Crowd-sourced Tagging to Enhance Discoverability

Presenter(s)

• David Francis - Senior Interactive Developer @ Bowdoin College Museum of Art

As a teaching museum closely connected to the curriculum of our college, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is always seeking ways to make our collections more relevant to our students and faculty. Our objects are well-organized and cataloged for museum use, but are far less defined in terms of subject matter. Keywords provide some help in this area but typically populated with curatorial terms (portraits, vessel, aerial photography, etc.) as opposed to depicted concepts (horses, churches, roads, etc.). Our goal was to make it easier for a researcher in a particular field to be able to enter topical search queries and get back a set of objects that depicted that topic. For example, if an astronomy faculty would like to utilize our collection to show examples of comets, we would like to provide a set of all objects that depict comets.

Lacking the internal resources to populate this new metadata for our collection of over 20,000 objects, the BCMA developed a crowd-sourced tagging system that allowed viewers of our online collections to suggest contextual keywords. To provide consistency in metadata, user suggestions generate a list of standardized terms from the Getty’s Art & Architecture term match Web service (http://vocabsservices.getty.edu/AATService.asmx) which the user may select. We store these entries in a database outside our collections management system that powers an experimental search interface and acts as a staging area for reviewing possible keyword inclusion in our CMS.

3D scanning with your iPhone for Museums

Presenter(s)

• Roz McNulty - Ms @ Fashion Innovation Centre

Monocle Prime, a 3D scanner using lidar for people and objects

I would like to demonstrate the Monocle Prime software beta that works with the iPhone and built in Lidar camera in the iPhone 12 – 14 models.

I have worked with Steampunk Digital in their development of Monocle Prime for years as a beta tester and I would like to show off the software by scanning people and things. I can then send a downloadable sample.

Although Monocle is available on the Apple iTunes store I don\’t know that Monocle Prime beta is ready for a commercial booth yet. It is still early days for commercial AR and scanning. But something a lot of museums ask for is an inexpensive scanner that could work for them. They might already have the beginnings of the tools they need.

I have brought the iPad and Monocle software with me to past MuseWeb conventions.

https://steampunk.digital/en/monocle-cloud-english/

The Repository - Indian Textiles and Crafts (RTC)

The Repository – Indian Textiles and Crafts (RTC), is a national knowledge portal being developed by NIFT under the Craft Cluster Initiative of the NHDP programme of DC (Handlooms & Handicrafts)Ministry of Textiles , Govt of India. This interactive digital platform will showcase the creativity and diversity of traditional Indian textiles, clothing and crafts thereby preserving and promoting the Indian textiles and crafts worldwide and benefit millions of craftsmen residing in all corners of the country. The repository will digitally archive both tangible and intangible knowledge resources on indigenous and contemporary textiles and crafts, research related to textiles and apparel, designer and artisan database, virtual museum, events and exhibitions. Major sections of the repository include Collections, Craft Registry, 3D Virtual Gallery, Research, Information Resource, Events , new clips.The repository will also have a visual databank of images, films, audio-visuals, podcast lecture series on craft practitioners. A mobile app is also being developed for quick access. Exhaustive metadata element sets for recording information under different categories have been developed along with value lists of standardised terms and names for metadata creation. RTC will be powered by Open Archival Information System (OAIS) to provide public access through search and retrieval. The repository will thus serve as a reservoir of knowledge for academicians, students, scholars, designers, artisans, art enthusiasts and the general public .