Beyond Collection Descriptions – More Data for More Users
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Jane Raftery, Collections & Access Manager, Glasgow Museums Expanding from an existing on line collection website with collection descriptions to exposing as much data as possible from our collections management system. Approaches to reviewing the unpublished data Collection images and IPR A section for teachers Small scale user evaluation
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Beyond Collection Descriptions – More Data for More Users
- 1. Jane Raftery – Collections and Access Manager, Glasgow Museums jane.raftery@glasgowlife.org.uk
- 2. 1856 McLellan Galleries 1870 Old Kelvingrove House & Industrial Museum 1896 Camphill House 1898 People’s Palace (Green Branch) 1900 Fossil Grove 1901Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum 1905 Mosesfield House, Springburn 1905 Tollcross House (first childrens’ museum in UK) 1936 Aitkenhead House, Kings Park 1964 Museum of Transport, Albert Drive 1966 Pollok House 1976 Haggs Castle 1978 Provands’ Lordship 1983 Burrell Collection 1989 Museum of Transport at Bunhouse Road 1993 St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art 1996 Maryhill Store 1996 Gallery of Modern Art 1997 Scotland Street School 2003 GMRC phase 1 2008 GMRC phase 2 2011 Riverside Museum 2016 Kelvinhall joint collections storage with Hunterian and NLS
- 3. 2009 - 2016 • Existing website since 2009 • Focus - collection level descriptions • Few object level records • Public requests to view collection • Acquired MWeb early 2016
- 4. Project Aims Release as much data as possible on CMS • Object (up to 500,000) • People (currently 800 available) • Sites (45) • Exhibition records • Media (110,000 digital images) • Collection Level Descriptions – 1258 Data - easy to change Related / linked data Responsive
- 5. Server setup / software installation / config Data / content – how to check? Initial evaluation – what do our users want? Images and IPR – what can we release? Web design – how should it look? Link to DAM to purchase image – a possibility?
- 7. Agreed to check all records to be released Object records Curators – 2 week secondment to documentation Trained to edit records Target 500 records 13 database fields People records – Checked by editor (written by volunteers) Sites: Archaeology curators checking Exhibitions: Exhibition project managers - create record when an exhibition opened
- 8. Accuracy of data – any errors, typos from the transfer of data from paper sources Inappropriate language / terms– non PC Data protection – names with address, telephone numbers, dates of birth etc. Sensitive data –medical / financial / ethnic information
- 9. • After first 500 records enthusiasm waned • Curators to spend one day a week on records • Managers to collate monthly figures of records checked 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 Jun-15 Sep-15 Dec-15 Mar-16 Jun-16 Sep-16 Dec-16 Mar-17 Nos of records checked by curators Number of records checked by curators Nos of curators editing
- 10. Spreading workload-more records ready (22 curators) Curators had knowledge– made sense to add data directly Good community spirit Felt empowered More curators editing more digression from standards Time consuming for documentation to check data Few situations different curators editing same record Numbers of records fell over time Revisit – decision to release some records without checking
- 11. Short observation and follow up interview ◦ Staff, teachers, volunteers, students, visitors How users navigate the general and advanced search Are words/ phrases familiar and easy to understand Are users satisfied with the information that their search(s) return
- 12. Consultation with museum education staff Prepare for visits / look at records after visits. Agreed list of top level themes - Scottish education system List of topics under each main theme Learning Assistants nominate topic object lists, curators check and prepare records
- 15. Small project team checking Naomi Korn – Copyright consultant Bernard Horrocks – IP Consultant (Tate) Works protected by copyright in our collection Many unknown / orphan works Using Mimsy data ◦ Maker death date ◦ Date made ◦ Acquisition date
- 18. Thank you for listening Any Questions ?
Editor's Notes
- Project we have been working on in Glasgow Museums over the last year to get our collections on the web, share our experiences and some lessons learned. The project represents what Glasgow Museums has had in mind for a long time. It was a Glasgow City Council objective to get more of the collections on line in their 2012 – 2015 manifesto First a little introduction as to who we are? Glasgow Museums is a Local Authority funded museum service. We have11 sites spread across the city. Museum service started in 1856, developed into large number of venues with parallel cataloguing systems and cover all disciplines from art, human history, natural history to transport and technology. All collections data merged into one system in 2000. Not much web access to our collections until 2009 but even then Collection Level Descriptions. But we were working hard at improving access by investing heavily in behind the scenes inventory projects that included photographers on each team with the aim of completing the inventories of our collections by 2018. This work meant that when we were ready we could provide access to the majority of our collections and also facilitate viewing of these objects. Use Mimsy XG as our collections management system
- Background: Original collections website launched 2009- result of a temporary project team working in our Research and Curatorial Dept (2006-2009)– original aim was to first give an overview of collections held and have a 2nd project to provide access to item level records as it was felt it would take years to check all these records before release. One of the aims of this initial website was to encourage website visitors to request to view objects at our main site Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (part of funding conditions). We have one member of staff who facilitates the object viewing –he sets up the viewings and also answers enquiries from the website. So strategically the combination of the website and the Resource centre is about centralisation and integration of our stored assets and maximising opportunities using the combined infrastructure of web and physical site.
