Estonia : The Internet-based Museum Information System MuIS in Estonian Museums (original) (raw)
Related papers
2014
Before turning to a web-based information system, E stonian museums used a system called KVIS (Information System for Museums and Antiquarian Ins titutions) that shared the same software but worked only locally at each individual site. KVIS w as created in 1993 with a goal to create a database that would allow users to document and explore obje cts related to the various human disciplines (archeology, art, history, ethnography, numismatics , etc.) and belonging to different periods of hist ory.
MuSeUM: Unified access to the state of the art
2007
This work addresses the prototypical problem of a cultural heritage institution with the ambition to disclose all of its content in a single, unified system. Like enterprises, these institutions often have heterogeneous collections distributed over multiple legacy systems. The brute-force approach taken here involves a mostly unconditional merging of the heterogeneous sub-collections and flattening of all metadata structures, effectively turning the problem to free-text retrieval. Our main findings are as follows: First, by converting all digital content from several systems of one cultural heritage institution to text, and indexing it with a standard IR system, we show that a unified approach is a viable option to give access to heterogeneous collections. Second, although our approach is simplistic, the initial empirical evaluation validates its superior performance against the legacy fragmented systems currently in use by the institute. Third, in a user study, with test persons ranging from expert users (such as internal employees) to naive users (such as potential visitors of the institution's web-site), we find that all test person's preferred the unified system-even those who work with the existing propriety system on a day-to-day basis.
The Museum as Information Space: Metadata and Documentation
Although museums vary in nature and may have been founded for all sorts of reasons, central to all museum institutions are the collected objects. These objects are information carriers organized in a catalogue system. In this chapter, the museum will be conceived as an information space, consisting of an information system related to different methods of reasoning. We will highlight the new possibilities offered by digital technology and the changes brought by the way in which visitors come into contact with objects. Our central claim is that the visitor moved from being onsite within the museum's information space to being outside the museum in the online information space of the Internet. This has fundamental implications for the institutional role of museums, our understanding of metadata and the methods of documentation. The onsite museum institution will, eventually, not be able to function as an institutional entity on the Internet, for in this new information space, objects, collections and museums, all function as independent components in a vast universe of data, side by side at everyone's disposal at anytime. Potentially, users can access cultural heritage anytime, anywhere and anyhow.
A FORMAT FOR THE MACHINE EXCHANGE OF MUSEUM DATA
Data processing in geology and biology, 1971
This paper attempts to solve one of these obstacles: compatibility between record formats in museums. To achieve this, a Museum Communication Format is proposed which for convenience here is called MCP. Such compatibility should neither restrict the range or complexity of data which can be held nor produce losses in transmission from originator to user. It was suggested that there was an urgent need to provide a nationally recommended standard for the cataloguing of museum collections which would be a first step towards a national index of museum holdings: an aim. if then a somewhat pious one that the Museums Association had had at its inaugural meeting in 1888.
Οnline Access to Digital Collections – Design and Use of Museum Databases, VSMM 2008
The creation of institutional websites is one of the most widespread information and communication technologies in the cultural sector. Expectations of web users, together with social and technological developments, have influenced an expanding trend among cultural organisations to offer wider inclusion and greater versatility in the presentation of collections and related information in their digital spaces. However, the effectiveness of these applications has not been systematically tested so far, nor has their use been examined with any in-depth research study, despite the increasing pressure on museums to provide online access to their collection catalogues. This paper will present the results of a research project which aims to address this gap. At the first stage of the research, museum websites from different countries were selected and analysed. After the identification of specific groups based on the type of web presentation, the research project focused on the museums that presented digital databases of their collection on their website, sending them a questionnaire on the design of the databases and of their use by virtual visitors. This paper will present mainly the results from these first two stages of the research and will place them in a broader discussion about the use of cultural information by different users in various contexts.
The Role of PREMIS Preservation Metadata in Information Management in Virtual Museums
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013
Through application of novel information technologies, virtual museums try to deliver the data to their users in any form and at any time that this requires information and resource management. Therefore, the use of metadata that is in accordance with novel technologies is necessary in main virtual environments. Each of the metadata has distinct responsibilities and can cooperate and have complementary roles along with others and through expressing museum objects characteristic, metadata describes them in a systematic way. The standard PREMIS preservation metadata maintenance schema, which is based on XML, has been developed in order to record metadata related to maintaining information resource in digital packages. In other words, this metadata provides the possibility of self documentation for digital data. This standard schema suggests an aggregate of kernel and application metadata elements. Every digital package should be aware of this aggregate in order to preserve its resources in long-term. Findings indicate that PREMIS preservation metadata has a determining role in optimal information management in virtual museums.