Hello listers,
I really want to thank everybody who responded to my e-mail: (Original
message at the end)
Guy Hermann
Linn
Sande
Stephen Toney
Tim
Karin Haubold
Sally
Erin Foley
Ted Stearns
Leslie Johnston
Chuck Patch
Tracie Umbreit
Dot Dalziell
Leonard Will
Erik Christman
Margaret Lyman
Diane Gutenkauf
Tim McShane
IDRC Marketing department
As some of you stated, there are different points of view from people when
deciding what technology to use for "museum management automation"
All your advices were very helpful, and based in my understanding of the
opinions, we'll be doing the following:
1. Have CAUTION, and take "reasonable time" to develop a General Technology
Plan based on the institution NEEDS in information management.
2. We will probably need a COLLECTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM and not simply a
database, so we will evaluate the possibilities:
buy an off-the shelf package software OR develop our own system
Personally, If an off- shelf package is customizable enough (by making
some programming), that may work for us, but the evaluation will
lead us based in specific needs.
Existing information was also recommended by some of you (CHIN Review,
Standards in Action: Spectrum IT Guide ). We plan to use some of them.
3. Meanwhile, we will make some minor fixes to our existing basic
applications (VB + ACCESS) and continue using them for inventory and
cataloguing.
We' ll need to confirm with users from specific CMS packages, what we
should take into consideration to ensure that the data collected using these
applications
will be recovered without any lost of information. (eg.field
restrictions, classification, etc)
Again, thanks a lot for your helpful comments and I'll be posting more
specific topics in the near future.
Ricardo Lopez
*****************************************************ORIGINAL
MESSAGE*********************************************************************
********
Hello everybody out there,
I'm new to this mailing list.
I have the task of assessing a project in the information technology
required to support the activities and procedures of a museum\cultural
center.
My experience is in the information technology area (information systems
design and development, database design, etc) and I have NO knowledge in
collection management systems for museums specifically, so I ask you to
excuse the possible misuse of terms in this e-mail.
This museum\cultural center is going to be opened in the year 2003 and it
will manage (exhibit?) different kinds of objects in different areas
(collections?):
Visual arts, archaeology, ethnography and others.
The building is not ready yet so the experts (artists?) will be working in a
temporary deposit basically doing these tasks:
Inventory of the collections (including making digital photographs)
Classifying and cataloguing the collections
OK, this is my general scenario, now the points at which I would appreciate
any comments from you:
The fact is that the project needs to have computer applications that help
to manage the previously mentioned tasks in a automated way.
There's a first question I have:
SHOULD WE DEVELOP OUR OWN SYSTEM OR BUY A COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE OR MAYBE A
COMBINATION OF BOTH?
We already have simple applications to make data-entry and basic queries
(developed in Visual Basic using MicroSoft Access), but I wonder
IF WE SHOULD BEGIN USING THE DEFINITE SOLUTION SINCE THE BEGINNING OR MAYBE
CONTINUE USING OUR EXISTING APPLICATIONS
ADDING SOME BASIC FUNCTIONS (CLASSIFICATION FOR INSTANCE) WHILE WE IMPLEMENT
THE FINAL SOLUTION (OWN SYSTEM OR COMMERCIAL APPLICATION)
Any comments will be useful,
Best regards,
TIA
Ricardo Lopez
Ingeniero de Tecnologia
Consultoria e Implementacion Tecnologica
Santiago de los Caballeros, Republica Dominicana
*******************************************************END OF ORIGNAL
MESSAGE******************************************************************
=========================================================
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