Hi Laura,
Thank you for your detailed and considerate response. I would still be
interested in seeing the assessment criteria for compliance beyond
capturing the units of information required by the primary procedures. My
concern is that museums may be using systems that they think offer
safeguards for collections information and captures all the right
information, but in reality may be at risk due to a variety of "unknown
factors" which may be considered during the testing process at Collections
Trust. If it is just a case of capturing the units of data in (controlled?)
fields, then that's great. For example, it would then be possible to say
that using Google Sheets as your CMS is not SPECTRUM compliant, even if it
has column headers for each unit of information. Or is it? ;)
Robin
--
Robin Patel
Heritage & Museum Consultant (Collections & Access)
t: 01786 860 691
m: 07815 312 562
[log in to unmask]
https://ergadiaheritage.com/
On 23 June 2016 at 12:06, Laura Davidson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hi Robin, All,
>
> Apologies for the delayed reply to this, I am just catching up on MCG
> discussions after leave. On behalf of Collections Trust I wanted to follow
> up on a few of the points in your summary and the previous posts.
>
> - There isn't a tool as such, to test a CMS for Compliance but there is a
> formal testing process that a developer can submit a system to. It's a
> lengthy process and a lot of work goes into it by the developers.
> - A software developer must be a SPECTRUM Partner in order to go through
> that verification. It's a commercial relationship becoming a Partner as it
> licences the use of SPECTRUM for commercial use. This has meant that some
> software developers, particularly open source, have felt unable to become a
> Partner. We are looking at ways that we can improve accessibility to the
> Partnership and work with developers who may be concentrating on a
> particular part of collections management/SPECTRUM procedure and could
> achieve Compliance for that specific area.
> - Compliance means a system has a designated place to capture all of the
> units of information that are covered by the 8 primary procedures as a
> minimum. This should be available as standard or can be defined by the user
> or the developer, but not just free-text fields. Compliant systems are also
> asked to demonstrate how the Units relating to all of the non-primary
> procedures can be captured.
> - As Nico said, only those systems listed on the Choose A CMS tool on
> www.collectionstrust.org.uk are SPECTRUM Partners. Those marked as 'SC'
> are Compliant. This means they are working with Collections Trust and the
> SPECTRUM Community on the development of SPECTRUM and have the commercial
> licence to use SPECTRUM within their system.
> - You may not be using the most recent version of a system however, or
> indeed capturing all of the information from the primary procedures in your
> documentation. There's not a lot we can do about that other than continue
> to provide best practice guidance on collections management and
> Accreditation support on www.collectionstrust.org.uk!
> - Collection Space is not SPECTRUM Compliant and although they mention
> SPECTRUM on their website, they do not have a commercial licence to do so.
> - We know there is a need for development of Compliance and will be making
> it easier to understand through the development of SPECTRUM 5.
> - Likewise, the Choose A CMS tool is getting a revamp so it is more of an
> active comparison between systems rather than its current form.
>
> It would be fantastic to get more feedback about the information and
> filters you would like to have when comparing systems. We will be looking
> to do some user testing probably around September so if anyone can help,
> please drop me a mail.
>
> Thanks again for the discussion, it's a great reminder that we could be
> more transparent about the process of Compliance, but please trust the
> information about developers on our website as that is the definitive list
> of Compliant systems currently.
>
> Yours,
>
> Laura Davidson
> Content Manager
> Collections Trust
>
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