It is often assumed that there is a large number of people wanting to access museum data. Is this the case? If so, how can we best present it? Should museum catalogues be available like library ones? Convincing answers to these questions are lacking, hence the Western Isles National Database Evaluation Exercise (WINDEE).

Several museums in Scotland have considered allowing public access to their records. However, there is little evidence that the average visitor, if such a person exists, is at all interested in browsing through museum catalogues. Part of the problem is that few attempts have been made to open up museum archives, and even fewer to evaluate their usage.

WINDEE is a collaborative project to test ideas for the Scottish National Database. The main objective is to establish if access to museum data is popular with a general audience. There is little doubt that museum professionals would like to able to interrogate each others' databases.

Computers fitted with touchscreens are sited in various locations in Lewis, Benbecula and Barra. The first was installed at Museum Sgoil Lionacleit, Benbecula, at the beginning of June 1993. These allow visitors to access information about museum objects from the Western Isles. The initial data has been merged from existing databases. The next part of the project is to collect data on appropriate objects in the Western Isles, and ultimately elsewhere.

The Western Isles was chosen for this project for various reasons. It is an area that is easy to define, yet composed of discrete units. Many Hebrideans are concerned about the disappearance of their material culture, usually to museums on the mainland. There is high awareness of information technology, and people on the islands are pioneering various ideas such as the "telecottage", speaking Gaelic dictionaries, a networked information service to schools and routine communications with far-flung parts of the Gaelic world, such as Nova Scotia and New Zealand.

Data

Records included in the first stage of WINDEE have come from fourteen institutions ranging from Campbeltown Museum to the British Museum. There are just over 5,000 records in total, with the majority obtained from the National Museums of Scotland database. The items represented vary from Lewis chess pieces (British Museum and NMS) to bottles of fulmar oil from St Kilda (Glasgow Museums). Most of the records from non-national museums were derived from the Museum Inventory System. NMS records were extracted from the Quixis database. Data from the British Museum had to be converted from text files received on floppy disk. Glasgow's records of St Kilda material were the only ones entered manually.

Design

The public access application is based on the assumption that most queries will be place orientated. The user selects an island, then chooses between viewing a list of objects from that area, doing a quiz or obtaining information about historical sites etc. Each selection is recorded, along with some details of the user, obtained from a questionnaire at the start. The relative frequencies of access to different parts of the application show the balance of interest from users. For example, we might expect that younger people are more interested in doing the quizzes, older people spend most time looking at museum records and tourists tend to view general information. On the other hand, we might be completely wrong in our assumptions!

As much as possible is bilingual, and language options other than English or Gaelic may be implemented in the future. All place names are Gaelic, in line with Western Isles Council policy. The records, of course, are the responsibility of contributing museums. It has not been feasible to translate these, or indeed to edit them.

Funding

It has been remarkably easy to raise funds for this project. The NMS is offering my time, travel, subsistence and other resources. Museum nan Eilean, in conjunction with Comann Eachdraidh Nis (Ness Historical Society), is providing administrative support, organising data collection and providing Gaelic translation facilities. Western Isles Enterprise (Iomairt nan Eilean Siar) is helping to fund data collection. The Gaelic Leader project, whose funding derives from the EC, is contributing almost half the total cost. The Scottish Museums Council has provided grant-aid. Hewlett Packard has supplied a computer. Most of the funding offers derived from a single meeting in Stornoway last November, where a prototype was demonstrated.

Problems

The main limitation has been the lack of machine-readable records in museums. The records included in the first stage of WINDEE cannot be considered representative, let alone comprehensive. Where records exist, in any form, it has generally been easy to convert them for public access. The most significant difficulties occur with data from systems where the structure differs from record to record.

It was intended to use as many images of objects as possible. This has proved much more difficult than collecting data or arranging finance. Museums recording their collections, quite properly, are concentrating on documentation for collections management purposes. The sheer quantity of work to be done has precluded much thought of recording images. Imaging technology has yet to settle down and provide acceptable results at prices which the average museum can afford. Most museums have higher priorities. Even in this limited application, the difficulty of converting image files from different sources, has been very apparent.

The application has been developed in Object Vision. This software was chosen for its ability to access large quantities of data in a variety of formats, ease of use and low cost. Its limitations are acceptable for our purposes and its ease of use compensates for most of the shortcomings. A variety of other software was evaluated but none proved any more suitable.

Catechism

The National Museums of Scotland is also involved in a parallel project, christened catechism, to establish the nature of questions that museums are asked, and whether existing documentation systems can help to answer them. Many museums will have received an explanatory leaflet and a form. Any who have not, and would like to participate can contact Helen McCorry, Data Manager, or myself, at the NMS.

Conclusions

The WINDEE project has already brought to light several problems in presenting museum data to a general audience. First and foremost, the data must exist. This is the biggest hurdle facing the national database, and any other project involving museum records. Once the records are in machine readable form, no matter how basic they are, they can be incorporated into a public access application.

If there is a severe shortage of basic records, then there is an almost total famine when it comes to images. There are good reasons for the latter. Despite much hype, imaging technology has been slow to come up with accepted standards and realistic costs as far as museums are concerned.

Truly interactive multimedia systems are as rare in museums as they are elsewhere. Perhaps the true role of museums is to provide means for visitors to interact with real objects? WINDEE is a first tentative step towards showing people where these objects exist.

WINDEE - 2nd Report

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