Access to Distributed Resources: the 24 Hour Museum

1
Access to Distributed Resourcesthe 24 Hour
Museum

• SITEM 2004, Paris
• 4 February 2004
• David Dawson, Senior ICT Adviser

2
Agenda

• who we are
• 24 Hour Museum and the metasearch project
• developing a Common Information Environment

3
Resource

• Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
• strategic advisers to Department for Culture,
  Media and Sport
• work with a range of Government Departments
• Department for Education and Skills
• Department for Trade and Industry
• partner in the MINERVA Project
• interoperability
• including work on European Technical Guidelines

4
Department for Culture, Media Sport
Culture Online
funds a number of other bodies, such as the
British Film Institute
Resource Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
EnglishHeritage
NationalMuseums
BritishLibrary
NationalLottery
BBC
ArtsCouncil

• strategic responsibility for regional museums,
  archives libraries
• Peoples Network
• co-funds UKOLN and Digital Preservation Coalition
• Cornucopia
• 24 Hour Museum

• each separately funded by DCMS including
• British Museum
• Tate Gallery
• National Gallery
• Natural History Museum
• Science Museum
• VA
• etc

• responsibility for the historic environment and
  archaeology
• regional offices in each part of England
• National Monuments Register
• responsibility for local Sites and Monuments
  Records

• Lottery distributors include-
• Heritage Lottery Fund an on-going funding
  programme
• New Opportuntities Fund NOF-digitise programme
  developed with Resource

• funded by licence fee paid by TV viewers
• includes BBCi website
• is investing 100m in a digital curriculum

• has new regional offices
• active as a funder in all sectors of the arts
• distributes National Lottery funds in addition to
  its own budgets

• funded by DCMS but has a remit for whole of UK
• runs a Co-operation Partnership Funding
  programme
• co-funds Digital Preservation Coalition

5
Peoples Network

• funded by National Lottery
• 140m to create ICT learning centres in all
  public libraries
• 30m to train all librarians in use of ICT
• 80m to create digital learning resources

6
24 Hour Museum

• the metasearch project

7
(No Transcript)
8
24 Hour Museum

• few facts and figures
• 200,000 visitors and 1 million page views a month
  and rising
• 21 of users stay for over 8 minutes
• average cost per visitor 0.15
• 85 of visitors go on to visit a real museum

9
What the idea is ...

• Most common email request from users is for
  information about objects
• 24 Hour Museum does not hold collections!
• so . . .
• enable searching of existing museum collections
  databases

10
Benefits

• 24 Hour Museum
• meeting user needs
• developmental step
• Museums
• more users!
• one set of data - integrated into different
  services
• Suppliers
• added value service

11
Interoperability trade-off
12
DC.Culture

• Proposal developed for Minerva
• Dublin Core doesnt work!
• DC.Coverage includes
• Space
• Time
• issue recognised in Digicult Report
• 4 Ws
• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Aquarelle, SCRAN etc etc (CIMI Profile)

13
Aquarelle Project

• EU-funded project
• FR, UK, GR
• cross-searching of different types of collections
• used Z39.50
• still trying to rebuild it!

14
(No Transcript)
15
DC.Culture

• Who
• CREATOR, PUBLISHER, CONTRIBUTOR, RIGHTS,
  COVERAGE.Culture, SUBJECT.Person
• What
• TITLE, SUBJECT, DESCRIPTION, TYPE, FORMAT,
  IDENTIFIER, SOURCE, LANGUAGE, RELATION,
  COVERAGE.Culture
• Where
• COVERAGE.Placename, COVERAGE.CoordinateX,
  COVERAGE.CoordinateY, COVERAGE.CoordinateSystem
• When
• COVERAGE.Culture, DATE.BeginDate, Date.EndDate,
  Date.Period

16
Metasearch Project

• the first version

17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
Common Information Environment
23
Common Information Environment

• joining-up services for users
• demonstrators under development
• health
• sense of place
• led by the Archaeology Data Service with EDINA
• completed in 6 weeks for 30,000
• partners include Resource, JISC, e-Science,
  Research Councils, NHS and British Library
• each sponsored by a different Government
  Department

24
(No Transcript)
25
(No Transcript)
26
Common Information Environment

• it works so what next?

27
(No Transcript)
28
(No Transcript)
29
(No Transcript)
30
Why isnt it happening?

• joined-up thinking
• needed at a national level
• MINERVA project helping this happen at a European
  level
• MICHAEL eTen project to implement open source
  approach to national portals
• personalisation vs confidentiality
• fear of giving away information to others
• fear of losing brand identity
• proliferation of portals
• users want services

31
contact details

• ? david.dawson_at_mla.gov.uk
• www.mla.gov.uk www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk