by Ian O. Morrison, Scottish Museums Documentation Officer

It is now some time since I reported here on progress towards a national database. A review of what has been achieved should be useful before we launch into the future with SCRAN 2000.

The underlying objectives of the National Database project have not changed over the years, nor have the basic means of achieving them. To a large extent, we are still confronted by the same obstacles. The advance of technology may help to overcome technical difficulties but cannot help with organisational and intellectual ones.

I felt that the key message that came out of the MDA Conference, held in Edinburgh last November, was "just do it". In other words, it is all very well having lofty ideals as far as museum documentation is concerned, but in the real world chances to do anything come rarely, if at all, and such opportunities have to be grasped when they do materialise. That is certainly my experience, both as a local authority museum curator and in my present role.

In this article I shall outline relevant developments in the information technology world, describe some recent "just do it" projects in brief and say a few words about the national database project in relation to SCRAN 2000.

Recent IT developments

The biggest change on the operating system front has been the much-vaunted introduction of Microsoft Windows 95. So far this has not made the slightest difference to museum documentation, except that it should provide a more stable platform for multimedia databases in the future. Its introduction also means that the typical new PC has resources several orders of magnitude greater than the minimum necessary to store textual records of every object in any but the largest museums. The typical museum record remains at 1000 characters. A typical one gigabyte hard disk is capable of storing one million average museum records, representing around fifty person years of full-time inputting effort.

The Museum Inventory System, still works on older equipment under the MS-DOS operating system. Version 4 introduced different structures for storing basic information about different types of object, such as social history, fine art or natural sciences. A certain amount of modification of the behaviour of these can be carried out by the user. Over one hundred museums in Scotland now use MIS for basic documentation. They find it useful for adding value to minimal amounts of information, making it more easily searchable by a variety of criteria. I am now open to suggestions for what users may need of a simple inventory system in the future.

The MDA has now ceased to develop MODES, and several database software vendors are launching new products aimed at the museum market. It is difficult to describe their products at this stage, far less recommend any of them, but up-to-date advice is available, as always, from the author. It is significant, I think, that a number of the largest museums in England have finally plumped for the LASSI-approved Multi-Mimsy, developed by Willoughby Associates. At the time of writing this is being acceptance-tested at the Science Museum.

Data Capture Projects

It is all very well having appropriate software, but old museum documentation hands like myself know that is the easy part. What are the most effective means for getting records into whatever package has been chosen?

One approach that is usually very successful is to appoint one or more dedicated staff to undertake a specific documentation task. Several museums have obtained grant-aid for this purpose over the years, and it can be the best way to achieve a combination of consistency and speed. Unfortunately, today’s political and economic climate usually precludes taking on extra staff for any purpose, even on short-term contracts.

If money is available, but staff cannot be employed for other reasons, a bureau service may be most appropriate. A handful of Scottish museums have tried this approach, with some success. Glasgow Art Galleries & Museums have computerised a large number of Natural Science records by the use of a commercial bureau. The Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling have had over 30,000 records input by an Information Technology Centre set up in Strathyre.

There is also a number of people with experience in museum documentation, who may be willing to input a specific number of records for a fixed price. This is the approach taken by Scotland Street School Museum of Education in Glasgow, who have recently had 15,000 accession records entered by a former National Museums of Scotland inputter.

I am sometimes asked about the possibility of scanning paper-based records and using optical character recognition software to feed them into a database. This is a very nice idea, in theory. I have done some experiments with museum records ranging from supremely clear and consistently typed records of shawls from Paisley to the rather more typical messily typed and heavily corrected cards from museums that had better remain nameless. Unfortunately, even the best records require more time and attention than they would need to be typed in from scratch.

The National Database

The National Database consists of a number of different files, incorporating records entered by individual museums and the results of collections surveys undertaken by the Scottish Museums Council. The proportions of different types of material are shown in the accompanying pie chart (fig. 1 ). This does not include the 450,000 records held in the database of the National Museums of Scotland.

Figure 1 shows that the largest number of records, in fact around 70,000, are basic inventory ones. These are very cursory, though generally suitable for Registration purposes. Slightly more detailed records, particularly of "Social History" items, are gradually increasing in proportion as more museums take advantage of the options to be found in MIS4. For example, large batches of records from the Smith Art Gallery and Museum and Scotland Street School Museum of Education have boosted the total of this section to around 35,000. Natural Sciences is a discipline which ultimately will dominate the national database, but in many museums is hardly touched in documentation terms, for a variety of reasons, including lack of available expertise, low priority and the fact that it has been covered by a collections survey. Other types of museum collection are also under-represented. An exception is fine art, which by its nature is often a high priority area for documentation, but where numbers of objects tend to be relatively small. The Foreign Ethnography Collections Research Project (FECRP) is represented by a file of nearly 20,000 records of relevant objects from museums excluding the National Museums of Scotland and Glasgow City Art Galleries & Museums. Other SMC collections surveys make up a fairly small percentage of the total, partly because the Natural

Sciences and Universities surveys were carried out on a collection basis, rather than in terms of individual objects. The collections covered by the Universities survey are now being recorded on an individual object basis in several institutions, with the inevitable consequence that much more material is now coming to light. Inventories have been, or are being, carried out at Heriot-Watt, Dundee and the Robert Gordon University. The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery is also engaged in a large-scale documentation exercise, from which records will find their way to the National Database in due course, as will those from the major documentation effort being made in Glasgow City’s Art Galleries and Museums. Mention should be made of several museums which have virtually completed basic inventories of their collections. Recent additions to this elite "club" include the Bennie Museum, Bathgate and the Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries. Of course, we should all recognise that this worthy achievement does not mean that documentation can stop, indeed the Bennie Museum has now moved on to establish and record exactly where all their objects currently are located. How many museums can say that they have done that?

It is one thing to have inventory records of a museum collection but quite another to provide access to museum information, which is the purpose of SCRAN 2000. The WINDEE project demonstrated that people were interested in looking at basic records of objects from their own area. However, the Catechism survey has shown that most museum enquiries involve a wider range of information than is generally available from inventory records alone. It is obvious that we need to do much more work on establishing exactly what information is appropriate to deliver to our public and this is an early priority for SCRAN.

Ian O. Morrison, Scottish Museums Documentation Officer

The above article first appeared in "Scottish Museum News", Spring 1996 issue, Volume 12 No. 1

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