Towards a common danish infrastructure

Towards a common Danish infrastructure for collections management, aggregation and dissemination
Christian Ertmann-Christiansen &
Henrik Jarl Hansen
Sharing is caring:
Digitized cultural heritage for all
11. November 2011

Towards a common Danish IT infrastructure for museums - the next generation

Sharing and caring
Sharing
Business processes
Standards and practices
It development efforts
Source code
Content
IPR

Shared business processes
The five pillars of museum administration
Research
Collection
Registration (collections management)
Preservation / conservation
Dissemination

Shared business processes
Sharing is the law of the land
§ 11 State and state subsidized museums shall report objects and documentation to the national registries of cultural history or art history.
§ 39 The minister of culture keeps a registry of cultural history and a registry of works of art. The minister makes the registries accessible to the public and relevant authorities.

Shared standards and practices
Building on prior work
A history of cooperation
A previous collections management system (DMI)
A national standard (Danish Museums’ Documentation Standard)
An online registry of art history developed at the National Gallery

Shared standards and practices
Room for improvement
Establishing the registry of cultural history
Abolishing manual processes
Doing away with redundant labor
Complete digital workflow
Avoiding on site software maintenance
Deliver collections management to museums as a service in a web browser
Published knowledge is immediately accessible to all

Shared IT Architecture
The solution
One shared online system providing three services
- Regin (collections management and reporting)
- Art Index Denmark (art registry)
- Museums Collections (cultural history)
One shared database
Shared source: open source software
Tools for sharing: content for museums’ web sites drawn dynamically from the database

Shared efforts
Usability and user-driven development
Usability tests
Workshops
User feedback from support hotline, teaching courses and meetings
Greenland
Faroe Islands

Shared IT Architecture Regin Museums’ Collections Service layer Database Art Index Denmark Foreign system Xml-import/export og webservices

History
Winter 2003 requirements specification
February 2004 first version of the system
Regin & Museums’ Collections
Autumn 2004 version 1.1
Spring 2005 version 1.2
XML import/export
Spring 2007 version 2.0
Integration of Art Index Denmark
Web services
Autumn 2011 version 2.2
Improved security and user-request changes
Spring 2014: The new museum database

Shared security
Accessibility 24/7/365 (99.7%)
Redundancy
Disks
Power supply
Network
But: not the museums’ internet connections
Monitoring
Incident response 24/7/365
Backup daily
Professional service provider

Sharing content Regin Museums’ Collections Servicelag Museums’ Database Art Index Denmark Libraries’ Database Archives’ Database Servicelag Servicelag Archaeology Database Servicelag Artists in Skagen A regional history

Sharing content
115 collections in Museums’ Collections
68 collections in Art Index Denmark
9 museums in Regon (= Regin Greenland)
10 museums in Regfo (= Regin Faroe Islands)
143,000 works of art in Art Index Denmark
71,000 with photos
2.3 mio. objects and 142,000 case files published in the Museums’ Collections
423,000 with photos

Challenges
Sustainability
Getting everyone on board
IPR
International accessibility (Europeana)

The background analysis and report
A new initiative on a common it-infrastructure
The work is in line with the national IT-strategy
Working Group commissioned by The Ministry of Culture (2010-2011)
to analyze the museums collection management systems and
to present a proposal for a national IT-infrastructure
Participants: National Museum, National Art Gallery, Odense City Museums, Thorvaldsen’s Museum, Heritage Agency and Agency for Libraries and Media (chair)
Report April 2011
Heritage Agency has been tasked to manage the process towards the new common system for collections management
tirsdag 22. november 2011

The new infrastructure is (also) a reaction to
Trends
Increased cost pressures on museums IT budgets
The establishment of the ”National IT service” has generally meant fewer IT staff at the state museums and institutions
An increasingly diversified IT landscape as the museums develop local solutions
Use of unnecessary resources by lack of scale of joint procurement
Fewer recourses in general in cultural institutions

The task
The Heritage Agency has been tasked:
To consolidate the museum’s collections management systems towards a common infrastructure
The consolidation is implemented by following the recommendations to modernize the current Regin system plus add functionality for object location solutions and digital resources
To establish a new joint museum database to include all the museums central records.
The new museum database are based on a new common conceptual data model
To involve the museums in the consolidation and modernisation work.

