1. Data quality for an effective web presence
Jesmond Calleja
Collection Systems Manager
Art Gallery of New South Wales
jesmondc@ag.nsw.gov.au
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
2. Introduction
• Museums are established institutions existing in a changing world
• Earliest date back to the 15th century
• Collecting data on old dusty cards in cabinets paved for the way for computerised
access at one’s fingertips
• Today access is of paramount importance
• The nature of museum work itself needs to be examined
• Issues of management, quality of data and collection management affect outcomes
• These are the points we had to piece together over a 14 year period in order for the
Art Gallery of New South Wales’ (AGNSW) online collection to have an effective and
consistent web presence
3. This presentation will address:
1. The history of data management at the AGNSW (from 1874)
2. Data management and its importance
3. The ‘Collection Project’ (1998) which served an the initial basis to accurately
record the Gallery’s collection data in a standardised and consistent format on the
Vernon collection management system
4. The ‘Digitisation Project’ (2000) was established to provide a complete visual
record of the Gallery’s collection
5. Re-evaluation and implementation of copyright data as it contains information
critical to the broad goals of the Digitisation Project (2000)
6. Importance of recording Provenance data (2002)
7. Consolidation of above points by providing a user friendly interactive experience
where the public can browse and search the AGNSW collection online (2010)
Note: this is the third iteration of the Gallery’s website
4. The Gallery’s data in 1997*
• Was in shambles
• Had missing data in many of the essential fields
• Could not be relied on
• Was inconsistent
• Had infrequent used of standards
• Made it extremely difficult to retrieve works and perform adequate reports
• Most curators were still using old catalogue cards as their primary tool for cataloguing
the collection
* Note: 1997 is the year that the author joined the Gallery
5. Plates showing old catalogue cards and cabinets widely used in the AGNSW for cataloguing
collection data
6. Data management
Steps taken preceding the data entry stage
• A list of data fields was compiled
• A short, working definition was assigned to each data field
• The need for syntax control was determined for each data field
• An inventory of existing documentation sources was undertaken
• A determination was made of which data fields are needed to fulfil the goals of the
‘Collection Project’
• A determination was made of which documentation source is the best for the
configuration of data fields satisfying the project
• A determination was made of which data fields need vocabulary control
• An estimated time frame for the conclusion of the project
7. Collection Project
Assistant Director - Collections
Head curator of Head curator of Head curator of
Australian art Western art Asian art
Registrar of cataloguing
and documentation
Assistant curator/ Assistant curator/
Assistant curator/
registrar for registrar for
registrar for
Western art Asia art
Australian art
Flow chart showing distribution of positions involved in the Collection Project
8. Commencement of Collection Project
Bibliography
• Buck, Rebecca A. (1998). The New Museum Registration Methods. American
Association of Museums, Washington D.C.
• Varveris, T. (1980). Cataloguer’s Manual for the Visual Arts. National Gallery of
Victoria, Australia
Resources and authorities
• The Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) is a thesaurus of art historical and
architectural terminology developed as a controlled indexing language for use by
museums, libraries and archives in cataloguing book and periodical collections,
image collections and museum objects, particularly art related works.
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/index.html
• Object ID offers invaluable information on object data in order to facilitate the
prevention of theft
http://archives.icom.museum/object-id/checklist/english.pdf
• Thesaurus of Geographical Names (TGN) is a thesaurus of hierarchically arranged
geographical terms to aid museums, libraries and archives that enter and index
geography terms for object and people records.
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/tgn/index.html
• Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) is a resource that was developed to serve as a
terminology resource for cultural institutions that research and use artist names. It is
neither an authority nor a thesaurus but a database of about 20,000 names that are
linked to 100,000 individual artists.
