CollectionSpace for Museum and Academic Technology Professionals October 29,

Speakers Carl Goodman, Principal Investigator, Museum of the Moving Image Patrick Schmitz, Co-Technical Lead, University of California, Berkeley Dan Sheppard, Co-Technical Lead, University of Cambridge Colin Clark, Co-Technical Lead, University of Toronto Angela Spinazze, Senior Project Advisor, ATSPIN consulting

CollectionSpace is an open-source, web- based software application for the description, management, and dissemination of museum collections information – from artifacts and archival materials to exhibitions and storage.

Project Partners Museum of the Moving Image, New York University of California, Berkeley, Information Services and Technology Division University of Cambridge, Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies University of Toronto, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, Fluid Project

Funding The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Program in Research in Information Technology Program supports the creation of "enterprise" administrative and infrastructural software by means of distributed, collaborative open- source development projects Collaborations with RIT-funded projects ConservationSpace Fluid Engage Ole Project OpenCast Project Bamboo

Project Team The CollectionSpace project team is composed of domain experts, designers, architects, and developers from each partner organization. Development teams work in cycles to issue regular software releases.

Initial Releases CollectionSpace Release 1.0: Eight core procedures and related functionality covered, including: acquisition, cataloging, loans, vocabulary control, media handling, customization, security, and documentation Incremental releases for testing and evaluation: 0.2: Released October, Allows user login, creation of intake records, and auto-fill intake and object identification numbers 0.3: November, Includes ID service with choice of sequential identification numbers; vocabulary service, to provide access to controlled lists; and support for acquisition

Implementations MMI, UCB, Walker, more to come S/M/L/XL Different flavors, each made available to the community

Open Source Ability to modify, share, refine Can result in better software No vendor lock-in or licensing costs Incorporation of existing OS software

Community Source

Benefits of Open Source + Structured and coordinated development process Designed WITH user community Reduced total cost of operations Doesnt scare your colleagues

Benefits of CollectionSpace Local or hosted Open architecture Standards-based Customizable Configurable roles and permissions

CollectionSpace Services Patrick Schmitz University of California, Berkeley Co-Technical Lead, CollectionSpace

Dozens of world-class museums and research collections Range from small to very large Cover a very broad set of domains Each has very different model, info needs Varying information around core activities Domain-specific information like stratigraphy Research activities require easy access to CMS data and integration with other systems/apps UCB and CollectionSpace

Services underlie the application, manage and provide access to all CMS data SOA ensures clean architecture for CollectionSpace Enterprise standard for integration, reuse Exposes information as Web Services for re-use, enabling mashups and new applications REST-based services easy to use and integrate Services model common entities, and relations, but are extensible to provide a flexible data model for each collection Provide permanent URI for objects for linking, citation, etc. Easy access to data for other applications, research projects, etc. Services, SOA, and the Project

Schema model for a customized service deployment Schema Extension Model

Example URIs, e.g., for loans, objects associated to one loan, and for a given collection object: your.museum.org/cspace-services/loans your.museum.org/cspace-services/loans/{id}/collectionobjects your.museum.org/cspace-services/collectionobjects/{id} REST payload (XML content) includes core schema information, and your custom extensions Dissemination and publishing tools have easy access to collections data Research applications have access to data without compromising database security or access policies REST Access to CollectionSpace

Doing 4 pilot deployments to gain experience PAHMA (Anthro) and a LifeSci collection at UCB MMI and Walker (Cultural Heritage collections) Developing best practices with (ETL) tools for import Building templates for initial domains Schemas and UI templates will be shared back to CollectionSpace Contributions from community ease future deployments Community provides forum for discussion/sharing experience Planning more deployments across a range of domains in 2010 CollectionSpace Pilot Deployments

CollectionSpace Application Dan Sheppard University of Cambridge, CARET Co-Technical Lead, CollectionSpace

Application Layer Why is it needed? What is it / isnt it? How does it work? Where does it fit?

Configuration

Plugins and Configuration

Plugins and Paths

Plugins

Application Layer Why is it needed? What is it / isnt it? How does it work? Where does it fit?

CollectionSpace User Interface Colin Clark University of Toronto, Fluid Project Co-Technical Lead, CollectionSpace

CollectionSpace UX Goals A holistic product Designed by museums, not technologists Easy to use, but not simplistic Accommodates your workflow & collection Accessible to a wide variety of user needs

How Were Making It Easy

Highly Configurable Museum collections are diverse CollectionSpace is built to be customized Add new fields Change labels Take things away Skin it for your environment Schema-lessness: no assumptions about data model baked into the user interface

Out of the Box Experience

Customized Museum Experience

A Web-Oriented Architecture No exotic technologies: just the Web HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Familiar and extensible Clean, simple URLs + useful data feeds Built using Fluids Infusion application framework jQuery RESTful APIs and JSON

Flexible and Accessible Highly skinnable, even for users Can accommodate diverse user needs Works great with the keyboard Supports other assistive technologies Accessible, but still rich and dynamic!

Q+A Angela Spinazze, Moderator

Getting Involved We would like to: Learn more about your institutions needs Help you gain support for implementation of CollectionSpace within your organization Build a sustainable community of users and contributors

Contact Information Carl Goodman: the team: Visit the website: Browse the wiki: wiki.collectionspace.org