Long Time, No Post
Admittedly, it has been a while since I posted. It has been an extremely busy month for me, with travel to two conferences and a major holiday. In October I had the opportunity to attend the user group meeting for the collection management software used by the Carter. Our collection management system is an big ol’ database where we catalog each work of art in the museum. It also manages digital images relating to the artworks, tracks exhibitions, bibliographic citations, conservation treatments, and more. If it deals with the art collection, it’s in the database. In fact, even the text you see on labels in our galleries is generated from the collection management database.
This year’s user group meeting was hosted by the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, and other database users came from all over the United States, Canada, and Australia. It was fascinating to see how other museums use their collection management databases and meet other database administrators from around the world. The only distraction (and it was a big one) was the gorgeous weather and lush surroundings in the Botanical Garden.
Pictured below: the NYBG’s Mertz Library, built in 1899.
After that, I attended the Museum Computer Network conference in Chicago (full disclosure: I am a board member of MCN and this year’s conference chair). This conference deals not only with the old standby issues with technology issues in museums, such as digital imaging, collection databases, and copyright, but is also a forum for discussing emerging trends like user-generated content, web 2.0, blogs, podcasts, and gaming in museums. This year’s conference had over 300 attendees from 13 countries, including Taiwan, Chile, and Spain. I returned to the Carter recharged and ready to tackle more technology projects – including more frequent blog posting!