- 2016 Acquire MWeb software from Axiell, Decision to keep the website simple and focus on our collections data and the content from our CMS. Not so much about GM programmes as this was managed somewhere else. Decision to try and release not only object records but as much other data we had on Mimsy. Fairly small scale project with small budget – no dedicated project staff, had to use the resources we had in times of staff cuts. Looked at all the data we had on our CMS (Mimsy) People: For example we had a lot of biographies of our early donors – project started with volunteers to research and write biographies of our early donor – many of which were industrialists, ship owners and merchants, wealthy men who donated to GM – many stories uncovered. But not only the wealthy were research but less well known and women donors who have enriched the lives of Glaswegians through their donations. We wanted to make this information available as did the volunteer researchers. Sites: Archaeology site data - we had a temporary 3 year project to reorganise our archaeology archive and again wanted to make the site records accessible The general search runs across all this data – when a user entered a search term the website searched across objects. People, Sites, exhibition and collection records and displayed the results listed as number of object records found, site records, people records etc. We wanted to make sure the data was easy to change and update. Wanted to display related information e.g. people records linked to the objects they donated or made, Sites linked to the object records, objects related to other objects Wanted a responsive site so could be used on tablets and phones as well as PCs Technical information Made up of 3 components – • an export/processor which builds a MySQL database, • the MWeb executable, which processes query requests from end-users, • XML engine, which processes query requests through an API and returns data from the MySQL database in XML format We will have an automated export routine from Mimsy that pulls out and indexes the data, and delivers it (along with associated media) to our public facing server
- There are a number of different stages or parts to the project, I’ll talk a little about some of the stages of setting up MWeb
- Project Stages - Config Document Once the server was set up, software installed and configured Had to decide exactly what data we wanted to extract – was straight forward Configuration document - Spreadsheet Worksheet for each Mimsy module List of fields Field tags – e.g different for NH Fields to be included in Keyword serach , Advnaced earch, List and Details views Any processing required Working copy of the website in about 2 weeks so we could see how our data preformed (basically the data extraction had been set up). Useful as we could try it out immediately and able to show staff what we were working on rather than trying to explain how it all worked.
- It was agreed we had to check all the records on our CMS before releasing to the web Doc staff normally did data entry / editing but very busy, Only way - involve more people Approach to data review- (objects) Object records Train all curators, Break down into manageable groups Each curators to make groups of 500 records (or bigger for larger collections) 2 week secondment to documentation dept, 500 records then spend one day a week after this Review 13 fields – Assigned a flag field – curator reviewed and MWeb – once flagged the record is exported to the website People records – one of our editors working through the text written by volunteers) Sites: Archaeologists checking and dealing with Site records (we had a 3 year project to reorganise our archaeology archive so preparing the records Exhibitions: just had to get exhibition project managers to add a record once an exhibition opened and make it current. Also got some Assistant Curators to review records for the bigger collections e.g the Social History collection and prints
- 13 object catalogue fields. Accuracy of data –particular disciplines place may have got mixed up with culture, natural history scientific names misspelled if the data entry staff unfamiliar with the terms Inappropriate terms / language –World Cultures collections had to be checked so for example terms such as Kaffir, Squaw, Red Indian, primitive, savage which may have been entered in our registers in 19th century not appropriate now for our public records. Data protection – names with address, telephone numbers, dates of birth etc. (e.g. school reports)? Sensitive data – ref to medical, financial or ethnic information or specific comments about a person for example in our Education collection (e.g. school reports). (Beyond Hope!) Additional data where field was empty . We still have records with for example ‘coin’ or ‘old chair’ in the description field. Catalogue flag fields was set to Y. All the curators very enthusiastic, keen to add their knowledge to Mimsy. Had to impress on each curator that the consistency of the data was very important REPORTS written for staff to run and check their data
- How did it go? Once a curator had completed their 2 week secondment we felt they may stop working through the records.
- Some downsides.. Found numbers of records falling over time. Although staff committed, other capital projects consuming staff time When we looked at the figures would have taken 8 years to get our records if curators kept to their commitment but much longer with numbers falling Looked at options and only sensible option was to release records without checking. Research managers asked to come up with collection areas we could release for low risk areas of the collection. Curators would be able to check later as any edits on Mimsy would update the web records at next data export. Have a disclaimer on the website and as an organisation we acknowledge we don’t know everything about the collections and lots of information out there so affirmation of this.
