{"id":1736,"date":"2012-09-14T12:18:05","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T11:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/?p=1736"},"modified":"2012-09-14T12:39:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T11:39:36","slug":"general-functions-collections-management-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/archives\/1736","title":{"rendered":"General Functions of a Collections Management System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am busy writing a summary of our information resources at RBGE and as part of this I am asking people to list what the high level &#8216;uses&#8217; of their databases are. I am just after a power point or two worth of information. Most of these databases are catalogues of physical objects &#8211; they are collections management systems varying from spreadsheets to complex multi-user systems. While I am waiting for the results I found myself thinking up a generic list of functionality for a collections management system.\u00a0 This is my list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Preserve<\/strong>&#8211; Key function is to make sure the collection persists. If it doesn&#8217;t persist it will not be available for future use.\n<ul>\n<li>Track loans in and out of the system so we don&#8217;t lose stuff when people borrow it.<\/li>\n<li>Control destructive sampling so when we do lose stuff it is done with purpose.<\/li>\n<li>Control deaccessioning of material so we only throw out the dead weight &#8211; not the good stuff.<\/li>\n<li>Manage prophylactic preservation treatments such as cleaning and insect control.<\/li>\n<li>Manage restoration tasks. When damaged objects are discovered arrange for them to be stabilized\/fixed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Publish<\/strong>&#8211; Key function is to make the contents of the collection available for research and enjoyment.\n<ul>\n<li>Search\/Query interface to discover content.\n<ul>\n<li>Index of what the collection contains &#8211; who\/what\/when\/where<\/li>\n<li>Track physical location of the object within the collection so it can be retrieved.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Share with aggregators of collections information.<\/li>\n<li>Control access &#8211; copyright\/moratoriums\/sensitive info.<\/li>\n<li>Generate Sales leads &#8211; potentially raise funds by selling reproduction rights.<\/li>\n<li>Profile\/Brand\/Marketing &#8211; wider awareness to support public funding of collection.<\/li>\n<li>Provide electronic citation mechanism e.g. persistent URLs and DOIs to support researchers and publishers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Enrich<\/strong>&#8211; Key function is to increase the value of the collections.\n<ul>\n<li>Accept donations\/purchase of new materials<\/li>\n<li>Extract\/augment information not inherent in the objects e.g. geocoding of collecting location<\/li>\n<li>Collect annotations to object by scholars and others.<\/li>\n<li>Link to related external sources and encourage linking back to individual objects.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is just a brain dump and may be a little too long &#8211; four power point slides total. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am busy writing a summary of our information resources at RBGE and as part of this I am asking people to list what the high level &#8216;uses&#8217; of their databases are. I am just after a power point or two worth of information. Most of these databases are catalogues&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biodiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}