Hosted and co-ordinated by the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. Sponsored by The 24 Hour Museum and mwr Ltd .

Building on the success of the inaugural conference in 2001, this one one-day event brought together leading practitioners, policy makers, training providers and commentators, to explore the issues related to building and providing web-based museum content for users of all abilities.

Thanks to all for making the day a great success.

LASSI

After years of effort (or does it just feel that way?), LASSI (the Larger Scale System Initiative) has completed its task of specifying and selecting a collections management package on behalf of eight museums.

And the winner is . . . MultiMIMSY.

The LASSI consortium consists of the following museums and museum services: Horniman, Hull, Imperial War, Leicestershire, National Maritime, National Museums on Merseyside, National Museum of Science & Industry and City of Nottingham Museums & Art Gallery. With the help of consultants, a very detailed specification has been drawn up and an Operational Requirement was released to suppliers in March 1995. A very strong element of this requirement was support for Spectrum, including active support for collections management procedures such as acquisition and loans.

Following a thorough evaluation of bids and the drafting of a framework contract, Willoughby Associates in Chicago have been appointed to supply the LASSI museums with their Oracle-based package, MultiMIMSY. The package will be enhanced in line with LASSI’s requirement, these enhancements then forming part of the normal biennual update to the standard package.

The Science Museum and Leicestershire Museums have installed the software and are currently converting data from their old systems onto MultiMIMSY. Once the existing consortium have received their systems, other museums will be able to join if they wish. If you are interested, please contact Jeremy Warren at the Museums and Galleries Commission for details.

Alice Grant from the Science Museum and I jointly managed the project during the ‘competition’ phase. Alice will be talking about progress with LASSI at the meeting at the Museum of London.

A User Group has been set up, chaired by Terry Corbett at the National Maritime Museum. Museums considering buying the system can join this group as associate members (contact Terry for details).

Fiona Marshall

MCG Autumn Meeting 1995

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

The autumn 1995 meeting of the group took place at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. We were treated to a very broad range of talks and demonstrations covering a wide selection of Kew’s operations.

First up, Ken Bailey explained the networking and hardware strategy at Kew, describing a dizzy range of impressive hardware (8 Novell servers, more than 800 PCs, 24 Macs, Data General Aviion server, 4 Unix workstations, fibre optic cabling etc etc). This is supported by a team of 4 programmers and 4 support staff. PACE and VMark Universe are used for most system development.

Mark Jackson then described the development of a multimedia system for visitors. Multimedia Toolkit software has been used to develop this system which it is to be networked around the gardens.

Steve Ruddy demonstrated the KewScape mapping system which provides a graphic representation of the gardens and collections. Data is taken from Kew’s Living Collections Database of 89,000 accessions held on the DG and displayed on a site map on a portable screen-based data collection unit (Gridpad). The Gridpad is used in the gardens, the AutoLisp software allowing plant records to be updated. AutoCAD is used to record 30 layers of information, including services, buildings and vegetation.

Milan Svanderlik of the Media Resources department explained how Kew is using Kodak PhotoCD to archive and access images. A database of images is being created using Kodak’s Shoebox software.

After lunch, Ken Bailey and Steve Ruddy reported on Kew’s World Wide Web pages and how these have been authored. The present trial system has been compiled largely from existing publicity and promotional material, but longterm aims are to distribute scientific information and to give outside access to Kew’s databases. (Kew’s Home page is at http://www.rbgkew.org.uk).

Francis Cook then talked about terminology standards, including the Dictionary of Plant Names and Genera and the taxonomic standards working group.

The last speaker, Liz Dauncey, gave an excellent presentation on Kew’s prize-winning identification system for poisonous plants, PLATO. This expert system has been developed in conjunction with the National Poisons Unit for use by medical professionals in hospitals. Your Chairperson was nominated (thanks guys) to prise apart an evil-looking specimen and use the system to identify deadly nightshade (A. belladonna). She also lived to see another day . . .

After tea (and frantic handwashing), a panel discussion ranged widely over the publication and sale of information and training. Internet and the production of Web pages (inevitably?) featured strongly. Thank you to the panel members, most of whom were persuaded into action at very short notice.

Many thanks to Bill Loader and the staff at Kew for organising such a fascinating and wide-ranging day – and an excellent meal the night before.

Fiona Marshall

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum has embarked on a major computerisation project that will make information on more than 1.5 million objects in its collections accessible to curators, visitors and network users.

The system will be used to maintain the inventory of the Collections Department and to support other collections functions. These range from the management of loans to and from other institutions around the world, to the production of object labels in the galleries. It will enable sophisticated information retrieval, allowing quick cross-referencing of enquiries, and provide fuller information to a wider audience.

The database will contain both detailed textual descriptions of objects and electronic images. A major feature will be the provision of efficient and sophisticated search techniques for staff and visitors, opening up new opportunities for access to and research on the collections. Existing computer records and paper documentation will be transferred to the database, so that users will have a single source for core object information.

