The National Museum of Norway has consolidated four museums into one institution since 2003. It is working to digitize its collection of over 400,000 objects and make them available online. It has developed an online collection using various APIs and technologies to display objects, associated biographies and other contextual information. There are ongoing efforts to improve the digital experience through additional languages, user feedback features, and new technologies like 360 degree images and 3D models. The museum is also committed to open sharing of its digital work to help other cultural institutions.

1. The National Museum
Collection Online
and Digital Activities
August 2016
Dag Hensten
twitter.com/daghensten
dag.hensten@nasjonalmuseet.no

2. Nasjonalmuseet / The National Museum
of Art, Architecture and Design
Since 2003 Nasjonalmuseet is a consolidation of four museums:
• The National Gallery
• The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design
• The Museum of Contemporary Art
• The National Museum – Architecture
As well as
• a nationwide program of touring exhibitions

7. new

8. Digital resources
• Communications Dept. responsible for content and technical
management of all public digital platforms
• Collection Management Dept. responsible for Collection Management
System (DCM Section) and photo library system (Photo Section)
• Head of IT + IT Officer responsible for all backend office systems
• Backend office support: External company, 1 ½ people fulltime

9. Digital platforms (public)
• Website: http://nasjonalmuseet.no – proprietary CMS
• Social media, primarily Facebook (42 500), Instagram (19 100) and
Twitter (9 200)
• Eventbrite
• Online museum shop (from June 2016) – Wordpress+WooCommerce)
• Online collection – custom framework + Wordpress
• Newsletter – Apsis
• (Library + Archive)

10. «Digital Resource Group»
• Not a production unit. Strategic and advisory function for (future)
digital activities and plans outside day-to-day functions
• 9 people
• Head of IT (in Admin Dept)
• Head of Photo Section (in Collection Mgmt Dept)
• Head of Information Section (in Comms Dept)
• Web Editor (in Comms Dept)
• 2 consultants/advisers in Digital Collection Mgmt. Section (in Coll Mgmt Dept)
• 1 representative from «Media and Design Group»
• Procurement Officer (in Admin Dept)
• Mediation Curator (in Travelling Exhibitions Dept)

11. «Media and Design Group»
• Production function for exhibition design, AV and digital for selected
exhibitions
• 3 people
• Graphic designer
• Exhibition designer
• AV specialist

12. Digital operative functions in Comm. Dept.
• Web Editor (strategic, technical and resource management, web and
intranet publishing)
• SoMe Manager/Comm. Adviser (web and SoMe publishing, SoMe
responsibility)
• Comm. Adviser (web, intranet and SoMe publishing)
• Comm. Adviser (temporary – web, intranet and SoMe publishing)

13. Our Collections
• Norway’s most extensive collection of art, architecture and design
• Around 400 000 objects
• Almost everything is registered in our CMS «Primus»
• Around 60 000 architectural drawings are not yet fully recorded
• Since 2008 the museum has worked to quality assure and revise the
registration of the collection
• This work is now even more central as the museum is starting a large-scale
relocation process to a new museum building
• When the new National Museum is complete in 2019, around half of our
objects will move from 5 storage facilities to Vestbanen. This requires a
complete and quality assured digital catalogue.

20. Some history
• 2000: Web publishing module for the CMS «is just around the corner»
• 2008: Annual report says «still lacking technical solutions for making
the collection available on the Internet». No data model, no access to
database.
• 2011: A selection of works from the collection are published to
DigitaltMuseum.no (DiMu)
• 2012: Oh, there seems to be an API for DiMu. Nobody’s using it.
• 2013: Access to the API and early trials
• 2014: Hackathon #hack4no and first prototype
• 2015: Elaborate mashup launched at Samling.nasjonalmuseet.no

21. What’s taken so long?
• Technology
• Internal resources
• External resources
• Digital mindset
• Copyright issues

22. What is it?
• Web application joining data from
• Collection Management System API (DigitaltMuseum) – 35 000 objects
• Nasjonalmuseet artists biographies RDF via SPARQL endpoint – 3 500 artists, designers and
architects
• Artists biographies from Wikipedia – where not found above
• Wordpress API: Custom groups of collection objects, group articles, collection object articles,
article images, sound files and more.
• DeepZoom images of selected collection objects (OpenSeaDragon)
• Google Maps for geolocation of motif (visual art), production place (design objects) or location
(architecture, exhibition venues)
• Developed internally by Communication Dept.:
• Project management, concept/idea, prototype, graphic+interaction design, info
architecture, front- and back-end development
• PHP framework-less application on standard hosted LAMP environment

