The only active section of the Drexel Digital Museum at present is the Historic Costume Collection, which is described on its website as "a searchable database of archival data and detailed graphics for the physical collections housed in the College of Media Arts & Design and the Drexel Museum, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. This site provides a wealth of information for fashion design students, fashion professionals, historic costume scholars, and followers of fashion trends, current and past. Some items from the collection are viewable in 3D panorama" (Drexel Historic Costume Collection, n.d.). To be completely accurate, the above should read, "This site will provide a wealth of information…"
My original assignment in the Drexel Digital Museum was to devise
- controlled vocabulary
- data entry interface
- public search interface
Initiating each of these tasks required research and assessments. My list of tasks eventually included
- assessing the current public interface
- assessing the current controlled vocabulary
- improving or replacing the current controlled vocabulary
- assessing the data requirements of the digital museum
- choosing data standards
- writing a crosswalk between the data elements of the various standards
- devising dummy interfaces for entry of all required data elements
- devising dummy interfaces for access to a controlled vocabulary database
- investigating the needs of potential users of the digital museum
- exploring the theoretical implications of public access to the digital museum
Because of complexity of each of these tasks, I was not able to complete any of them in the allotted 10 weeks. I have, however, made a good start and have provided thorough documentation of my sources, methods, and intentions. See action required for further information.
assessment of the current interface
The interface is elegant; I like the small images and limited data display. However, I would recommend providing multiple hyperlinks to further data and to many larger images.
The current searching capabilities are very limited; see theoretical discussion below for more recommendations. See my discussion of the current digimuse public interface for more details.
The museum had a limited controlled vocabulary based on the ICOM vocabulary (ICOM International Committee for the Museums and Collections of Costume, 1982). I found this vocabulary inadequate and proposed a new thesaurus (available as a separate file) based on the Art & architecture thesaurus (Getty Vocabulary Program, 2000a).
This new thesaurus is more complete and should be easier to maintain. It also adheres to international standards and should support data sharing between institutions. See my discussion of faceted controlled vocabulary for more details.
The museum should collect data required by international standards. Since there are so many different standards, I selected three that fit the museum's mission:
- CIDOC Information Categories
- AMICO Data Specification
- Object ID
These data standards will need to be translated into metadata. I selected three appropriate metadata standards:
- Dublin Core, following CIMI Dublin Core best practices as appropriate
- AMICO Data Specification
- PRESERV Metadata, for metadata representing technical details of imaging
To insure easy data exchange between different systems, the metadata will need an interoperability standard as well:
- OAI Protocol
To ensure that each data element is assigned to appropriate metadata fields, a metadata crosswalk (available as a separate file) is necessary. See my discussion of museum metadata standards for more details.
An interface for data entry should support, not hinder, the cataloging workflow and should allow entry of all required data elements. See my discussion of data entry interface requirements for more details. See also my data entry dummy interface.
I am not fully convinced that digital museums are worthwhile. However, only by continuing to work on such projects will I know for sure.
Digital "objects" are not a substitute for physical objects. Nevertheless, digital museums could allow users to access to objects in ways previously impossible. See my discussion of the surrogate vs. the thing for more details.
The ways in which we resolve theoretical questions concerning digital museums will affect the design of public interfaces.
next page: current digimuse public interface
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Donny
Smith
May 2002
[email protected] or [email protected]