[Koha] Musing on a museum module

[Stephen Hedges]

Trevor -

I have a fairly basic question -- what do museums do with the information they 
have in the database.  I went to the SPECTRUM website ( 
http://www.mda.org.uk/spectrum.htm ) and it looks like it's basically 
guidelines for describing the objects held by a museum.  (I have no experience 
in museum work, so I may be missing something.)  So I'm guessing that for you, 
Koha would be a way to store and retrieve information about the objects you've 
collected.  Or do you sometimes loan items as well, and need to track them much 
as a library tracks book loans?

Stephen Hedges
Director, Nelsonville Public Library
95 W. Washington St., Nels.,OH 45764
USA

> A little while ago I enquired whether there was 
> any interest amongst the
> Koha community in a museum module. A few people 
> responded in the
> affirmative. :-) Seems to be a rather small and 
> widely scattered group
> (me: UK, two: US, one?: NZ).
> 
> My first thought is whether this fits into Koha! 
> Whilst there are some
> proprietary library systems that have museum bolt-
> ons the latter modules
> are just that bolt-ons. The functional provision 
> is therefore limited by
> the underlying library workflow assumptions.
> 
> My second thought concerns the design of a museum 
> module. Although the
> proprietary systems use the same or similar 
> database this might not be the
> best choice. It is clearly a case of shoe-horning 
> additional requirements.
> results in various comprises. There are also 
> national standards for museum
> databases. For example here in the UK it is the 
> Museum Documentation
> Association's SPECTRUM. Other national museum 
> communities have similar
> standards. None of these are National Standards 
> from BSI, ANSI, AFNOR,
> DIN, SiS or even ISO but are "de facto" 
> standards. (I was part of the
> BSI/ISO cummunity responsible for SGML so am very 
> aware of the different
> status "standards" have.) SPECTRUM is somewhat 
> unwieldy and its
> documentaion is targeted at the museum 
> professional not software
> engineers.
> 
> Perhaps those interested would comment upon these 
> thougts. First, should a
> museum module be added to Koha itself or is it 
> better to use Koha as an
> example of open source achievements. Second, what 
> database model should be
> adapted for a museum module/system? Personally, 
> I'm not a fan of
> relational systems; my primarty experience is 
> with text retrieval systems.
> Though my intent here is to consider the "schema" 
> for a museum system not
> to make product choices.
> 
> Regards, Trevor
> 
> British Sign Language is not inarticulate 
> handwaving; it's a living language.
> Support the campaign for formal recognition by 
> the British government now!
> Details at http://www.fdp.org.uk/
> 
> -- 
> 
> <>< Re: deemed!
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Koha mailing list
> Koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
>