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WillScott
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| 06-09-2009 7:46 AM |
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To begin with an example, consider that a museum has a video about an object (A) that mentions, only briefly, another collections object (B). The museum would like the video to be linked to both objects in the database, but in different ways. Perhaps the relationship for object A would be called "About" and the relationship to object B would be "Referenced In". Presently, both relationships or types can be added to the MM module, but it cannot show which Type/Relationship applies to which object. Separate MM tabs could be used in the Catalogue Module to determine the type of relationship (perhaps one Tab for "About" and one for "Referenced In", etc.), but that seems costly and confusing.
Furthermore, the museum wishes to publish the video to the internet for object A, but not for object B (because the video is not relevant enough to object B to merit linking/embedding of the video in object B's online record). To accomplish that in the current model, it seems two copies of the video would need to be created allowing one to be linked to A and publishable, and the other linked to B and not publishable.
While type, relationship, and web status (security) can be set in the MM module, there does not seem to be a way to record various types, relationships, and web statuses for many objects in relation to a single MM record. Either separate MM Tabs/Fields would need to be created in Catalogue to specify type/relationship and web status or multiple instances of the same MM item would need to be added to show the different relationships to different objects. Both solutions seem to involve a duplication of effort and/or data that is time consuming and potentially detrimental to data integrity. Would it not be better to have the ability to describe the relationship rather than just the object or MM item?
I wonder if anyone has dealt with, or come up with a solution for, describing these various relationships between Catalogue and Multimedia records. Recommendations using the default model and those requiring customization would both be quite helpful.
Many thanks!
Will
Will Scott
Museum and Computer Consultant
willscottconsulting@yahoo.com
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Mark Bradley
Posts:44
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| 21-10-2009 12:12 PM |
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Hi Will
Interesting idea. Obviously EMu is built on the expectation that a Multimedia record will have only one use/purpose.
One idea - how about adding fields to the Multimedia tab in Catalogue. One could be "relationship", and the other could be "score" or "relevance" (a percentage?). Example: "features in" and "35". Together these could define the relationship to Catalogue of each attached MMedia record, which could then be filtered on the web.
Could even redesign the Multimedia tab in Catalogue as a nested table in with columns for Thumbnail, Title, Creator, Type, Format, Identifier, Description, Relationship and Score. This would be too wide to be useful at a glance, but perhaps some of the columns are unnecessary. |
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WillScott
Posts:0
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| 27-10-2009 10:22 AM |
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Thank you for your reply, Mark. UPMAA added Type and Notes fields on the Multimedia Tab of the Catalogue Module (and a few other Modules) that will handle the Type of relationship and additional remarks. I would like to propose that object-side typing of Multimedia be made standard in all EMu modules.
Is this affecting other institutions? Please add a comment or drop me a line directly if so. I would be interested in developing a detailed specification with other clients to propose to KE.
This issue came again to mind at the User Group meetings in MN last week. Dave Smith at Natural History London presented some of their uses of the Narratives Module, including a video project documenting the knowledge of many retiring staff members. It was an oral history of the museum, on one hand, and collections documentation on the other. Such video interviews and collections storage walk-throughs could be related to a number of objects and events (even loans, collection events, and accession lots). It would not make sense to edit the video to include a copy of each part discussing each object/event—it disrupts the narrative and is time-consuming. It would make sense to related objects and events to the video noting that Object A is referenced and Object B is discussed at length, and Event A (the curatorial video project) is related as a "result", and Event B (a past exhibition) is related as "referenced in." For that to be possible, multiple relationships need to be recordable for a single Multimedia object from any Module.
A simpler example is an installation photograph from an exhibition. It may be linked to the exhibition Event as "installation photo" and to various other objects included in the photograph with a different relationship (perhaps, “featured in group photo” or “in installation photo”). Furthermore, one object in the installation photo may be a loan object (Loan A) that could be useful in comparison to a permanent collections object (Object F), creating a “similar object” relationship between Object F and the image that includes Loan A.
I am being fairly loose with defining relationship types between Modules and Multimedia. I think that they should be fairly open and dynamic, however, and defined by institutional needs. The inability to specify attachment-side relationships leads to duplication of, perhaps the most resource-hungry type of collections data, multimedia. Although EMu is fast, and memory cheap, one should, be able to view a single Multimedia object and see how it relates to various other records in the database. The present EMu configuration does not allow for that.
As I mentioned in the original post, one of the driving forces behind this request was having the ability to determine which Multimedia objects to publish online for which records. MM A may be publishable for Object A, but not for Object B, even though MM A is related to both in EMu. It might be worthwhile to develop this even further to include web publishing options on the tabs to which Multimedia records are attached, in addition to defining the type of relationship. That would allow clients to decide manually (or by defaults) which Multimedia records to publish to the web for which objects distinct from the type of relationship. Object C may have a relation to Photo A (a group image of multiple objects) of "featured in group." Object D may have the same relationship to the same Photo A, but is less prominent in the photograph as compared to Object C. The museum wishes to publish the group photo for Object C, where the object features prominently, but not for Object D, where the object is present, but obscured. Separating the type of relationship from the internet publication setting for Multi-media objects would allow that situation to be handled without the creation of confusing duplicate Multimedia records.
That leads me to another proposal that applies to Multimedia and to EMu overall. EMu’s built-in web controls allow only a toggle—publish to web or do not publish to web—for any record. I will post this in more detail to the appropriate section of this forum, but it merits mentions in the context of Multimedia typing and web publication.
For many museums, it may be possible to make a binary decision about web publication—share it with the public or do not share it with the public. I suspect, however, that many museums are looking to publish various levels of information for access by different kinds of users. I work quite a bit with university museums, UPMAA included. End-user categories for intranet/internet publication for a university museum include not just the public, but also students, faculty, and researchers. The museum may wish to publish a larger, but less-complete, set of data to university users than to the general public. Researchers may be given access to a different set of records, more complete than the public records, via registration and login. University and non-university museums, both, may require publication categories such as general public, researchers, and educators (K-12 and university-level), internal kiosk, etc. Furthermore, special projects may require a subset of data to be published that is geared toward 3rd grade teachers, in particular.
EMu does not seem to include this sort of intranet/internet-access control in default configurations. (I know of at least two museums that are paying for more detailed controls designed in-house as customizations). Things could certainly get out of hand trying to accommodate each institutions specific needs in this area. But I think that there may be a middle ground.
In its simplest implementation, this may include 1-n levels of intranet/internet publication that could be defined by the client via a dropdown. In that scenario, users could set objects to be published to the public (www), researchers (www with approved registration), intranet (university), intranet (museum), etc. Any number of categories could be set by adding terms to the dropdown field controlling the levels of access. Clients would be largely responsible for handling which records are presenting to end users based on that field. KE may also include the field as part of its PHP Web Toolkit so clients would not have to throw broad IFs in front of the KE code.
A more complicated option would be an altered copy of the EMu Security controls that limit in-house access to records, tabs, and fields. That would allow a greater level of control. Publication of records would be based on end-user “groups” or categories.
I am interested to hear from other users how they are publishing different information to different sites and how they think EMu’s default publication options might better accommodate their needs. I would be glad to collaborate on a proposed specification for improving publication options, as well, if other clients are interested.
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