David, the areas to think about are digitisation, file naming and
tracking, vocabularies, database design and user interface. The Tasi
website is very useful for guidance on digitisation and file naming and
managing digitisation projects generally (http://www.tasi.ac.uk/). For
our project we used a mixture of volunteers and professional curators to
develop vocabularies and object descriptions. The database was
developed professionally but using open source tools (my SQL, PHP) and
the interface was designed by a professional using HTML and tested
repeatedly on volunteers. You can see the results at
http://www.transportarchive.org.uk. Ours was a NOF-digi project with a
proper budget so the site has quite a few fancy bits as well. There are
some good technical guidelines at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/nof/support/
and it is worth taking a look at the JISC NOF-digi mail list at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/NOF-DIGI.html
Regards stephen
Professor Stephen Brown
Director, Knowledge Media Design
De Montfort University, UK
http://kmd.dmu.ac.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
klaus e. werner
Sent: 14 November 2006 15:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Tips on creating a smallish database for history-related
documents
Dear Mr. Hemming,
what is true for "small volunteer-run town museums" is also true for
bigger museums. We started a digitization campaign some 2 years (or
more) ago, after long afternoon sessions on deciding which way to go and
which tools to use. We more we thought about it, the more we saw the
need to keep it simple.
Our tools are all open source, and the formats all open
(non-proprietary). The basic decision was to use XML as main format,
DocBook (which can be roughly exported from OpenOffice) as Text/Document
format, and URN links for connecting the informations inside the
documents with the museum records.
Some first results are on
http://museicapitolini.net/hyperrecord/index_en.xml
It's a mix of former Word documents (the old museum inventaries), former
Excel spreadsheets and Access databases (the more modern inventaries),
and a lot more - all transformed into XML and as such sure to survive
the next years without any version problems.
As it is a European Comunity sponsored project, we'd be happy to help
you.
--
klaus e. werner
DAVID HEMMING wrote:
> I'm writing on behalf of a small, volunteer-run town museum.
>
> We have about 8000 pages worth of text, perhaps half of which are
available in Word format, documenting all aspects of the history of the
town of Wallingford.
>
> These pages are currently in various physical folders in filing
cabinet and include excerpts from wills, council minutes, miscellaneous
reports and academic studies.
>
> What we want to do is create a searchable database for this
information to make it easier to use as a research tool.
>
> We'd be very grateful for any examples of best practice from other
museums/collections.
>
> As ever, we have very limited finances, and want to create a framework
that our volunteers can use.
>
> Issues that we're particularly mindful of are
>
> - Most appropriate IT tools
> - Using appropriate thesaurus terms and field structure
> - Potential for future web enablement
> - Integration with records for physical objects in the museum
>
> Basically any help in guiding us on where to start would be excellent.
> As our resources are limited, we want to start off from the best place
to allow the database to grow as we are able to introduce information
into it.
>
> Thanks for any guidance anyone can give.
>
> Regards David Hemming
Don't forget the Autumn meeting: 16 November, Natural History Museum,
London
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Don't forget the Autumn meeting: 16 November, Natural History Museum, London
**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
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