Sean
H. Gao
Museum Information Management & Technology
By demonstrating the participation of one or more activities related to the museum's information management from data to collections, this section explains how the program helps establish professional goals of digitizing information and collections, in relation to ultimately enhancing the accessibility and inclusivity of museums and cultural institutions.
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[ Referred Courses ]
Museum Information Management - Iris Lee & Jennifer R. Cwiok
Museum Information Management class starts with current issues and topics in the field of museum information management that adapts to real museums nowadays in the United States. Instructed by two of the Cataloging and Metadata Librarians at the American Museum of Natural History and led by other domestic guest lecturers in this field, this course demonstrated a list of essential knowledge in providing and managing information. The class is anchored in the collection of information and is taught specifically in the functions of collection and digital asset management systems. Related problems like how to catalog cultural objects by applying descriptive metadata standards and best practices are explored for creating new access points to museum collections through digital tools.
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The essential content of this class covers:
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Protocols on the use of the Collection Management System(CMS);
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Familiarize Digital Asset Management(DAM) for a museum collection;
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Catalog and curate information on cultural objects;
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Metadata standards & practice: Dublin Core, Cataloging Cultural Objects, Getty Vocabularies, taxonomies & controlled vocabularies, etc.;
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Familiarize Application Programming Interface(API) & Omeka S
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This class provides a great connection to external practical projects and voices including but not only Lead Creative Technologist and Museum Registrar from AMNH, Media Asset Manager from Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, Digital Collection Manager at Carnegie Hall, Head of Metadata and Systems at MoMA Archives, etc. These precious guest lectures not only let practical scenarios and related solutions into the overwhelming week-by-week tech terms but also provide career insights and professional possibilities from the large museum/institutional angels.
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The outcome of this course provides a great hands-on experience when establishing and curating an exhibition starting from its metadata management. The term-long assignment took three solid months and provided a detailed outline of building the collection. The freedom of letting student choose their own topics and objects provide diversifying results for the final presentation. The project contains all GLAM aspects and the collective reports as well as peer feedback are valuable throughout the process. I made an exhibition collection based on a Dutch-born but Chinese court painter Guiseppe Castiglione and his influence on Chinese painters. Creating HTML documents with all website designs and information management works brings so much joy into the exploration. Analyzing how to constrain my research frames and control vocabularies increased my professional vision and correlated information building within the collection. It is a very crucial course for me, preparing me to become a digital archivist for any museum or cultural organization.
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[ Learning outcomes ]​
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Postman (an API platform) Project: access and retrieve metadata from a publicly available collection database
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Term-long Omeka S Project [Webpage]: a fully realized public-facing site featuring curated digital images of at least 20 cataloged museum objects and contextual information about personal research, as well as an exported data-sharing page using APIs.
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