- Once we has a working copy of the website we decided to do some initial user evaluation with the help of our Visitor Services curator to help inform the design of the website Small scale to get an idea of how others would find the website. 9 volunteers recruited to do the initial evaluation of the development website (staff, teachers, students, former visitors to resource centre). Aim: - To test usability and functionality of MWeb with a range of audiences. Found out quite a lot from this small scale evaluation – some terminology misunderstood (education collection), missed some aspects of site as not obvious had a function (e.g browsing collection hierarchies), without search tips didn’t understand how site searched across record fields and types. Objectives: - How are users navigating the search functions (standard and advanced)? Are there any issues/ challenges, in terms of navigation? Are words/ phrases that are used familiar and easy to understand? (e.g we had a category called Education Collection – this caused confusion so we decided to change it as a result How easily are users able to access the information they require? Are users satisfied with the information that their search(es) return? Is there any additional information that may be required for MWeb to further meet the needs of users? What are the key motivations and expectations for users when using a site of this nature? Participants were invited to attend a short observation session and follow-up interview with Visitor Studies staff at a GM venue. Given a brief intro to MWeb and its function, before observing participants using MWeb for approximately five minutes. In advance, participants were asked to have one or two areas of interest that they will search for during their session. If necessary, prompts will be issued. Following observation, participants will be taken through a short survey to gather their feedback and opinions. Shown some of the design ideas for the website and asked opinion So during the evaluation there were a number of suggestions, we looked at these and decided to go with some but not others based on resources Some ideas came out of the user evaluation
- One idea that came out of the evaluation session was a webpage specifically for teachers and pupils. Our Education staff were very excited by the project as up to now they only had static webpages on the main company website. They wanted to keep it simple based on the four main education topics / themes used in Scotland – Expressive Arts, Religious and Moral Studies, Science and Social Studies. So the page has the four main themes with the list of topics underneath. We wanted to make it very flexible and easy to change topics and also add / remove objects linked to these topics. Records are created as Mimsy Subject records with the objects linked so the education staff could take control if they wanted to add new topics and change object records if required. Resource for teachers to prepare for visits and also for after visits. Main job was to get short description of the theme and then a suitable selection of object records.
- Another page on the website was specifically for the public to arrange object viewing. The original website was also set up to offer object viewing to anyone interested. This was in our Resource Centre. So we had a page developed with a form for website visitors to request to object viewings in our Resource centre in South Glasgow. As this website had so much more data we hoped it would be easier for public to identify what they wanted to see.
- Another aspect of the project we had to consider was how we deal with releasing the 133,000 images, these were often taken as part of funded inventory projects. We could control which images were to be released as assigned a flag field in the Mimsy Media record for those images that were suitable for public release. Two sizes of image were to be released Thumb and Screen. This proved to be an even bigger task than the data! Collections were so varied and there was potential for infringement of Intellectual Property rights unless we looked into it and checked all our images. Number if things we had to consider As this was part of a project that was HLF funded the digital output was to be assigned a CC license CC BY NC (non commercial), this was part of HLF standard conditions so anything we put out there had to be out of copyright. Think it would be easy to follow copyright law and include images for objects out of copyright ….but consider this What if you have no Maker name or you have no date What if you have a maker but cannot find anything out about the maker Does a medal fall under copyright law or a piece of jewellery? If a trademark is visible on an image can we display it? We had so many dilemmas
- How did we approach? We are fairly risk averse as an organisation so had to consult with management, do our research, educate ourselves – Collection so varied – dealing with everything from the natural and human world - Art to NH to Social History that we had to look out for different things in different collections – education collection had school reports with children’s names, date of birth and sometimes addresses, we may have taken this out of the data fields but had to be aware the data may be visible in the images. Some had remarks that someone may not have been pleased to see published on line. We also had lots of objects with trademarks and logos that we needed to consider if we could publish images of these (is trademark featuring prominently in the image?, well known brands etc. First had to educate ourselves on the latest in IPR and other legal issues We contracted Naomi Korn an IP consultant to come for a day to give us an overview Many of our images fell into the ‘unknown’ or orphan works category as there was not sufficient data to determine if the copyright had expired. A few months later we had Bernard Horricks from the Tate provide a 2nd consultancy day We used Mimsy searches to try and categorise record into different copyright risk categories.
- Consulted with senior management to get agreement on what we could and couldn’t release. Briefing paper with our recommendations. Checklist document based on risk categories. We had categories for No risk, Low risk, Medium risk and High risk. Used a traffic light system as suggested by Naomi Korn. Okay in theory but when we came to try it out on the actual records with images we had to refine a number of times and try to simplify – even then there was an element of subjectivity. Trying to simplify what was a very complex subject. Assigned an OPTION field so we could assign our copyright risk categories with a view to then updating a field in the Media record (Thumb and Screen ) for No Risk, Low and Medium risk categories to be released for public websites. High risk categories would not be released
- Web site still in development (almost there) Few slides of home page, detailed view and browse collections. We achieved the aim of expanding information available to public –many aspects to the practicalities of this that we had not appreciated until we embarked on the project. Limited resources, working with current staffing levels alongside few other major projects so competing for resources. The driver was to get the content out there and capitalize on the massive investment that Glasgow Museums has made since 1992 when data entry, inventory and photography projects were started. Now that we have the infrastructure in place we can add to the website indefinitely Moving from Collection descriptions to object level descriptions highlighted many issues we had to deal with once the focus was on the object. When we go live in June we hope to have 100,000 records online.