The contract for the Collections Information System (CIS) has been awarded to ICL Enterprises following a detailed analysis of the Museum’s requirements and the capabilities of available systems. ICL Enterprises is working with specialist multimedia software engineering company System Simulation Limited (SSL) to develop the system. ICL’s TeamServer hardware and SSL’s Index+ database software will form the basis for CIS. SSL’s multimedia search engine technology is already used by several institutions, including the National Gallery, the London. Transport Museum and the Hulton Deutsch Picture Library.

The new system will be installed in the recently refurbished Research and Conservation of Art Centre on the South Kensington site. Visitors to the Museum will be able to access the information through public study rooms, over a highspeed communications network which is currently being installed. Implementation will take place in phases over a period of 2 years and begins with the transfer of the existing computer inventory of over 400,000 objects. The Museum expects to make the new database available to researchers all over the world via the Internet in due course.

Dr Alan Borg, Director of the V&A, said: “This is one of the most important technology procurements among UK museums in recent times. The Collections Information System will play a vital part in the efficient management of the Museum’s objects, while increasing scholarly and public access to information via a high-speed communications network.”

THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS

OVERVIEW OF COMPUTING FACILITIES

The Royal Botanic gardens (RBG) installed the Prime minicomputer during December 1983. The choice of equipment was made while RBG were still part of the ministry of agriculture fisheries and Food (MAFF) STATUS was also selected by MAFF as their major database package, although RBG were represented on the selection committee.

Before the RBG computer was installed MAFF provided computing mainframe. This work covered part resource on their central ICL of the Plant Record system, Seed Bank Recording and the use of statistical packages.

The following computer equipment is now installed at RBG:

• Prime 9750 processor with 4Mb memory
• 2 300 MB exchangeable disks
• 5 315 MB Winchester disks
• 1 1600/6250 BPI magnetic tape deck
• 1 600 LPM Central printer
• 50 terminals
• 22 s1ave printers

The local communications network is based on CASE Grapevine with a recently purchased CASE DCX850 to provide a range of facilities which include line contention handling , message and service switching , and dial up facilities . A small Grapevine system has been installed at the RBG Garden at Wakehurst Place in Sussex which is then linked by private Telecom line to the Kew computer. RBG is also connected to the MAFF network.

Some 220 members of staff are registered to use the computer.

Database Projects

Plant Collections This was our first major database to go 1ive. The full record of data available for each specimen (c.86,000) is now on the Prime and is used in the day-to-day management of the collections at Kew and Wakehurst Place , and for general interrogation and simple report production. Separate databases are available to transfer records of ‘ dead ‘ specimens (c.4,000) from the live database and to hold National Trust arboretum records (c.26,000) .

Bibliographies A Plant anatomy bibliography database is now available (c.70,0000 records) and two others are in the process of being developed – Kew records of Taxonomic Data (c. 60,000) , and Economic Botany of which some 35,000 records are loaded out of a total of 90,000.

Index Kewensis The complete IK has been digitised and loading has commenced, supplement 12 is now online (17.000 of 950,000 records) and the next batch in being cleaned up. Data for the current supplement is being keyed directly into the Prime for transmission to the publisher and to provide the source for the database.

Generic Index This database contains all the generic and associated familiar names accepted by RGB (c. 16,000), and includes synonomy and homonomy.

Other developed systems

• Specimen lists for floras
• Leguminosae database
• Palynology slide index
• Wood Anatomy
• Worth weather recordings (300Mb)

Projects under development

• Museum specimen catalogue
• SEPASAL database (arid lands research project)
• Door / collector index
• Geographic index
• Danum Valley International Collection Project

GENUS INDEX

The RBG Genus Index is a database of genus names showing their validity and relation to other genus names, and the family they are in, all as perceived by RBG. It is written in COBOL end uses two Indexed files, one for the Families and one for the Genera. It is called by typing SGFN 1. Why have a Genus Index? Genera may be created or deleted by botanists anywhere in the world as long as they publish the fact according to a set of international rules for botanical nomenclature (which are not, however, enforceable). This system has lead to much confusion, and it has been realised for many years that a codification of genus names is needed.

2. How is the Index structured?

Genus names are seen by the program as being a collection of hierarchies, each one headed by a name accepted by RBG as being valid both nomenclaturally and taxonomically, and filled out with the various categories of known synonyms (other names describing the same plants). The hierarchical structure of one ‘name tree’ is as below;

Available synonyms may be used; they have been validly published but represent only a part of a genus accepted by RBG. Unavailable synonyms and spelling variants may not be used. The former may be invalidly published, superfluous (true synonyms) or homonymous (the same name used twice) Each record on the genus file has two keys to accomplish the chaining above. The first contains a value unique to each record. The second contains the value of the record to which it chains. This allows the program to trace up or down chains very easily. A third key links each record with a family name from the family file.

3. Uses of the Genus Index file.

Any botanist, from any terminal, can see almost instantly RBG’s view of a genus name they might be using. In addition, the indexed files can be linked to any other system on the RBG computer, allowing, for example, validation of genus names and automatic allocation of family name.

Spring 1986 meeting

Databases: STATUS, GENUS INDEX, REFS

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