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/ulan/index.html
9. Digitisation Project
• To establish a phase of an important aspect of the Gallery’s future operation and
relevance
• The project will position the Gallery to maintain:
1. a permanent high quality image repository of the collection
2. an enhanced collection database
3. and be a primary source for educational and scholarly research
4. appropriate internal and external access to the database
• Budget allocated for the project was set for a 3 year period
• Project was initially established to provide a complete visual record of the Gallery’s
collection AND to set the wheels in motion to have a dynamic, database-
driven website that presents a thematic route of entry for exploration of the
collections
10. Image capture
• Images were created according to a priority list of approximately 7,600 works from a
total collection of 26,000 objects (@ year 2000) = 29% of the collection
• Each image stored in 6 formats: Master Archive, Publishing, Multimedia, Screen,
Web and Thumbnail
• Screen, web and thumbnail images planned for the web
• A numbering system was set up for documenting images that attempted to reflect the
accession number of collection objects
• A new numbering system was implemented in 2004 that would offer flexibility and
easy link of images to the Vernon database and website
11. Previous and current image numbering system
Accession # Digital image #
Previous – started 2000
4.1998 4_1998.S
4_1998_view.S
4_1998_side.S
4_1998_detail.S
Current – adopted 2004
4.1998 4.1998##S.jpg (the primary image)
4.1998#view02#S.jpg
4.1998#view03#S.jpg
4.1998#detail01#.jpg
Table showing the digital numbering systems adopted by the Gallery. The previous system
proved to be incompatible with linking images to the web so all images were renamed with
the current system around 2004. The file name consists of 4 parts:
1. Accession number – exactly matched to the Vernon record
2. Photography generated parts – view/detail/base – separated by #
3. Archive initial eg. S=screen, M=master etc.
4. File extension ie. jpg, tif, dng etc
12. Plates showing the root where the digital images reside on the Gallery’s server. Top left:
Images stored in respective folders according to the first digit of their accession numbers.
Middle: Shows all the images in folder 4. Top right: easy retrieval of images
13. 90
80
70
60
50 % digitised
40 % not digitised
30
20
10
0
ian
rn
n
al
lia
te
As
in
es
ra
ig
st
W
or
Au
Ab
Table showing the % of digitised and non digitised works for the main curatorial
collecting areas as at January 2010
AGNSW collection = 29530, 61% have been digitised
14. Copyright
There are three key copyright concepts of which museum professionals should be aware:
1. There is a difference between owning a physical work and owning rights
associated with it
2. There is an assortment of rights surrounding copyrighted works. This involves the
right to exploit a work ie. to reproduce it, create derivatives works, to distribute the
work, to perform the work publicly, to display the work, and to control he digital
transmission of sound recordings
3. Application of copyright law to any particular work is extremely date and fact
sensitive
15. • The copyright law in Australia is complex
• AGNSW Vernon database allows for flexibility in determining copyright status
• We can make it clear when a work is both in the public domain in Australia, yet in
copyright overseas
• This allows us to record if we have rights for the internet but is clear that we do not
need the obtain rights for print purposes in Australia
Australian Copyright Act – Copyright extension 1.1.2005
• Was passed in December to take affect on 1 January 2005
• Essentially it will bring Australia in line with the US and Europe by extending copyright
from life of the artist plus 50 years to life of the artist plus 70 years
• The changes are a little complicated given that it is not retrospective - hence
photographs by Max Dupain or David Moore that were out of copyright as of the
31.12.2004 remain out of copyright whilst those that were in copyright as of 1.1.2005
are now in copyright for life plus 70 years
• International works that went out of copyright in Australia in 2004 remain out in
Australia but may still be in overseas which of course we need to be aware of if
reproducing the work on the internet or distributing catalogues etc overseas
16. The changes that will affect
the Gallery include:
Photographs by an Australian artist
• Any photograph taken (does not matter when it was printed) by an Australian
photographer taken before the end of 1954 is out of copyright world wide
• Any photograph taken after the 1st of January 1955 will now remain in copyright for
the life of the artist plus 70 years
Photographs by an International artist
• Any photograph taken before the end of 1954 is out of copyright in Australia but still
in copyright internationally
• For online use any photograph taken by an International photographer (except
Canada, Japan, Russia and a couple of others) is in copyright for life plus 70 years
17. Upper left: Showing a historical record of
how Matisse’s print has been
photographed
Left: Data on Vernon showing Matisse’s
print is no longer in copyright in Australia
but still in overseas. Obtaining a license
allows AGNSW to publish on the web
Right: Matisse’s print flagged ‘full
public access’ to allow publication onto
the web
18. Provenance
• Meaning of the word is origin
• Association of collections, provenance means the history of ownership
• The availability of records from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and
publicly surrounding high-profile cases of Jewish-owned art stolen by Nazi officials
• Documenting the transfer of an artwork from one owner to another can establish the
legal ownership of that work
• Provenance can also help determine the authorship of a work
• Knowing where a painting was at a given time also allows the art historian to trace its
influence on other artists.
19. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Boy Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Boy
bitten by a lizard c1595/1600, oil on bitten by a lizard c1600, oil on canvas.
canvas. The National Gallery, London Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte
Roberto Longhi, Florence
These two identical paintings introduces many of the problems faced by scholars in
attributing, dating and interpreting Caravaggio’s work
from: Blunden, G. (ed.). (2004). Darkness & Light: Caravaggio & his world. Art Gallery of New South
Wales, Australia
20. • Provenance fulfils a fundamental mission of a museum to research its collection
• Prior to the late 1990s, it was uncommon for significant provenance information to be
recorded in collection management systems
• Standards for provenance research were not defined by the museum community
• Provenance should be presented in a clear and organised fashion and be as
complete as possible
• The order of ownership may be earliest to latest owner, or the reverse, as long as the
chronology is obvious
• There should be some mechanism by which owners are distinguished from dealers or
auctioneers
• The source of information about each owner or transaction should be documented
References
• Yeide, Nancy H., K. Akinsha and A.L. Walsh (2001). The AAM Guide to Provenance
Research. American Association of Museums, Washington DC
• Yiede, Nancy H. (2005). Vitalizing Memory – International Perspectives on
Provenance Research. American Association of Museums, Washington DC
21. Recording and assembling
provenance data
• The object itself is an important, if not the most important primary document
• It should be fully examined for clues tracing its history from the moment it left the
hands of the artist until the present
• The work should be taken to a well-lit location and unframed so that it can be
carefully studied front and back
• Recording provenance data aids the cataloguing process into gathering more data
• All data on the front and verso of the painting needs to be recorded: signature, date,
inscriptions and labels
22. Internationally accepted location diagram and abbreviations. The AGNSW has used and
adapted similar conventions
from: Varveris, T. (1980). Cataloguer’s Manual for the Visual Arts. National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
24. Inscriptions recorded for Braque’s Glass of absinthe on Vernon showing consistent and
standardised data format
25. Vernon data for Braque’s Glass of absinthe, showing acquisition and provenance data.
Note: for this presentation the valuation and purchase price have been purposely omitted
26. Moving towards a web presence
• A modest search the collection site was built and the collection went live in December
2002
• First substantial re-design of the Gallery’s website took place in December 2005
• This re-haul also coincided with the launch of myVirtualGallery
• Implementation of the Vernon Browser as the back-end operating system
• Results yielded from a curatorial search did not provide a true cross-reference to
works that could possibly fit into more than one curatorial department. Because of
this, major adjustments to previously entered data were performed onto the Vernon
database
• User feasibility tests undertaken on 746 random individuals asking 4 collection related
questions
27. 40 40
35 35
30 30
25 25
20 20
15 15
10 10
5 5
0 0
Agree Strongly Neither Disagree Strongly No Agree Strongly Neither Disagree Strongly No
agree disagree opinion
agree disagree opinion
Fig. 1 Is it easy to find works in the online collection?
Fig. 2 Is the browse section well organised?
50
35
45
30
40
35 25
30
20
25
20 15
15
10
10
5 5
0
Agree Strongly Neither Disagree Strongly No 0
agree disagree opinion Agree Strongly Neither Disagree Strongly No
agree disagree opinion
Fig. 3 Does the on-line collection need a simpler ‘simple search’?
Fig. 4 Does the on-line collection need a subject keyword search?
