KE EMu and the Future for Natural History Collections

KE EMu and the Future for Natural History Collections María Consuelo Sendino Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD UK. Email: c.sendino-lara@nhm.ac.uk Abstract This paper describes the current status and the future outlook for KE EMu, a system for museum collection documentation and management that is capable of monitoring collections and exporting data to websites. Although KE EMu is a collections management system for all museums and collections, it has great potential for natural history collections, especially geological collections that have been relatively neglected. KE EMu Software has been active in supporting efforts to standardize documentation, encompassing all kinds of information (e.g., images, bibliography, exhibition history) that are associated with the item and its management. Information is the future, and the Internet is the main means of communicating this information. Museums are repositories of a wide variety of information about collections (Bižić-Omčikus, et al., 2005; Gavrilović, 2007). A museum object is a source of scientific and/or cultural data, forming a basis for research. Therefore, it is important to find ways to facilitate access to this data, as well as to organize the data systematically. In the early days of museums, the object and its associated bibliographical information were paramount, and processes such as treatment techniques, type cataloguing and heritage conservation were of secondary importance. The use of objects for teaching purposes (pedagogy) developed subsequently in museums. Increasingly, the stakeholder is choosing the information they require from the museum. Museums disseminate information about the objects in their collections, including catalogues, bibliographical and documentary data, that is useful to the researcher. Standardizing software used in museums and related institutions helps both curators and the users of the information, ranging from members of the public to specialist researchers. Any citizen can benefit from the availability of information in today’s society of knowledge. In an environment allowing the user remote access to large amounts of information, the consolidation of information management systems has two advantages: (1) it facilitates the future construction of collective Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals,Volume 5, Number 2, Spring 2009, pp. 149–158. Copyright © 2009 AltaMira Press. All rights reserved. 149 150 KE EMU AND THE FUTURE FOR NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS = storage of digital information with the aim of allowing the user to access the largest possible quantity of information from a uniform interface; and (2) it generates digital information for distribution over the Internet. Museum Documentation In pre-digital times, documentation was important for monitoring collections, even when museums functioned only as places for storing and exhibiting objects. Documentation is a particularly important function of modern museums which gather, manage and diffuse information of cultural and scientific value. Documentary information can have the same or even greater value than the actual objects in the collection. Museum documentation has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it is the set of diverse documents that are kept in the institution. On the other hand, it is the process of creating and managing these documents. Objects must be considered as the primary documents in a museum. Archival material is also crucial, such as researcher’s letters (Figure 1), sound recordings, and photographs. Archival material gives contextual value to aid interpretation of museum objects. Also important is bibliographical data related to an object, and administrative information reflecting museum management of the object, both in the past and at the present (record books, loans, exhibitions, research, etc.). The aim must be to preserve, order, classify, locate, recover and disseminate as much of this information as possible and appropriate. In summary, museological, documentary, bibliographical and administrative arFigure 1. Archival letter from the Natural chives should be inventoried, classified, History Museum, London in which John photographed, preserved appropriately, Cameron (Faculty of Medicine, Dept of and made available to potential users. Anatomy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Accessioning new collections, Scotia) asks for Woodward’s reconstruction conservation, curation, internal move- of the famous Piltdown skull to Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward (Keeper of Palaeontology ments, including deploying items for at NHM from 1901-1924) in a letter dated exhibition, and loans are all important 9 January 1919 (DF PAL/100/92/5 NHM processes. Documentation has an or- archives). = MARÍA CONSUELO SENDINO 151 ganized, mostly hierarchical structure which is important for efficient knowledge transfer. It is necessary to plan the documentation system before computerization in order to access information in a logical way. Documentation: A High Priority in Natural History Collections Nowadays there is an imperative to digitize collections in all museums around the world, and natural history collections are leading the way. A high priority is to publish collection data over the Internet as the best way of making this data available to researchers. Some countries have developed their own software for museum documentation. Others are using standardized software with potential interoperability with other software, as with GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and KE EMu (Electronic Museum). Among natural history collections, zoological and botanical specimens are the first that are being digitized, and the most important initiatives are GBIF and KE EMu. These are supported by a large computer base. KE EMu is the main software used to digitalize geological