Dear All, MDA, the focus for standards and best practice in Collections Management, has successfully concluded negotiations with Government culture bodies in the Netherlands and Belgium to export SPECTRUM, the UK industry standard for information management.
Already in use in over 3,000 culture-sector organisations worldwide, SPECTRUM is an open standard, maintained and developed as part of MDA's ongoing mission to promote best practice in the heritage sector. The adoption of SPECTRUM will help Dutch and Belgian museums manage their knowledge and information more effectively, as well as supporting greater mobility of collections between the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. MDA Director Nick Poole commented, 'This is a significant step forward for standards within Europe, and this development represents the culmination of almost 2 years work by the staff at MDA. Common standards not only promote best practice, they also provide us with a shared language which supports greater partnership. Museums in the Netherlands and Belgium already have significant expertise in the areas of knowledge and information management, and we all stand to benefit as a whole by working together to common standards.' Wilbert Helmus of the State Department for Cultural Heritage commented, 'Dutch and Belgian museums have long been committed to the principles of SPECTRUM. Our museums contain some of the world's most diverse and exciting collections, and this agreement provides us with a solid foundation on which to build. We are very pleased to be working with MDA and we look forward to an exciting partnership in future!' Licenses were signed between MDA, the Netherlands Museum Advisors Foundation and Culturele Biografie Vlaanderen vzw. Under the terms of this new agreement, representative organisations in the UK, Netherlands and Belgium will form part of a European Documentation Standards Development Community. Each national version of SPECTRUM will be linked to the UK standard on an ongoing basis and future updates will be cascaded to each participating country. MDA will be working with CIDOC, the documentation Special Interest Group of the International Council for Museums, to identify further partner states within Europe. Gordon. ******************************************************* Gordon McKenna e-mail: gordon at mda.org.uk MDA The Spectrum Building, The Michael Young Centre, Purbeck Road Cambridge CB2 2PD, UK Tel: +44 1223 415760 Fax: +44 1223 415960 Setting the standard for managing collections information *************** http://www.mda.org.uk/ ****************
