How to Make History Interesting...

It's not always easy to think of ways to make history engaging for kids...

Tate Online

While we await the new version of our EMu Intranet site, it may be useful to take a look at The Tate's online database. This operates in a very similar manner to the IMu set up we will be using, and includes many similar design features.

Have a test drive here

The overall look and feel will obviously be different, but the built-in functionality is very similar; simple search and advanced search tabs, and the saved objects (known as My Collections in our version).

Tate also use a really interesting Subject classification page - which allows users to browse without any prior knowledge of the collection content. Our "Browse Collections" functionality will be implemented using the Narratives records to provide multiple ways for users to discover our collection overviews.

Also of interest on the Tate website is a detailed explanation of their ongoing digitisiation project - Insight: digitising the Tate Collection - which is well worth a read.

Experiments with Learning

Whilst exploring the Powerhouse blog Fresh + New(er) on a boring tram journey, I stumbled on another interesting post by Seb Chan on their recent experiment with using QR codes on Object labels. Similar to barcodes, QR codes are those little square pixelated codes which are used by mobile devices to photograph or 'scan' an embedded code which looks up an URL (much easier than typing a hideously long url).

What struck me in this post was the powerhouses willingness to experiment and test a new process so that the organisation can learn from the mistakes they may make - rather than just outsourcing the mistakes and the learning... read his comments here.

As Nick recently suggested, it might be useful for us to include Registration Numbers on our Object Labels, and in time when the whole EMu catalogue goes public on the Web, we could consider adding URLs to the labels as a way to provide visitors with access to more detailed information. This would also help redirect people to our website and raise awareness of our collections online facility.

Key to the City

Photo: Louis Armstrong House Museum

Key to the City is a clever project created by artist Paul Ramirez Jonas. To be part of the project members of the public are invited to go (with a friend) to a kiosk in Times Square. Here friends bestow keys on each other and the adventure begins. The key may be for a back door, front gate, community garden, graveyard or museum in all five New York buroughs. The keys open spaces usually not accessible to the general public.

Imagine all the interesting doors you could open in the Arts Centre?

fresh + new(er)

This is the blog I mentioned at the staff meeting this morning. It's called Fresh + New(er) and is written by Seb Chan, Head of Digital, Social & Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse. If you have any interest at all in digital media and museums then this is a great place to find out what's happening at the cutting edge. If you want a short-cut into the site use the 'Categories' on the right sidebar to dip into areas that interest you most or check out this post about the digital strategy for The 80s Are Back exhibition.

Fresh + New(er) was originally set up as an internal 'repository and sounding board' and is now one of the top 10 most visited sections of the Powerhouse website. I think the disclaimer from the organisation is also an interesting feature allowing Seb and his team the freedom to talk about things that may never happen, went wrong etc without it reflecting on the 'brand'.

If you like what you see why not subscribe by email (also on right-hand sidebar)? It is not a daily or even weekly blog so you won't be bombarded with emails and you can save them or print them out to read later.

Reference Library now in EMu

As I write this post, over 5000 records for our Research Library Collection are being imported into the Bibliography Module of EMu...at last!

Our books have recently been catalogued in Libraries Australia, the National Library Database. These same records are also displayed to the public via the free online combined libraries portal called TROVE. These records have now been imported into the EMu Bibliography Module to enable the physical location of the books to be tracked - as the Library Books will be divided between the Collection Store and the Research Service in the Ballet Centre.

The EMu Bibliography Module has been designed to support citations and references of any sort of material (websites, maps, aerial photography, catalogues, journals) - and not just the material which we hold a copy of.

Each type of publication has its own tab, so choosing "Book" will activate the Book tab, and choosing "website" will activate a different tab with the necessary fields to reference a website.

It is important to understand that all items held in the Reference Library are all classified with the publication type "Archived Resource / Library Holding".

The information that could be imported into EMu was quite minimal: Title, Author, Call Number, ISBN, Publication and Imprint data. Although the EMu records lack some of the additional details that would make records more easily discoverable (no Subjects or Keywords) this has been overcome by providing a hyperlink to the full TROVE record. You can activate this from any Archived Resource Record by choosing the Tools Menu > Resource > Search Trove. (EMu has been configured to copy the Title field to Trove and search for a match). Trove is still the most appropriate place to search for books unless you know the title or author.

So in summary -

• Trove should be used to browse or search for records if you are not sure what you are looking for


• Everything in our library is treated as an Archived Resource / Library Holding in EMu Bibliography


• All other Types in Bibliography are for referencing externally held material


• Library Holding records contain a direct link to the full Trove record (Tools>Resources)

And as always, I'm happy to show anyone how to use this module

Rowena

'Object of the Week'

Image originally posted on Powerhouse's 'Object of the Week 'blog

In the last post I mentioned the Powerhouse blog 'Object of the Week' and recently they had a very interesting post on Lady Sonia McMahon's famous dress that got me thinking. There are so many instances when we could do this sort of thing to make our collection relevant. When 'Hey, Hey It's Saturday' was re-launched we could have done something on Ozzie; we could something on Lauris Elms as the winner of the Green Room Awards; something on Robert Helpmann, Kristian Fredrickson, Bell Shakespeare the list goes on...

In many instance the text is already written (as captions etc) and increasingly we have good images on EMu so something like this would be very achievable. I know that Ro has been working very hard on the new version of EMu which makes web publishing much easier so perhaps that might provide some opportunities. What do you think?