collections (mineralogical, petrological and palaeontological) because it can manage complex stratigraphical information efficiently. KE EMu (Electronic Museum) software is used nowadays in many of the largest natural history collections. These include the Natural History Museum, London; Manchester Museum, Manchester; National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; American Museum of Natural History, New York; The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; Department of Botany, University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu; New York Botanical Garden; Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven; United States Polar Rock Repository (USPRR), Columbus, Ohio; Australian Museum, Sydney; Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney; and Museum Victoria, Melbourne. The Rationale of KE EMu KE EMu was born of the necessity to monitor museum collections. Its goals are to allow different systems to interoperate, to standardise, integrate and exchange information between institutions, and to publish this information on the Web. The software manages all museological, documentary, bibliographical and administrative processes. These processes include: inventory; cataloguing; applying standardized terminology; bibliography; accessioning and deaccessioning; condition checking and conservation; incoming and outgoing loans; external movements; events such as exhibitions; location tracking and internal movements; valuations; and insurance and indemnity. Consequently, this software can work in any kind of museum or institution (arts, natural history, archaeology, etc.). From a computer 152 KE EMU AND THE FUTURE FOR NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS O terminal it is potentially possible to access any information about any object that is kept in a museum. In the case of a fossil, this comprises taxonomic, stratigraphic, geographic, bibliographic, multimedia, conservation, valuation and insurance information, and also internal management documents and whether the fossil has been loaned, exhibited or researched, and when. The software relates documentary information with all related archives, allowing recovery of the history of the object. It incorporates a museum process and documentation standard called MDA SPECTRUM II, which is a publication of the UK MDA (United Kingdom Museum Documentation Association). The Operation of KE EMu KE EMu software is designed to enter, store and manage the data from any object in any museum, with the possibility for publishing this information on a Website. It has Internet and Intranet capabilities out-of-the-box, and offers easy customization. The software can manage collections of all sizes, from the world’s largest electronic museum databases with many millions of records, to small, highly specialized collections with only a few thousand records. Furthermore, it can be used for cultural, art and natural history collections. It works with data relating to acquisition, registration, inventory, cataloging, multimedia (such as images, videos and audio files), bibliography, storage, conservation, loans, movements, events, valuation, etc. There is a module for each process and all modules are related to each other. KE EMu support for natural history collections includes taxonomic definitions, specimen identification, type status, field trips and a gazetteer. It supports multi-discipline queries with automatic adjustment of display based on the type of objects. The Catalogue module of KE EMu can be extended, with new disciplines added and the structure of existing disciplines modified. This ensures that KE EMu precisely matches the collection requirements of the museum. On the other hand, KE EMu has an interface that could be tailored to the particular requirements of any discipline. As a result, natural history collections can have a different interface than cultural collections. For instance, in Zoology, Botany and Paleontology, taxonomic information is important and has to be visible in the interface. Each interface is configurable to the requirements of the institution. Most modules (Figure 2) are standard and are not usually configured according to the discipline. They are designed to con- Figure 2. KE EMu command centre at the Natural History Museum, London. 154 KE EMU AND THE FUTURE FOR NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS O The Taxonomy module is capable of maintaining information about taxa all levels in the taxonomic hierarchy, from variety up to kingdom. This module also records information about the author and year of publication of the taxon, and other bibliographical references as well as synonyms, homonyms, common names, conservation status and descriptions. The Collections Events module records information relating to the locality at which the object was collected, with the attributes of precise locality, geographical description, latitude and longitude and/or other coordinates, altitude or capture depth, collector and date and time. Information in the Events module covers date, venue, statistics, finance, task, multimedia and security. Attributes are precise venue where the event took place, the cost of the event, people who were present, those in charge, related multimedia files and the security of the event. The Rights/Copyright module holds information regarding the ownership, other rights or copyright provisions pertaining to one or more objects. Special conditions, the holder, reproduction restrictions and restriction of use are attributes of this module. The Bibliography module holds general bibliographical references: books, journals, articles, papers and theses. This module can be linked to other modules, such as the Taxonomy, Parties, Collection Events and Catalogue modules. The Multimedia module stores digital images, videos, audios, word-processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and any on line or off line resources that are related to the