KE EMu User Group Meetings

6th European User Group Meeting, London, 2-3 June 2008

The 2008 European EMu User Group Meeting took place in London at The Natural History Museum and had over 70 attendees from several countries (including France, Australia and Egypt).

A wide range of topics was covered, from Pest Management to Oral History projects.

There was ample opportunity for questions and socialising, enabling attendees to share their experiences and for newcomers to EMu to ask for help and advice.

A number of tours were organised by the NHM, with the Rare Books Collection proving very popular.

Monday 2nd June
	Darrell Siebert Natural History Museum - The MOA Programme Darrell talked about the implementation of EMu across their five science departments. NHM established a team in each department to test the system and had two overall project leaders (Andrew Brown from KE Software and Marion Raiser for NHM).
	Simon Wilson Hull Museums Service - Web development, quizzes and bulk data loading in EMu Simon described the development of the Hull Museums’ website and its launch. The collections of eight museum sites are brought together under five themes. The entire content of the website is generated from EMu (including the quizzes!): http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/museumcollections
	Alex Fell KE Software – UK - EMu New Developments Alex explained the new features available on the latest versions and introduced those in EMu 3.2.05 (to be released July 2008): audit roll back, improved drag and drop options, etc.
	Julian Tomlin Consultant - Machine-readable systems in collection management and visitor access Julian presented an overview of his research (commissioned by the London Museums Hub) into the use and effectiveness of barcodes and RFID tags in object location and movement control. His report is available on-line: http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/find_a_network/regional_networks/sustainable_storage
	Andrew Brown KE Software – Australia – iMu, using iPods and other hand held devices in EMu: Part 1 & Part 2 Andrew demonstrated how to download a personalised guided tour of a museum collection onto a hand-held device and gave us a tour of the 'EMu National Museum.'
	Nicholas Crofts CIDOC and Musées d’art et d’histoire, Geneva – Applicability of documentation standards in the context of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation Nicholas talked about how to document intangible heritage.
	Dave Smith Natural History Museum – Can EMu be used as a tool for Pest Management..? Dave showed how EMu could be used for monitoring pest (utilising the object locator). Additional video file
Tuesday 3rd June
	Malcolm Chapman The Manchester Museum – YouTube content from your museum Malcolm talked about ‘Collective Conversations’, an oral history project recording people’s thought about objects in the museum collections. The museum now has its own film studio (The Contact Zone). The films are put on EMu and YouTube, thus reaching new audiences.
	Nick Poole Collections Trust, formerly the MDA – New directions for the Collections Trust in the wake of the MLA restructure Nick gave an overview of the Collections Trust and discussed documentation standards, in particular in relation to documenting digital assets.
	Elizabeth Bruton Museum of the History of Science, Oxford – Get your hands dirty cleaning data Liz shared her experiences of data cleaning, before and after migration, using EMu and also checking for errors manually.
	Brian Cathcart Kingston University – The Museum Lives Brian talked about the oral history project at the Natural History Museum to interview 50 people connected to the museum and to record for posterity their memories of the last 30 years. http://www.kingston.ac.uk/pressoffice/latestnews/2008/april/11-Museum-memories-to-be-treasured-for-ever/
	Janice Kamrin American Research Center in Egypt – Egyptian Museum in Cairo Database Project Janice introduced the database project at the Egyptian Museum, which now has a dedicated Registrar Department and is about to implement EMu. Janice welcomes advice from EMu users: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it