[MCN-L] What is a Collections Management System supposed to manage?
Amber, A resource worth looking at is Annamaria Poma Swank's report on collections management systems at http://documenti.rinascimento-digitale.info/Collection_Management_System s I have looked through it and it appears to address some of the issues you are grappling with. The overall gist, if I understood correctly, is that museums have come to use collections management systems more broadly, as a foundation for providing content to end users. Will Real Carnegie Museum of Art -Original Message- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Morgan, Amber Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 10:41 AM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] What is a Collections Management System supposed to manage? We are addressing some concerns regarding our collections management system. Something that has become clear is that our staff is not in agreement as to what a CMS is and what it should do. We are attempting to address the needs of our education department. It would be very helpful to know how other institutions maintain what could be considered educational content. If anyone out there would be willing to answer a few questions, I would be very grateful! Do you store label copy in your CMS? Do you use your CMS to manage detailed information about artists, events, places, etc? If so, do you limit it to information specifically about your collection, or do you also maintain information about related materials held elsewhere? Does your institution collect any user-generated content, and if so, does it go into your CMS? And finally, if you're feeling up to it - what, in your opinion, is a collections management system; what should it do and what should it NOT be expected to do? Many thanks, Amber the warhol: Amber E. Morgan Associate Registrar 117 Sandusky Street Pittsburgh, PA 15212 T 412.237.8306 F 412.237.8340 E morgana at warhol.org W www.warhol.org The Andy Warhol Museum One of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh Email newsletter http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/email Membership http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/SupportCMP ___ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/
[MCN-L] What is a Collections Management System supposed to manage?
I don't know if this is affecting ya'lls discussion, but remember that "CMS" is a common acronym for "Content Management System"--a bird of a slightly related, but very different color. ari On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Morgan, Amber wrote: > We are addressing some concerns regarding our collections management > system. Something that has become clear is that our staff is not in > agreement as to what a CMS is and what it should do. > > > > We are attempting to address the needs of our education department. It > would be very helpful to know how other institutions maintain what could > be considered educational content. If anyone out there would be willing > to answer a few questions, I would be very grateful! > > > > Do you store label copy in your CMS? > > Do you use your CMS to manage detailed information about artists, > events, places, etc? If so, do you limit it to information specifically > about your collection, or do you also maintain information about related > materials held elsewhere? > > Does your institution collect any user-generated content, and if so, > does it go into your CMS? > > And finally, if you're feeling up to it - what, in your opinion, is a > collections management system; what should it do and what should it NOT > be expected to do? > > > > Many thanks, > Amber > > the warhol: > Amber E. Morgan > Associate Registrar > 117 Sandusky Street > Pittsburgh, PA 15212 > T 412.237.8306 > F 412.237.8340 > E morgana at warhol.org > W www.warhol.org > > The Andy Warhol Museum > One of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh > > Email newsletter http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/email > Membership http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/SupportCMP > > > > > > ___ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >
[MCN-L] What is a Collections Management System supposed to manage?
We are addressing some concerns regarding our collections management system. Something that has become clear is that our staff is not in agreement as to what a CMS is and what it should do. We are attempting to address the needs of our education department. It would be very helpful to know how other institutions maintain what could be considered educational content. If anyone out there would be willing to answer a few questions, I would be very grateful! Do you store label copy in your CMS? Do you use your CMS to manage detailed information about artists, events, places, etc? If so, do you limit it to information specifically about your collection, or do you also maintain information about related materials held elsewhere? Does your institution collect any user-generated content, and if so, does it go into your CMS? And finally, if you're feeling up to it - what, in your opinion, is a collections management system; what should it do and what should it NOT be expected to do? Many thanks, Amber the warhol: Amber E. Morgan Associate Registrar 117 Sandusky Street Pittsburgh, PA 15212 T 412.237.8306 F 412.237.8340 E morgana at warhol.org W www.warhol.org The Andy Warhol Museum One of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh Email newsletter http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/email Membership http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/SupportCMP
[MCN-L] What is a Collections Management System supposed to manage?
