IMUG Meeting at Yarra Ranges Regional Museum

Yarra Ranges Regional Museum website

On 2 December, approximately 25 people attended the Inmagic Museum Users Group Meeting hosted by the Yarra Ranges Regional Museum, Castella Street, Lilydale. Karlie Hawking (Curator Collections)  provided a brief history of the development of the museum (formerly Lilydale Museum) and its collections before discussing the challenges of putting the catalogue of the collection online. There has been an online database since July but two years planning and experimentation were undertaken before the online database was ready to be made available to the public.

url for catalogue

Presto for DB TextWorks was the program used for the online platform and the database is hosted by Maxus. This was the first time that this version of the Presto software had been used in Victoria for a DB TextWorks database, as well as being the first time Presto had been used for a museum collection, resulting in considerable experimentation by the staff at Maxus working with the museum staff. It was an interesting learning curve for all.

One of the issues for museum staff was deciding the fields to be included in the online catalogue as opposed to the fields used in-house to maintain the collection. It was therefore necessary to have another look at the records of items already catalogued to ensure fields that would appear online contained information of use / interest to the public. 

Images are provided for most of the records and multiple images can appear in one record. However when putting images online it is necessary not only to ensure the quality of the image but also to keep the size of the images not too large as large images take longer to download. Images are a great way to publicise the collection and smaller images will achieve this as well as providing the opportunity for the organisation to make some money by selling larger copies of images when required.

The database was also to be an engagement tool between the museum and the public. The online database includes a section where the public can add comment for a record item. The comment section can be set up so that comments are monitored before appearing online. If this option is utilised someone needs to check for possible comments. There is also a link on the record page allowing researchers the option of sending an email. A telephone number is also provided. Experiments with social media sites have been undertaken - Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Urls need to be shortened to use with these sites and although there has been success with Twitter and Pinterest there have been problems interacting with Facebook. As there is an increasing number of projects combining platforms it is useful to know how you want your data to be used by other platforms if the opportunity arises.

In Presto you can email records, download records as a pdf or html file and save records. One issue with the database is that Presto uses pop-up screens. As browsers increasingly block pop-ups it may be necessary to temporarily disable this action when using this site.
 
Pam from Maxus also spoke briefly about this project and then there was some general discussion including the possibility and challenges of including records of online databases on Trove in the future. We then went upstairs for refreshments and the opportunity for a more informal chat and networking. Many thanks to Karlie and her team for hosting this event.

IMUG meeting at Emerald Hill Heritage Centre

The Inmagic Museum Users Group meeting was held at Emerald Hill Heritage Centre at South Melbourne on Friday 9 May 2014. Twenty-two people attended from a range of organisations including public libraries, historical societies and small museums and archives. The heritage centre was opened in its current location in November 2013 and is located as part of the Emerald Hill Library.  The City of Port Phillip covers suburbs from Elwood to Port Melbourne. Kay, the history librarian, provided an introduction to the development of the heritage centre and its collection and then Sandy spoke about the databases and the digitisation program.

As well as an annual allocation of money for the digitisation of photographs, money is also allocated for the digitisation of newspapers for Trove. Many of the early electoral rolls have been scanned and made available using ISSUU software. An A-Z listing of City of St Kilda correspondence in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century is also available and digitised images are available for some items. The issue of copyright of previously unpublished material was discussed.

Heritage and Art databases have been catalogued using DB TextWorks and the records are then accessed via Spydus, the library’s cataloguing software and incorporated with records of items from the library local history collection. Low resolution images are linked to the catalogue records and copies of images can be ordered.

Additional information about the Emerald Hill Heritage Centre is available at http://heritage.portphillip.vic.gov.au/Home . The catalogue and other digitised resources can be accessed in the Research Resources section of the heritage website.

Many thanks to the staff at the Emerald Hill Library and Heritage Centre for allowing us to visit and especially to Kay and Sandy for showing us part of the collection and explaining how DB/TextWorks is used in conjunction with Spydus to catalogue their collections.

IMUG visit to Museo Italiano

On 7 May seventeen IMUG members visited the Museo Italiano in Faraday Street, Carlton. Opened in October 2010, exhibitions at the Museo Italiano explore the experiences of Italian migrants in Australia, the influence of Italian culture on life in Australia and the resulting Italian Australian culture that has developed. Among the permanent exhibitions is a timeline along one wall illustrating key events in Italian and Australian history as well as Italian Australian history. One display portrays settlement in a new country while the Italian influence in Australia on food, language, performance and sport is the theme of another exhibition. Many techniques including the use of audio visual material is used tell the many stories.

After visiting the museum, Paolo Baracchi, Coordinator - Co.As.It. Italian Historical Society, spoke to the group about the Italian Historical Society which was founded in 1981 with the aim of
collecting, preserving, interpreting and promoting the history of Italians in Australia. An overview of the collections was provided as well as an outline of the programs offered during the year. The collections are increasingly used for family history research and a number of research guides have been prepared to assist researchers with their enquiries.

DB TextWorks is used to catalogue the society's collections and Web Publisher is used to make the catalogues of three of the collections available to the public via the society's website. There are four search options - Browse the entire archive, Search image collection, Search diplomatic archive (information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Italy covering the period 1856-1947)  and Search internee database.

There are presently 9,000 photographs catalogued in the image collection. The catalogue record displays a small image and larger images can be obtained from the society. The images online are harvested by Trove and are therefore available in any searches made in this national database. Search in Trove (http://trove.nla.gov.au/picture) for Vendramini to see an example.

More information about the Museo Italiano and the Italian Historical society can be found on their website.

