Janet,
in our experience there are many ways of integrating with collection databases (export/sync, SOLR, Sphinx, bespoke). As a rule of thumb, collection database are good at managing object level information, not so much at group level stuff: in most cases they know in which gallery an object is, yet they don't have the notion of a floor plan or indeed a building.
Generally speaking (again) the obvious (both not so easily avoided) principle is: do not duplicate information: the CMS needs to know very little about collection objects in order to create such hierarchies and allow your presentation layer (that combines CMS and Collection DBs) to display them on your website (or wherever you want them). Conversely you may want a CMS that has a similar structure to your collection DB for objects that are not part of your collection (hence are not necessarily in your collection DB) yet they need to be featured on your website (as they are on loan for an exhibition). Besides, if you have a flexible CMS, it can hold as much metadata as you want, in the structure you want - hence it becomes a collection management system. I doubt Drupal can do that.
Best,
Cristiano
On 16 Aug 2011, at 12:15, J DAVIS wrote:
> I certainly like the idea of open source Web CMSs for museums and galleries. Some issues can be how they might pull in information from existing collections databases.
> Web CMSs I've used so far don't have adequate image/media galleries and don't allow enough any or enough structured metadata. I think that having thesauri/controlled vocabularies/glosssaries as part of them is a good idea.
> I think Web CMSs should be quite foolproof on the backend so more staff and volunteers can add content to specific sections. With some good writing & style guidelines, enabling a wider number of people to add their own educational materials, news items, blog posts etc helps to keep the website lively.
> Janet
>
> Janet E Davis
>
>
>
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Cristiano Bianchi
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