>We are addressing some concerns regarding our collections management >system. Something that has become clear is that our staff is not in >agreement as to what a CMS is and what it should do. I'd think about the problem a little more broadly. The long view answer is that it doesn't matter where it lives, as long as it lives somewhere. If everyone agrees that it needs to be stored, there are a couple of different ways to approach the problem and you make the mental tradeoffs of short-term need and internal behavior vs. long-term scale and potential use. At one end of the continuum, you just have databases of stuff. Your authoritive records of information in the organization. The development department is probably authoritive about donors and members (people that matter to the org). Visitor services is probably authoritive about programmatic transactions -- ticketing, class registrations, etc. Your collections management system is probably the most authoritive record of the collection itself (if we're disagree on this point, we've got a deeper problem... ;) Your goal at this point is to simply make sure stuff is getting stored. The next point along the path is where secondary information starts to become important. It's easy to start associating label copy, additional images, exhibit text, podcasts, publications, etc and hang that off of the collections management system. Your goal here is to make it easy for end users to find the stuff associated with objects. The problem you quickly run into is an issue of scale and specialization. You may start to realize that not one answer fits all your needs -- you may add a digital asset management system to take on some of the burden that had been falling to your collections management system, for example. By this point, it's become very clear that meta-data is every bit as important as the information itself. And, your goal here is to let each system do what it does best. So now that you've built a bunch of specialized stuff and have decent enough meta-data, you start to *really* concentrate on is providing linkages between stuff and inferring information. You have systems that understand how to translate or pull a subset of relevant information from another system and present that to the end-user. A good example is some of the work that Koven Smith is doing at the Met that was presented at MCN. I can think of a few other data points in the continuum, but I want to circle back to your original question -- should we use our CMS for this extra stuff. I'd answer, why not? If it's the easiest path forward that you have and it gets people in the habit of thinking of multiple kinds of information, then it's a good solution. At the same time, think about the tradeoffs in your long-term view -- where do you hope to be in 5 years -- and if this presents a good baby step or if you need to take a few steps forward at this point. -bw. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Bruce Wyman, Director of Technology Denver Art Museum / 100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204 office: 720.913.0159 / fax: 720.913.0002
[MCN-L] What is a Collections Management System supposed to manage?
Dear Amber: Here at the Magnes, it's yes to all of the above. I've written extensively on the topic, and CMS's have grown very, very feature-rich over the past 40 years. At the Magnes, we have a CMS (IDEA at ALM) which can also function as a Content Management System, but we don't entirely use it for that purpose. And, as information manager, I do put a limit onto the sorts of information the CMS collects. Namely, any information which has some relation to collection items goes into the CMS. If it has nothing to do with collecting activities or item care, it goes elsewhere. For tracking artist and researcher information, it's slightly different, and we do use the CMS to keep track of researchers who come through our doors. But then researchers are also looking at specific objects or collections, so they're linked in that way. Here's what ours covers: Basic library, archive, and museum information (object movement, descriptions, valuations, etc.). Label texts Any and all associated media (including dissertations and material found online relating to the item in question) Subjects, translations, synonyms, and other sorts of dictionaries Artist biography and information Reference materials User-generated content, such as social tagging or comments about specific items (we're building that right now) Exhibition and events info Loans Deaccessioned items Researchers and pulled items Reports I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but we have not spent any time focusing the CMS as a tool for the education department. Instead, it functions, for us, as a research and collection management tool. In a meeting yesterday, one of our curators asked if she could scan in all of her notes about conversations she's had about various topics. I hadn't quite thought about using the CMS in that way, but it's something we're mulling over (we did end up telling her that a blog or a wiki might work better for that, but it was something to think about). Our system might be a bit of a special case, though. We've spent the past 8 months custom-tailoring it to be a robust research tool in addition to core collection management activities. At the most basic level, CMS should manage collections, and manage them well. Some systems have a number of extra features which make them functional for managing other activities, but I have not yet seen them function well as a DAMS, or as a way to keep track of development and marketing materials. (Of course, now that I've said that, someone will say that they've gotten theirs to function that way!) Ok, a bit long-winded but I hope it answers some of your questions. ~Perian Perian Sully Collections Information Manager Web Programs Strategist The Magnes Berkeley, CA -Original Message- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Morgan, Amber Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 7:41 AM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] What is a Collections Management System supposed to manage? We are addressing some concerns regarding our collections management system. Something that has become clear is that our staff is not in agreement as to what a CMS is and what it should do. We are attempting to address the needs of our education department. It would be very helpful to know how other institutions maintain what could be considered educational content. If anyone out there would be willing to answer a few questions, I would be very grateful! Do you store label copy in your CMS? Do you use your CMS to manage detailed information about artists, events, places, etc? If so, do you limit it to information specifically about your collection, or do you also maintain information about related materials held elsewhere? Does your institution collect any user-generated content, and if so, does it go into your CMS? And finally, if you're feeling up to it - what, in your opinion, is a collections management system; what should it do and what should it NOT be expected to do? Many thanks, Amber the warhol: Amber E. Morgan Associate Registrar 117 Sandusky Street Pittsburgh, PA 15212 T 412.237.8306 F 412.237.8340 E morgana at warhol.org W www.warhol.org The Andy Warhol Museum One of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh Email newsletter http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/email Membership http://members.carnegiemuseums.org/SupportCMP ___ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/
