OCLC awarded Mellon grant to conduct museum data exchange study
DUBLIN, Ohio, February 12, 2008-OCLC, the world's largest library
service and research organization, has been awarded a grant from The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to further develop standards for museum
data exchange.
The $145,000 grant will be used by OCLC to fund projects involving OCLC
Programs and Research and seven RLG Programs art museum partners to
build an information architecture and model behaviors that museums can
use to routinely exchange data.
This initiative will result in the creation of a low-barrier/no-cost
batch export capability out of the collections management system used
by the participating museums (GallerySystems TMS), as well as a test of
data exchange processes using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The test will create a large research
aggregation of museum records, which will be analyzed to determine in
which areas museums should invest in upgrading their records, and in
which areas automated processes can be utilized to harmonize
descriptions for retrieval. Participating museums will also discuss
the evidence about the relative utility of the aggregation with
stakeholders from the museum, vendor and aggregator communities.
"We've seen a change in attitudes in the museum community over the last
couple of years, and increasingly, technological solutions are lagging
behind aspirations to share," said James Michalko, OCLC Vice President,
RLG Programs. "We are grateful to The Mellon Foundation for their
generous support of our efforts to empower museums in their desire to
exchange digital records and images."
Project manager Günter Waibel, Program Officer, RLG Programs, envisions
that the initiative will have far-reaching impact. "While we're
focusing our initial efforts on TMS, we hope that our solution will be
generic enough to take us a long way towards addressing data exchange
issues for other vendor-based and homegrown systems," Waibel said.
Museums participating in the project with OCLC Programs and Research
include the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston; the National Gallery of Art; Princeton University Art Museum;
Yale University Art Gallery; Victoria & Albert Museum (research
aggregation only); and the Cleveland Museum of Art (research
aggregation only).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted a kick-off meeting January 28-29
to bring participants together and begin work on this initiative. The
project is expected to be completed by the end of March 2009.
About OCLC
Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC is a nonprofit
library service and research organization that has provided
computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing, eContent,
preservation, library management and Web services to 60,000 libraries
in 112 countries and territories. OCLC and its member libraries
worldwide have created and maintain WorldCat, the world's richest
online resource for finding library materials. RLG Programs, part of
OCLC Programs and Research, supports exploration, innovation and
community building on behalf of libraries, museums and archives. For
more information about RLG Programs, visit www.oclc.org/programs.
More information about OCLC is at www.oclc.org.
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