I believe, an instance of move and not a transfer of custody acquisition or any such thing. Best, George > On Oct 2, 2017, at 10:06 PM, Robert Sanderson <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi Christian-Emil, > > Could you provide some pointers to data that has Moves? In our experience Move is theoretically important, but we could not find any museum that had Move activities that weren’t better described as a Transfer of Custody. > > In particular: > • No history of internal movement between galleries / sites (which would not be a change of custody) > • No history of the actual movement of the object between institutions (e.g. for exhibitions), which would be better as a transfer of custody anyway. > • Disincentive to record these events or make them public as it encourages theft > • No real incentive to integrate shipping/tracking and descriptive systems > > We’re very happy to move terms around, but only with good cause :) In particular, two institutions that both require the class and have actual data to support it… preferably also with the intent to publish that data. > > Rob > > On 10/2/17, 11:59 AM, "Christian-Emil Smith Ore" <[email protected]> wrote: > > Before Getty(?) send out the the profile to all arts museum, maybe one could go through the list once more and add a few central classes, move is one of them. > Best > Christian-Emil > ________________________________________ > From: Crm-sig <[email protected]> on behalf of Robert Sanderson <[email protected]> > Sent: 02 October 2017 19:15 > To: Dan Matei; martin > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] NEW ISSUE using CRM > > Hi Dan, > > If the terms were moved to an extension, for example moving Site to the Archaeological extension, would then they would still be available for use but not add to the complexity of the base model. > > I think there is some “food” they’re asking for, which is the cognitive cost of understanding them and when they should be used. If that cost is high compared to the value (which I argue that it currently is), then the result is decreased usage of the model. This “usability” cost is the primary driver for Linked Art – if we can do it once for the entire art domain, then every (art) museum or gallery has then had that cost pre-paid. > > If you have data in real systems that _require_ the classes we’ve set aside, we’d very much like to discuss those with you off-list. > > Hope that helps! > > Rob > > > On 10/2/17, 7:31 AM, "Crm-sig on behalf of Dan Matei" <[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> wrote: > > Friends, > > On 30 September 2017 at 17:24, martin <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Some classes may be an overspecialization, this has to be discussed and respective classes be removed. > > > > > > Oh no ! Please do not remove anything ! > > > I use almost all the CRM elements, in order not to loose nuances in my legacy databases (besides museum and library resources I have to model intangible resources - e.g. theatre productions). So I have to add elements from other ontologies and even – horror > – to invent some more. I trust more the CRM elements than those I invent :-) > > > Moreover, even if some CRM elements are not used too much, they do not ask for food. So... > > > Please... > > > Dan > > > PS. You can establish Oskars for the "best" class of the year, the most popular property of the year, etc. And the "overspecialised" ones will earn no Oskar. > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Crm-sig mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig <http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Crm-sig mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig _______________________________________________ Crm-sig mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig -- Dr. Martijn van Leusen Chair, Examination Board for Arts, Culture and Archaeology Chair, Faculty of Arts Advisory Board for Data Management policies Associate professor, Landscape Archaeology Groningen Institute of Archaeology / Poststraat 6, 9712ER Groningen (Netherlands) phone +31 50 3636717 Academia page <https://rug.academia.edu/MartijnvanLeusen> _______________________________________________ Crm-sig mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