object. There are multimedia tabs in any module that are related to the general multimedia module in each record, and there are records in the multimedia module that are not attached to a record (meetings, planning papers and so on). Finally, the Parties module, one of the most important modules related to the Catalogue module, holds information about people and institutions. These can be donors, curators, conservators, or any persons or organizations related to the object, and may include personal or private information and related bibliography. The other module to highlight is the Narratives module (Figure 5). This module is linked to all of the others, e.g. the Parties, Bibliography, Taxonomy, Multimedia, Sites and Events modules. There is no field in the Catalogue module that links to Narratives, but a narrative record makes an attachment to an object in the Catalogue module via the object tab. The Narratives module has the peculiarity that it can be developed for different audiences (e.g. schools, researchers and the general public) and for a range of purposes (e.g., exhibitions and brochures. This information is automatically accessible over the web and is fully indexed, providing the general public with access to information published by the institution in an appropriate context. More information on KE EMu can be found at its website: http://www.kesoftware.com/ 156 KE EMU AND THE FUTURE FOR NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS O Software update, maintenance, support and correction are advantages of KE EMu and can be performed virtually as new configurations become accessible online. In addition, KE EMu can be customized and when a museum requests a change to a standard module the benefits are spread to all users. Automated maintenance programs are run remotely on a schedule determined by the museum. Remote assistance is also possible. Furthermore, KE EMu places no limitations on what information is stored (e.g. metadata) or on the format of data, except that the data must be textual. Hence, when a new object is inserted, the default metadata description is generated automatically and may be modified by the cataloguer. This software works with a multiuser database management system called KE Texpress that imposes almost no limitation to the number of fields indexed in a KE EMu catalogue table (regularly more than 1,000 fields), allowing fast performance. Corrections and improvements are always necessary and this is the reason for the existence of a KE EMu user group which has meetings and forums. To date there have been fourteen meetings, the last one held in Las Vegas (USA) from 21 to 22 October 2008 (4th North American User Group Meeting). Until recently this group had its own website (http://www.emuusers.org/) that was maintained by Forbes Hawkins (Museum Victoria). The latest discussions about KE EMu concern media asset management, especially locations, conditions and reproduction. All information from a user group website is now being transferred to the KE EMu Website (http://www.kesoftware.com/). The current software iteration is KE EMu version 3.2.05 with the following general enhancements: support for about ninety image formats; support for automatic optimization of range indexes; geo-referencing fields with common mapping coordinates; geo-referencing availability in the Sites and Events modules; multilingual support; dynamically modifiable order of data for multilingual users; record roll-back allowing previous versions of a record to be re-instated (maintaining the complete history); possibility to drag and drop any media resource, for instance from a Windows Desktop, directly to the multimedia tab without opening this module (creating a multimedia repository record), and with the option to do this with multiple files; and record templates. KE EMu Tomorrow: Ideas for the Future KE EMu will continue evolving to adapt to the changing requirements of museums, incorporating all those functionalities that allow ease and effectiveness in document system management in museums. A future development of KE EMu is to read barcodes. Refined barcode readers that facilitate register movements and upload sample data will require system integration. Museum Victoria has developed an application (MVWISE, Museum Victoria Wireless Input System for EMU) based on handheld PDA´s and wireless 158 KE EMU AND THE FUTURE FOR NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS O like to thank Rafael Gómez-Martín (ECI, Madrid) for his revision as a computer expert, and Phil Palmer and Paul Taylor (NHM, London) who reviewed the manuscript and provided comments. Literature Cited Bižić-Omčikus, V., Mitrović, M., and Cvetković, Z. 2005. Museum information system — design methodology, implementation and perspectives. Pregled Nacionalnog centra za digitalizaciju, 4(6): 69–77. EMuUsers.Org [on line] [accessed date: 23 October 2008]. Available on: http://www.emuusers.org/ Gavrilović, G. 2007. Museum Information System of Serbia: recent approach to database modeling. Преглед НЦД (Review of the National Center for Digitization), 10: 47–58. KE Software [online] [accessed date: 23 October 2008]. Available on: http://www.kesoftware.com/ Monteil, C. 2008. A Species Selection Tool for the “Syrph the Net” database. In Syrph the Net on CD, Issue 6. The database of European Syrphidae, eds. M. C. D. Speight, E. Castella, J-P. Sarthou, and C. Monteil. Dublin: Syrph the Net publications. Speight, M. C. D., and Castella, E. 2006. StN Database: content and glossary of terms, Ferrara, 2006. In Syrph the Net on CD, Issue 6. The database of European Syrphidae, eds. M.C.D. Speight, E. Castella, J-P. Sarthou, and C. Monteil. Dublin: Syrph the Net publications. Speight, M. C. D., Monteil, C., Castella, E., and Sarthou, J-P. 2008. StN Ferrara, 2008. In Syrph the Net on CD, Issue 6. The database of European Syrphidae, eds. M. C. D. Speight, E. Castella, J-P. Sarthou, and C. Monteil. Dublin: Syrph the Net publications.