Dear Nick,
I will give you an honest answer re: Local Authorities allowing data to be
held elsewhere. From
experience it has been incredibly difficult to do anything like you
suggest, even hosting our website
outside of the Council has been fraught at times. I think there is (from
my point of view) a huge
cultural chasm between 'out there' and Local Authority organisational
culture.
I think it would be a hard slog to do what you suggest, and may not be a
one stop shop solution
as intended. I think there may be an appetite for this from small museums
with a very modest budget
if the hurdles could be removed. Perhaps others will have a very different
view depending on their
experience.
Best regards
Vince
Vincent Kelly
Principal Manager: Collections Management
Manchester City Galleries
Mosley Street
M2 3JL
Tel +44 (0) 161 235 8829
Fax +44 (0) 161 274 7416
Internal: 804 8829
[log in to unmask]
www.manchestergalleries.org
Green Drops and Moonsquirters: The Utterly Imaginative World of Lauren
Child - Saturday 21 June 2008 - Sunday 21 September 2008
Deodorant Type: Sculptures by Gwon Osang - Saturday 21 June 2008 - Sunday
21 September 2008
WINNER: Large Visitor Attraction Greater Manchester Tourism Awards 2008
FINALIST: The Guardian Family Friendly Museum Award 2008
Visit manchestergalleries' flickr photostream
Nick Poole <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]>
18/09/2008 00:39
Please respond to Museums Computer Group
To: [log in to unmask]
cc:
Subject: Re: ABC guide to Digitising Museum Collections
Dear Vince,
Just to endorse your response briefly, and also to say that this is why
we're looking into cloud/utility computing options as a service for
museums. If there is a critical mass of demand in the sector for this kind
of infrastructure, we think there is a business model for leasing server
space and reselling it on a competitive basis. As a bonus, we could
centralise the costs of latency, backup etc.
The costs you mention are an order of magnitude higher than the costs of
leasing server space through, for example Amazon S3, another 3rd party
provider or even Googlebase or Freebase. If we are to take this line of
enquiry any further, it would be really useful to know (a) whether people
are able to free up their data from their current provider (eg. The Local
Authority) and (b) whether there is an appetite out there for low-cost
managed data hosting which we could provide in partnership with Culture24.
Best regards,
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Vincent Kelly
Sent: 17 September 2008 11:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ABC guide to Digitising Museum Collections
Hi Julian,
I hope you are well in sunny Stockport.
I just wondered if you were going to cover infrastructure & servers? I
think that a lot of
people can be blissfully unaware of capacity issues for projects such as
these,
images take up a huge amount of space on servers, and with that comes a
large
server back up cost. It might be an idea to use some case studies or give
examples
from organisations who have had to deal with this.
We are currently planning to move to a new server hosted outside of the
Council and have
been exploring the capacity issues that come with ambitions to have an
enormous digital
master file (50mb) for each object. The cost of doing this ruled out this
ambition very quickly
as the back up costs would have been £2,700 p.a. for 21,000 images. If
organisations
want to have multiple images for each object you can see how the cost
could escalate. Perhaps
if you are the Tate or Getty Images with a huge budget you could do this
but for many this is
not realistic.
Are you going to cover image management software and how to link this to
your database?
Te Papa, NZ have done a lot of work in this area it would be worth talking
to people like them
to see what they have done, and how much it cost etc... Anyway that's my
twopennoth worth, I
hope it is helpful.
Cheers.
Vince
Vincent Kelly
Principal Manager: Collections Management
Manchester City Galleries
Mosley Street
M2 3JL
Tel +44 (0) 161 235 8829
Fax +44 (0) 161 274 7416
Internal: 804 8829
[log in to unmask]
www.manchestergalleries.org
Green Drops and Moonsquirters: The Utterly Imaginative World of Lauren
Child - Saturday 21 June 2008 - Sunday 21 September 2008
Deodorant Type: Sculptures by Gwon Osang - Saturday 21 June 2008 - Sunday
21 September 2008
WINNER: Large Visitor Attraction Greater Manchester Tourism Awards 2008
FINALIST: The Guardian Family Friendly Museum Award 2008
Visit manchestergalleries' flickr photostream
Julian Tomlin <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]>
17/09/2008 08:20
Please respond to Museums Computer Group
To: [log in to unmask]
cc:
Subject: ABC guide to Digitising Museum Collections
[Apologies for cross-posting]
Dear all
Renaissance East Midlands will be producing a simple guide to digitising
museum collections (2d and 3d) and would like comments from members.
I have been commissioned to write the guide and am working with Caroline
Moore, Digital Access Development Officer at REM. The guide will be
delivered as an on-line resource, available in PDF, and possibly in HTML
format. We hope that this will be available on the Collections Link as
well as the REM site.
The guide is being produced as a result of consultation with museums,
both small and large, in the East Midlands. It will reference the rich
amount of detailed information already available on-line in such sites
as Collections Link
<http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/digitise_my_collection>, Minerva
<http://www.minervaeurope.org/>, <http://www.minervaeurope.org/> AHDS
<http://www.ahds.ac.uk/guides/index.htm>, National Preservation Office
<http://www.bl.uk/services/npo/publicationsleaf.html>, and TASI
<http://www.tasi.ac.uk/>.
/Caroline and I would appreciate feedback from members in any models
that might be considered exemplary, as well as comment on the structure
and content of the guide./
The guide which will be illustrated is expected to cover the following
topics:
Project scoping and planning
Involving users
Creating digital content
Creating metadata
Publishing digital content
Copyright
Preservation and sustainability
It is envisaged that it will provide readers with a basic understanding
of approaches to a digitisation project and operate as aid to planning.
Consultation with users will take place using early drafts of the guide.
Please feel free to reply on or off list.
Thanks
Julian Tomlin
--
Julian Tomlin | 146 Heaton Moor Road | Stockport | SK4 4LB | United
Kingdom
T: +44 (0) 161 443 1398 | M: +44 (0) 7974 001976 | E:
[log in to unmask] | W: www.juliantomlin.com
Caroline Moore
Digital Access Development Officer
Renaissance East Midlands
Leicester Arts and Museums Service
A12 New Walk Centre
Welford Place
Leicester LE1 6ZG
T: 0116 252 7338
East Midland's digital collections
http://www.renaissanceeastmidlands.org.uk/our_work/digital_access_to_collections/east_midlands.html
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