We have similar here - there is the collections database plus the website (with online search function) has a database. Maintaining two databases was discussed but deemed a waste of time with limited staff resources. We ended up working with the website software company to do an automatic upload from the collection database to the website software. We run the upload once a week. That way new data populated the website regularly but data entry only happened in one place. This cost us a little more to set up and there have been some hiccups occasionally when the automatic upload didn't happen for some reason - it was always a server error, not a software problem.
-Jenny
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Jenny Benjamin
Director
Museum of Vision
San Francisco CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-11-2018 08:49 AM
From: Greg Moss
Subject: Overlapping Databases: Accession versus Virtual Museum
What experience do any of you have with having two databases for a portion of your artifacts?
More specifically, we have several thousand artifacts in our museum of scales, weights and measures. These are tagged with accession numbers, which identify the contributor, creator and type, and sometimes other details.
Now, we are creating a virtual museum (using Omeka). The Omeka database will include all the information we've documented, plus other details -- and displaying an identifier rather than the accession number. For the foreseeable future, the virtual museum will only be a portion of the total collection.
So, should we . . .
- Record everything into to the virtual museum database and only publish those items that have good photos and more robust information?
- Maintain two databases: the entire collection in one, and the virtual museum in a separate one?
- Some other mixture?
Thanks!
Greg Moss
ISASC Museum Planning Committee
International Society of Antique Scale Collectors
www.ISASC.org
c: 248-338-4496