The work in progress
We work towards common goals
The new system will need a new name
Suggestions are very welcome
The new data model must be compliant with international standards like CIDOC CRM
The data model must accommodate the union, not just the intersection, of the metadata schemas it is based upon
The data model should be “future proof” (e.g. new art and media types)
However, it is essential that the same museum object is recorded in the same way, whoever registers
But the approach may be different (resp. “case registration” vs. “object registration”

Project organisation tirsdag 22. november 2011 Steering committee Data model WG IT coordination group Reference group Ad hoc groups KUAS Project team

The data model WG
Task
The WG (skilled users) will contribute to the development of the new, common conceptual data model to accommodate data from the Regin, GenReg, Globus/Corpus and other.
The work is estimated to take ½ year.
Participants
Bodil Frandsen, Nordjyllands Historical Museum
Jens Toftgaard, Odense City Museums
Kim Brasen, National Art Museum
Rikke Ruhe, National Museum
Mette Høj, Roskilde Museum
NN, TMS – museum
Facilitation
Process consultant
Metadata specialist

Reference Group - an invitation
Task
The task is to follow the development of the of the new data model and to give input to the development process
We aim for a broad representation from different museum categories and sizes
We want an open and involving process
Output
The group should provide relevant input to the data model WG and to the development of the model
Participants
We invite 15-20 representatives from the museums to join the group (please give me feedback)
We also plan 2-3 introductory meetings around the country

Project organisation tirsdag 22. november 2011 Steering committee Data model WG IT coordination group Reference group Ad hoc groups KUAS Project team

It-coordination group
Task
The WG (it-management) will become responsible for coordinating the consolidation and converging towards a new common it infrastructure seen from the it-business side.
CollectionSpace
Participants
Jes Gjørup, National Museum
Steen Weidemann, National Museum
Kim Gundersen, National Art Museum
Axel Kellermann, National Art Museum
Jacob Riddersholm Wang, Odense City Museums
NN, TMS museum

Main steps
The process is estimated to take 3 years
Phases
The new data model
Have a closer look on CollectionSpace to see if the system can be completely or partially included as part of the solution
Specification process
Development and technical installation of the new system
Other special applications (for larger museums)
Location system and media files (digital resources)
Conversion of data from the Regin system
Broader consolidation process

Other topics
Digital resources
Ting Community
Cultural Heritage Archive Opens System (CHAOS)
Development
International standards
CIDOC CRM (data model)
Lido Schema (Athena) (sharing)
Europeana data model (EDM) (sharing)
Open source
Semantic web
Cloud computing

The economy
The total cost is estimated at 21,5 million DKK (2011 -2018)
Development costs over the first 3 years approx 13.5 million DKK
Operation and maintenance over the next 5 years approx 8 million DKK.
Financing
The development is financed from central funds (ministry)
The subsequent operation (and further development?) will involve payment
There are more models for financing
The decision will be made before 2014, when the system becomes operational

Status
Kick off meeting 28. September
Introduction for the WG’s
Invitation to tender for the consultancy assignments
Description of tasks
New IT project model
Ministry of Digitisation
Next step is to adopt a new project model and to report the project to a new IT board

Keywords for the process
Modernisation
Innovation
Co operation
User involvement
Consolidation
Engagement
Communication
Sharing

Next step: see you in the cloud

More information www.kulturarv.dk

Contact
[email_address]
[email_address]
http://www.kulturarv.dk/kid
http://www.kulturarv.dk/mussam

Towards a common danish infrastructure

by chrert on Nov 22, 2011

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Towards a common danish infrastructure — Presentation Transcript