24. What is published?
• The objects are typically highlights from the collection
• Also in connection with revising collection and planning exhibitions
• Metadata for all published objects have been assessed and quality
controlled before publication
• The digital representation (photograph) should be of high quality
• Published image resolution is typically between 2000 and 4000px on
the longest side
• Since 2015 published image resolution is 4000px on the longest side
• Similar objects are photographed consistently

26. What do people want?
• In our online collection:
• Harald Sohlberg’s Street in Røros,
• Hans Gude and Adolph Tidemand‘s Brudeferd i Hardanger
• Edvard Munch’s Winter.

28. What do people want?
• In DigitaltMuseum:
• This dress is the fourth most visited object among 1,5 million objects from
Norwegian collections!
• Why? Pinterest #omgthatdress

31. Re-using content

34. Re-using content
We re-use texts by Nasjonalmuseet authors previously published
elsewhere:
• Two fresh highlights catalogues, covering hundreds of works from the
visual art collection from antiquity to today
• Older catalogues, e.g. works by Edvard Munch
• Outdated online presentations
• Norsk kunstnerleksikon
• Currently updating contracts with external text contributors to allow
for online use as well

35. Interface

42. Biographies

43. Di

44. Biographies
• Norsk kunstnerleksikon – 4 vol. index of Norwegian artists, with
authorative biographies, exhibition history, bibliographic references.
Completed 1986.
• Wikipedia. Is it good enough? MoMA seems to think so.
• Getty Union List of Artist Names
• Store Norske Leksikon
• How can we find the right – and the best – biographies?
• VIAF identifiers are registered in our CMS, but not accessible in API – yet.
• Kulturnav?

47. Language difficulties?

48. ba

49. Language difficulties
• Only some objects have titles in other languages
• Some highlights (mostly paintings) have translated English titles
• All terminology is entered in Norwegian
• How can we improve this?
• Nasjonalmuseet uses Feltkatalogen. Recently published to Kulturnav and
referenced to Getty AAT
• Whose responsibility?
• On-the-fly query in web application or provided by the API?
• Other issues – untranslated titles?
• Offer user to search with Google Translate, as pragmatic temporary fix?

50. What about the library and the archive?
• Most library systems now have some sort of API
• Nasjonalmuseet uses Tidemann – a Norwegian proprietary system
• Has a somewhat slow API that returns XML
• Possible to integrate with collection, but for what purpose?
• In what context? Artist? Work? Type of work, technique, school etc?
• Bibliographic references in CMS not accessible in API – yet
• Bibliographic references in artist biography?
• In most cases the book or article cannot be read online – yet

51. What about the curators?
• To do:
• Create internal working group for special content, involving curators and
educators
• Create understanding of how publishing process works
• Change mindset so that curators and educators also has the online collection
in mind when working with future projects

52. Future stuff

54. Future stuff
• Machine Learning / AI
• Principal Components project 2016-2017
• Integrate outcomes in collection online?
• API, re-use, sharing

56. Future stuff
• 360 degrees photos
http://samling.nasjonalmuseet.no/360/kim-3/
• 3D/turntable view
http://samling.nasjonalmuseet.no/no/360/object/NMK.2007.0476
• 3D models of objects
http://samling.nasjonalmuseet.no/no/object/NG.S.01145

57. Sharing and collaboration
• Committed to share methods and code with other institutions in Norway and Sweden,
through GitHub and seminars/workshop
• All components, plugins and 3rd party libraries are open source
• Modularised, multi-language, built with a view to share with other collections
• Recently initiated EEA Grants funded collaboration and knowledge sharing with National
Gallery of Slovakia (SNG)
• Grant from Kulturrådet, EUR 90 000 for further development and knowledge sharing /
workshops / seminars

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59. User involvement
Involve the user with options for
• feedback and dialogue
• creating and playing with content
• creating and (social) sharing their own collections
• crowdsourcing: tagging, annotation?
• Reporting errors