Museum Journey: Physical to Virtual
When we look at the oldest cave drawings, incisions, and symbols on the walls that date back millions of years, we can clearly see that this is an innovation in the intent to record information, capture memories, and communicate a message. Today, this intent is part of our history and development that have been preserved by museums around the world. As they are our repositories of art, culture, and heritage, they also play a great role in the retention and management of information. The museums have come a long way from storing their collection’s information physically on paper to digitally with the help of electronic technologies such as software and hardware.
In the age of digitalization, it is important for our museums to use these technologies to archive their collections and information. These innovations and advancements in technology, like mobile applications and collection management system (CMS) software, have influenced museums on how individuals engage and are able to acquire, generate, store, and preserve documents, respectively.
In the 21st century, the role of collection management software has expanded from museums, libraries, and archives to galleries, schools, educational institutions, private collections, corporate companies, and much more. It can be used by a museum's collection staff or by individual, private collectors, as well as for membership, accounting, and administration. With the help of technology, it’s become easier for software to sync with third parties and utilise shared data in order to provide museum administrators and departments with insights into their data.
In today's digitally engrossed environment, museums around the world use a variety of softwares to deal with collection management, such as:
1. JATAN: A Virtual Museum Builder, which is a digital collection management system for Indian museums. It is a client server application with features like management of digital objects with multimedia representations, Dublin Core metadata compliance, a collaborative framework for museum curators and historians, and search and retrieval. JATAN software is successfully deployed in ten national museums across India, as standardised by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. It is designed, developed and maintained by Human-Centred Design and Computing Group, C-DAC, Pune. JATAN has recently launched a mobile app, which is an extension of this project.
2. NetX: It is a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution that makes it simpler to manage vast digital file libraries. It has a simple, contemporary design, expandable components, strong search facets, stored searches, asset request forms, grid editors, download functionality, and more. This software system is used by museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and Brooklyn Museum. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there are another two software named TMS or the museum system (organises the collection management work) and Jira (issue tracking product software) which helps organise and manage its large scale collection information. All three of these systems are linked to one another. Every night, NetX sends the photos to TMS, and TMS sends the object information to NetX. Jira is simultaneously more integrated with NetX than TMS, and it supports these two systems on a daily basis.
3. Axiell: The software is a flexible, user-friendly, and web-based solution for managing museum and archive collections from anywhere. Utilising Axiell Collections in a browser is easy. The platform is constructed in accordance with industry standards (Spectrum 5.0, Dublin core, AACR2 and more) and has strong user permissions to regulate database access. Some museums that use the Axiell system are the Field Museum, Qatar museums, the Australian Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
4. MuseumIndex+ : Featuring the Index+ Workflow Pilot, MuseumIndex+ is a potent Spectrum compliant museum collection management system that not only supports but also walks you through the Spectrum procedures. There are nine primary procedures for.eg. object entry, acquisition, accessioning, inventory and more. MuseumIndex+ is the latest generation of our museum collection management system and supports collections management, digital archives and interactive public access. The museums which use this CMS are the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Academy.
There are many museums around the world that still lack collection management system software and are not available online for the public. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, only 6% of collections are now on display. It implies that more than 94% of the collection is not visible to visitors on-site, but they can still study it online. Similarly, at the National Museum, New Delhi, there are thousands of objects that are not yet on display, but because of JATAN, the Digital Repository of Museums of India, which is slowly building its digital collection, are being made available to people.
References:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Digital Asset Management Software | NetX
Museums - Axiell - Collections management - Museum software
MuseumIndex+ – Collections Trust.