Results from a 2005 survey of 746 random individuals
28. 9000
8000
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
Browse Simple Advanced
Graph showing the relationship of the number of hits for browse, simple and advanced
search: May 2008 – June 2009
29. Moving towards web 2.0
• The third iteration of the website went live in September 2009
• A 5 person web team and 2 developers started the planning process in early 2008
• Given the right publishing infrastructure would provide the Gallery with the
opportunity to develop a number of fully integrated web 2.0 strategies,
including:
1. Making the collection “machine readable”
2. Develop an online community
3. Support the mobile web
30. Accessibility
• All Australian websites are required by law to be accessible to users with disabilities
• Australia is one of the few countries where this requirement has been tested in law
• In the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) lawsuit of
2000, a visually impaired user successfully sued SOCOG over their website
accessibility http://webaim.org/blog/target-lawsuit-settled
• Most government funded organisations that have not already complied are currently
working towards compliance
• The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20,
describe levels of accessibility
• The Gallery’s website failed to meet even the lowest of these levels
• The redesign of our site was a good opportunity to address and fix the site’s
accessibility issues
31. Redesign and implementation
• A recent redesign of the website was initially carried from the perspective of user
stories
• A user story is basically a narrative that a user tells from their perspective
• This story typically describes some kind of scenario or situation that the user finds
themselves in
• Keep the user stories as simple and short as possible to allow the developers to
make a reasonably low risk estimate of how long the story will take to develop
• Once the design templates were executed, the developers built a beta-site and from
this site acceptance tests were carried out
• These were crucial as we randomly selected a cross range of people from the public
to test the site
• 13 institutions were surveyed on the basis of their web interfaces and fuctionality
32. Institution Browse options Browse by Display multiple Results with Stemming Showing Multi-word
filter images no images location query operator
National Gallery interface no no yes yes yes AND
Art - DC
National Gallery interface no no yes no yes Cannot search
of Victoria
Art Gallery of No browse options no no yes no no AND or OR
Western Aust.
Tate Gallery backdoor no no yes no yes AND
Art Institute of interface no no yes no yes AND
Chicago
Powerhouse backdoor no yes yes no yes AND
Museum
National Gallery interface no no yes n/a yes Cannot search
– London
Fine Arts no browse options no no yes no yes AND
Museum SF
Walker Art interface yes no no yes yes AND
Center
Museum of interface yes no yes yes yes AND or OR
Modern Art
National Gallery no browse options no no yes no no AND
of Australia
Museum of Fine interface no no yes No no AND
Arts Boston
V&A Museum interface no yes yes yes yes AND
AGNSW after Interface yes yes yes no yes AND
20 Sept. 2009
Table showing results from 13 institutions surveyed
33. • The new collection interface was built with the goal of both exposing the breadth of the
collection and encouraging deeper exploration
• User studies have recently shown that if a user does not know precisely what objects
s/he is looking for, then the multi-facet search method with its browsing the shelves
sensation is clearly preferred over keyword search or using only a single facet
• If the user is capable of expressing an information need straightforwardly in terms of
keywords, then a Google-like keyword search interface is usually faster and preferable
• Early discussions considered building one interface that would accommodate a simple
search together with a browse
• Large percentage of our public comprise of educators, researchers and scholars who
know precisely what they are looking for in our collection
• Browse interface, and including our object metadata as facets with counts gives users
two immediate benefits:
i. it exposes the collection since they can see at a glance
how many paintings, sculptures, etc.
ii. it gives a key way to differentiate between words and
meaning
34. At top level, the public are able to
filter browses and perform basic
searches
Advanced search option also
available at top level
The public are invited to explore and
browse through the collection
Options available to view all
highlights and to see what is on
display
Collection landing page at top level showing all
collection areas the public can browse through
37. Primary image is max 505 pixels
wide
Object web record for the Nepalese
sculpture Padmapani c13th century, gilt
copper, lapis lazuli, gems and stones. Each detailed image is 155 pixels wide
Purchased 2010
38. Conclusion
• Accurate, consistent and standardised data is imperative for any collection
management system
• The Collection, Digitisation, Provenance and Copyright projects were of paramount
importance in setting a precedence for quality of data
• Good quality data creates a path for putting collections online
• Browsing and navigating are two main interactions users currently have with our site
• We have allowed our users to deconstruct a large set of results by peeling back the
layers into bite-size pieces and navigate based on what’s important to them
• Faceted search can just add more complexity and frustrate users if not considered
from the user perspective and carefully thought through with sound usability
principles in mind
• Faceted search is giving our public a unique way for them to interact with the
collection in a way that was not possible in previous iterations
• The journey toward a perfect collection interface is ongoing and a project that is
forever evolving