Online Databases

For the past fifteen years I have been involved in projects involving the publication of online databases. The Whitehorse Manningham Local History Database was the first regional local history database  in Victoria. Since then a number of other databases have been published online including the Victorian Local History Database established for promoting collections held in organisations affiliated with the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. More recently Museums Australia (Victoria) has produced Victorian Collections launched a month or two ago.

At the recent Inmagic Museum Users Group meeting there was much discussion about participation in projects such as Victorian Collections. Below are some of my thoughts regarding involvement in an online database project.

Online database projects are a great way for societies to promote both their collections and their organisation. Including records in a regional online database allows researchers to know about the range of items held by your organisation as well as specific items that may be useful for their research. In some cases the use of an online database may be the first time researchers become aware of the existence of your organisation. Researchers can then contact you for information on viewing or obtaining copies of items, including charges for this service.

Participation in an online cataloguing project encourages standardisation of cataloguing in the use of fields required to adequately catalogue items.

Many online database projects also have a thesaurus which participants in the project are encouraged to use when selecting subjects making it easier for researchers to locate items on a specific topic. One such online thesaurus is the Victorian Local History Thesaurus. Another online thesaurus is the Australian Pictorial Thesaurus.

Online databases should provide a range of options to aid the searching of the database. Through the Internet we are now used to being able to type what we want in a box and after clicking the Search button have immediate access to the material we require. Sometimes this works but often a much more reliable search can be undertaken using the options provided in an Advanced Search screen. It is therefore useful to have more than one way of searching a collection. Even Google has an Advanced Search option.

Currently in Victoria there are two types of online databases.
In the first, organisations catalogue their collections and then export the fields required for inclusion in the online database. Organisations therefore have a full copy of the database records on their premises and can include information for their own use in additional fields if they wish to do so, enabling full control over their catalogue records.
In the second, organisations catalogue information about their items directly into the online database using the set of fields provided.  The organisation therefore does not have its own copy of the records unless it has a reliable link to the Internet at all times. This may restrict access to the records within the organisation.

Cataloguing directly into an online database such as Victorian Collections could be a useful way for organisations having small and often valuable collections but whose main focus is not collecting such as sporting clubs, churches, RSLs and similar organisations in order to provide public access to their collections. However organisations whose main focus is the collection and dissemination of information may find that it is more useful to catalogue their collection in-house and then transfer all or some of their records into an online database (or databases).

Inmagic Museum Users Group meeting

Puffing Billy at Emerald Lake Station



The first Inmagic Museum User Group meeting for 2012 was hosted by the Puffing Billy Railway Archive. Members boarded the steam train at Belgrave for the hour trip to Emerald Lake Park, plenty of time to chat with other users of DB TextWorks software in the carriage and also enjoy a light lunch.

At the station members of the group discussed a number of issues including concerns about the new cataloguing system Victorian Collections being promoted by Museums Australia (Victoria) and finding a replacement social media site for the Computers and Cataloguing My Connected Community Group (mc2) as Vicnet is closing mc2 at the end of June.  It was decided to set up a Computers and Cataloguing group in Yahoo Groups. Barbara has now left Maxus and at the beginning of the meeting she introduced Pam who will take over Barbara's former role working with smaller organisations using the software. Barbara will continue to attend our meetings.

One of the major aims of these meetings is to allow those using DB/TextWorks software for cataloguing to be able to meet and discuss issues. Many thanks to the members of the Puffing Billy Railway Archive for hosting this meeting and for providing such great hospitality.

It was then time for those who had travelled by Puffing Billy to board the train for the return trip to Belgrave. Last seen they were being served scones. It was a most successful excursion and meeting.

Puffing Billy

IMUG meeting June 2008

The first Inmagic Museum Users Group meeting for 2008 was held on Wednesday 11 June at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. The theme for the meeting was using images with DB/TextWorks.

Barbara introduced the session by taking a photo using a digital camera, transferring the image to the computer and then linking the image to a record in DB/TextWorks. Susan Oliver from Werribee Park and Werribee & District Historical Society told the group about projects, undertaken at those organisations, to attach images to their catalogue records.

Approximately 40 people attended the meeting and there was much discussion about scanning and projects during the session as well as networking opportunities before and after the meeting. Networking is an important feature of IMUG meetings. In the photo Rod and Ted are busy sharing information.

Those present also had the opportunity to visit the images room at the RHSV where David showed the equipment used and some of the recently scanned images.

In her talk Barbara spoke about resolution and compression of images and different file formats. She showed how to link the image by typing the path to where the image is stored on the computer (or elsewhere) into the image field in the edit form. In the discussion a number of people said that when adding images to a batch of records they copied and pasted the path into the image field and just changed the name of the image.

From version 4 onwards it is also possible to scan a photograph and link the scanned image to the record dirctly from the database. Click in the image box on the Edit screen, go to the Records Menu and select Scan Image then follow the prompts. When the image is scanned and stored the path is added automatically to the record.

Another tip that Barbara gave us was that it is possible to specify the drive where images are stored so that the database will automatically check the drives nominated to locate the image and the drive does not have to be added in the path. This feature can be found by going to the Tools menu, select Options, select Imaging, then in the Image drives box type the letter of each drive where images are stored. Click OK to complete the action. There is additional information about this in the Imaging Tab (options) in the Help index under Image drive and path.

Barabara also showed how to add a picture box to any report form in order to view the image with the record.

The Help in DB/TextWorks is acually helpful. Searching for Image in the index should answer most questions about using images with the database.

At the end of the session Barbara showed how to make a simple lightbox for reducing the shadows and improving the quality of images when photographing small items. How to create an inexpensive photography lightbox and Do it yourself lightbox are two of the many articles available online on this topic.