Museums and Digital Repositories October, 2005

The punch line… In the digital realm, museums: * are very much like libraries * tend to share the same policy issues

Museums and libraries in the digital realm * Differences in physical formats disappear when objects are digital *Underlying shared purpose becomes more obvious

Some Harvard background “Digital Repository Service” –in production for 5 years –terabytes of data, millions of objects –29 depositors (4 of them museums) –provides both object access and preservation –operates as a service –partially cost recovered recover marginal cost of storage

Some Harvard museums active contributors

But not yet all…

Carrots, not sticks Internal grant program (all museum contributors have gotten at least one grant… and all have continued to use services afterwards!)

Lots of policy… (and most of it quite comfortable to museums)

Repository policy aims * it’s not about disk storage * long time horizons * service to the Harvard community * depositors must take some responsibility

Policy (1) Data must be “library-like” in purpose (i. e., support research and teaching)

Policy (2) Data must be of persistent value

Policy (3) Data must be of accessible to the entire Harvard community (hedged a bit for temporarily “dark” collections)

Policy (4) Data must be findable through University-wide discovery tools some issue with museums here…

Discovery “Public catalogs” not traditional in museums –particularly not union catalogs! –frequently oriented to exhibitions rather than catalogs Museum collection management systems not always consistent with library access systems –descriptive practices, metadata formats

Discussing discovery Persuasion when integrating data makes sense –our visual arts catalog ("arts, material culture, and social history“) fits well for art and archeology images, but not for fish specimens Some museums have their own independent discovery tools

Discussing discovery Persuasion when integrating data makes sense –our visual arts catalog ("arts, material culture, and social history“) fits well for art and archeology images, but not for fish specimens Some museums have their own independent discovery tools and there are on-going discussions in other cases….

Policy (5) Depositors are responsible for intellectual property issues

IP issues in museums – many additional issues * Artists rights * NAGPRA * Multiple levels of rights * etc…

Policy (6) Depositors are responsible for paying repository fees

Policy (7) Repository and depositors share responsibility for preservation

Preservation Repository agrees to try to preserve objects if: * in recommended formats *accompanied by appropriate metadata

Museum data formats Mostly reformatting (parallel to libraries) –visual images –text images archival material field notes published documentation Born digital text coming (also like libraries) Field databases (a bit more interesting…)

Shared responsibility * Formats and metadata * Preservation action decision-making * Funding

In sum… Museums are much like libraries in this domain –persistent research data –interested in public accessibility –understand metadata –curatorial understanding and interest in their collections data –persistent organization to take long-term responsibility (financial, preservation) –familiar data types

The big difference Mind-set, traditions, formats for discovery