The MAE (Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts) aims to preserve Catalonia's performing arts heritage and make its collections accessible. It has four units housing a research library, archive, museum, and school library with over 120,000 books and manuscripts, 200,000 photos, 16,000 set designs, and more. Before 2008, it lacked an integrated information system. Its 2008-2013 strategic plan focused on adopting open source technologies to improve management, reduce costs, and promote online access. It developed its own application based on HydraProject to manage metadata and disseminate collections, transforming its work processes and bringing its heritage to the 21st century.

1. The ICT and the Dissemination of Heritage
The Experience of MAE
Anna Valls
FIRT, Re-Routing Performance
Barcelona, 2013

2. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Vision and Mission
Vision
To be the reference centre for the research and information of
performing arts of Catalonia
Main goals
To preserve the memory of the performing arts in Catalonia
To support teaching and research at the various schools of our centre
To disseminate our museum, archive and bibliographical collections

3. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
4 Units
Research and historical library
1968
Archive
1978
Museum
1923
School library
1923

4. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Many kinds of documentation

5. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Bibliographical and Media Collection
Books,manuscripts, magazines, DVDs… : > 120,000

6. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Set design collection
Set design collection: set sketches, set models, costume renderings,
backdrops… more than 16,000 items.

7. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Archive Collection
Photos: > 200,000
Posters: 6,700
Programs: > 100.000

8. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Costumes
1000 pieces of actors , tenors, dancers…
Dresses and accessories like shoes, umbrellas, necklaces …

9. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Puppetry Collection
The puppetry collection contains 400 pieces

10. MAE. Documentation Centre and Museum of Performing Arts
Before 2008: Working without Information Technologies

We had 35,177 documents in 885 Windows folders

We had more than 50 MSAccess databases for the archive and
museum collections

Our bibliographical catalogue was run by VTLS

Our digital newspaper database was run by Knossys

Our staff didn’t include any IT engineer

We used to have old tecnology and no open source

We used to pay for all the IT services

11. Strategic Plan 2008-2013
Goals
Taking advantage of IT
to promote our museum collections
Human
Resources
Professionalization: two new IT engineers
Organization
Improve management, processes and internal
communication  increase efficiency
Finance
Expenses reduction: open source software and our own
data centre

12. 2008-2009 Project
From Puting out the fire stage to Reactive stage
futurs students
Web (joomla)
Content DM
To promote museum
collections
2008
MAE web
Joomla
Newspaper
Data base
Dspace
2010
2009
Strategic IT
planning1.0
The first computer
engineer
Hardware
acquisition
Academic
Internet
network
Data
Centre

13. 2010-2011 Project
From Reactive stage to Proactive stage
Scanner II
website
Intranet
Supporting
Virtual Anniversary Performances
Campus
Database
website
Online
exhibition
‘Viatge per
l’escena’
New
catalogue
‘Escena
Digital’
2011
2010
2012
ECLAP
European
Project
Strategic IT
Planning 2.0
Virtualization
project
2nd IT
Engineer
New backup
system

14. 2012 Project
From Proactive Stage to Innovative Stage
We needed an application to manage and to disseminate the
archive and museum collections
We decided to develop our own application

15. 2012 Project
Proactive Stage to Innovative Stage
Partners: DuraSpace, Stanford, Virginia, Notre Dâme, Hull, etc.
Main elements: Fedora, Solr, Ruby on Rails

16. 2012 Project
Proactive Stage to Innovative Stage
A new single data model for all the collections with Dublin Core
metadates (except bibliographical and audiovisual collections)
One single application to:
Describe documents or objects
Preserve images
Disseminate the holdings

17. 2013
Conclusions
Weaknesses
The project took much longer than we expected
Some staff had difficulties to adapt the news formats and
technologies of the XXI century

18. 2013
Conclusions
Strengths
21rd Century Technology
We use one single application for all the archives and museum collections
Our information system covers: ingestion, transformation, preservation
and dissemination
Our digital holdings are growing every day
We are much more efficient

19. 2013
Conclusions
• We believe that the effort of these last six years has been
worth it
• We are open to the world
• Hydraproject has asked us to become partners which
makes us very

20. 2013
Proactive Stage to Innovative Stage

21. Anna Valls
vallspa@institutdelteatre.cat