Admusing adventures at Wolverhampton Art Gallery
| Published date | 01 April 1997 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040655 |
| Date | 01 April 1997 |
| Pages | 47-50 |
| Author | Philippa Tinsley |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Admusing adventures
at Wolverhampton Art
Gallery
by Philippa Tinsley, Registrar,
Wolverhampton Arts and Museums
Service
As part of the Museum & Galleries
Commission Registration process, museums
set out detailed plans to show how well they
currently document their collections, and how
well they plan to do so in the future. For
Wolverhampton Art
Gallery,
like many other
museums, that plan included a computerised
collection management system. At the end of
May 1998, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
purchased Adlib Information System's
museum system ADMUSE. Two months
later,
successfully through Registration phase
II, the cataloguing is in hand and we are
dreaming about potential future projects
involving the system.
Background:
Collection management
systems in museums
Museums, and most especially Art Galleries, have
been much slower at exploiting the benefits of
computers than Libraries. Some museums have
had the enthusiasm and resources, and the effects
are spectacular: the Micro Gallery at the National
Gallery is a great example. For many of us,
however, the 'system' is, at best, paper-based and,
at worst, all in the curator's head.
The driving force behind cataloguing standards in
museums is the Museum Documentation Associa-
tion. Directly funded by, amongst others, the
Museums and Galleries Commission, the MDA
has set out standards - SPECTRUM - and advises
museums directly and through regional workshops
about their
use.
You can find out more about the
MDA on www.mda.org.uk.
Back in the early 1980s, the MDA put together a
collection management database called MODES
(Museum Object Data Entry System). It sold at an
exceptionally reasonable price (less than £100
originally) and was extremely popular. During the
next decade, practically every museum in the UK
bought it with the intention of computerising their
catalogue.
You either love MODES or you hate it. Many
museums have used it thoroughly and very suc-
cessfully. Unfortunately for many museum
professionals, this was their first ever experience
of a computer application. Despite the MDA
training courses, many found it overwhelming. Art
curators, obviously, are very visually minded and
the formal structure of a DOS-based database was,
quite simply, not the way their mind worked!
About eighteen months ago, MDA decided they
would never have enough money to upgrade
MODES to Windows and officially turned its
support over to the MODES Users Group. Cou-
pled with the LASSIE group of large museums
investigating a joint system, many museums took
this period of flux as an opportunity to review their
system requirements.
Background:
Collection management
systems at Wolverhampton Art
Gallery
We had been early purchasers of MODES and a
great effort had been made to train the staff and
start cataloguing our collections. Unfortunately,
without dedicated cataloguing
staff,
the pressing
exhibition schedule took priority and data entry
never got very far. Apart from the Geology Col-
lection (more of this later), no records have been
entered or edited since 1990. Of our entire collec-
tion of around 12,000 objects, less than
1
in 10
was catalogued in MODES. It clearly wasn't
working for us.
Choosing a New System
What was needed
The heart of Wolverhampton Art Gallery's mission
is 'accessibility'.
VINE 108
—
47
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