Project Description

CollectionSpace is a collaboration that brings together a variety of cultural and academic institutions with the common goal of developing and deploying an open-source, web-based software application for the description, management, and dissemination of museum collections information. This report includes an update on the project team's activities for November and December. The next update will be released Friday, January 8th.

Updates are emailed to the Announcements list and posted to the project wiki and website the first Friday of every month.

Releases 0.3 and 0.4

The CollectionSpace project team is pleased to announce the release of CollectionSpace 0.3, which allows users to create a new acquisition record, choose an identification number pattern for object, intake, and acquisition records, and choose items from a controlled list in intake, object, and acquisition records. Unless otherwise noted, the 0.3 release interface only allows for text entry; calendar dates, dimensions, and vocabularies will be functional beginning with release 0.4. Non-functioning elements of the interface appear in gray. To access the demo, use login: guest and password: guest.

Try the CollectionSpace 0.3 Demo

The CollectionSpace project team welcomes any and all questions, comments, and critiques of the 0.3 Release. A feedback page has been created on the project wiki; users can also email talk@lists.collectionspace.org.

The team is currently working on Release 0.4, which will include search, relationships between records, dimensions, calendar dates, and expanded support for vocabularies.

Community

The Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark) has signed on as the project's newest contributor. SMK will use CollectionSpace for their enterprise-wide collections information, management, and access resource. It will serve back-of-the house needs, and integrate seamlessly with SMK digital, their new digital communications and education initiative.

The project team hosted a successful series of webinars in late October and early November. Over 150 attendees got an advanced look at CollectionSpace, met the design and development teams, learned about the software's advanced architecture, functionality, and user experience, heard about our production schedule and deployment plans, and learned how to get involved with the project.

Video, audio, and slides for each webinar are available on the project's website.

In early November, project team members Carl Goodman, Megan Forbes, Angela Spinazze, Jess Mitchell, and Colin Clark attended the MCN 2009 conference in Portland. Carl and Jess participated in the session "Doing More with Less: A Community-Software-Based Technology Strategy Roundtable."