Welcome

With a raft of new features, many of which have been discussed and previewed at Users Meetings throughout 2005, the release of EMu 3.1 has been much anticipated. The wait is over and it is with great pleasure that we announce the official release of KE EMu 3.1 on 28 February 2006. Some features are listed below with a link to more detailed Release Notes provided.

EMu continues to develop, in great part through feedback and suggestions from EMu users, and we take this opportunity to encourage you to attend the EMu Users Meetings planned for this year in North America, Europe and Australasia. These are proving to be excellent opportunities to share ideas with other users and EMu's developers. Details of our meetings and other industry meetings throughout the world are provided below. We look forward to your feedback and to seeing you sometime this year.

In this Issue

• EMu User Group Meetings
• KE on the road: Conferences & Trade Shows
• New Members of the EMu User community
• EMuUsers.org Update
• What's new
• Release Info
• Support
• Training
• EMu Client Profiles
• Tips and Tricks

The 4th UK EMu Users Meeting, 10-11 April 2006

The Royal Academy of Music, London, will host the European EMu Users Meeting this April. Highlights of the Meeting will include EMu practical workshops on new functionality and reporting; a presentation from the Museums Documentation Association (MDA) about the latest SPECTRUM standards; guided tours of the Natural History Museum and the Academy; and an evening event with classical music performed by the acclaimed Ardelle Quartet.

Meeting topics, schedule and accommodation details are available on EMuUsers.org. Due to limited places a maximum of ten representatives from each organisation will be able to attend. To register, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by 27 March.

The 2nd North American EMu Users Meeting, 25-27 October 2006

The Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (CMCC) will host this year's North American EMu Users Meeting at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, and the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario, both of which are managed by the CMCC. Building on the very successful meeting in Chicago last October, this promises to be another excellent opportunity to share EMu knowledge and experiences and to participate in a dialogue with EMu's developers about where EMu is heading.

Details will be posted on EMuUsers.org as they come to hand, although the CMCC's This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it can be contacted in the meantime. If you would like registration information or to register for the Meeting, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

KE on the road - Conferences and Trade Shows

In coming months KE Software will be participating in meetings, tradeshows and conferences in North America, Europe and Australia, with themes ranging from collaboration between institutions to the role and relevance of museums in the Digital Age.  We encourage you to join us - and please stop by for a demonstration of EMu's new features - at one or more of the following meetings:

Museums and the Web 2006: the international conference for culture and heritage online

This is the 10th Annual Museums and the Web conference to explore the online presentation of cultural and heritage content across institutions and around the world.

22-25 March 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

American Association of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo™2006: A Centennial of Ideas: Exploring Tomorrow's Museums

2006 is the AAM's centennial and this meeting is an opportunity to look to the future of museums and the challenges that await over the next hundred years.

27 April - 1 May 2006, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Canadian Museums Association (CMA) 59th Annual Conference: To be or not to be

This conference examines fundamental questions about the role and relevance of museums in a world of competing priorities: sustainability, culture as commodity, succession planning, accountability, revenue-generation, and community engagement.

2-6 May, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Museum and Heritage Show

Now in its 14th year the Museums and Heritage Show is the UK's leading trade exhibition for museums, galleries and heritage visitor attractions. It aims to provide suppliers and operators with real solutions, ideas and inspiration and includes the Museums and  Heritage Awards for Excellence.

10-11 May, Earls Court, London, UK

Museums Australia National Conference: Exploring Dynamics: Cities, Cultural Spaces, Communities

This conference examines the dynamics and priorities that exist within and outside museum and gallery walls: how are these concerns reflected in strategic thinking and programs?

14-17 May, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Joint Meeting SPNHC-NSCA: The Road to Productive Partnerships

KE Software is a Platinum sponsor of  this joint meeting of the Society for Preservation of Natural History Collections and the Natural Science Collections Alliance. The conference aims to highlight collaborative efforts between scientific collections and other museums, state and government organizations, private entities, and international groups.

The EMu Community Grows

KE Software is pleased to welcome the following institutions to the community of EMu Users:

In North America:

The United States Polar Rock Repository (USPRR), The Ohio State University

The USPRR is a new addition to the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University. It houses rock collections from Antarctica and the Arctic, along with field notes, annotated photos and maps, raw analytic data, paleomagnetic cores, ground rock and mineral residues, thin sections, and microfossil mounts, microslides and residues.

In Australia:

History Trust of South Australia

Established in 1981 the Trust seeks to encourage the research and public presentation of South Australian history and to safeguard South Australia’s material heritage. The Trust comprises three museums – The Migration Museum, The National Motor Museum and the South Australian Maritime Museum, which collectively manage the State Historical Collection.

Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG)

Recently upgrading from Texpress to EMu, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery is not strictly new to the KE family, just the EMu branch of it! The largest museum and art gallery in Australia located outside a capital city, QVMAG boasts nationally recognised collections of Australian colonial art, contemporary craft and design, Tasmanian history and natural sciences.

EMuUsers.org Update

The number of users registered with EMuUsers.org has increased by more than 100 since the September 2005 issue of this Newsletter, an indication of the growing usefulness of the site for support, debate and sharing ideas. The total number of registered Users now stands at 231.

Recent additions to the site include detailed answers from KE to Frequently Asked Questions about EMu Administration, Reports, Locations, Searching, Parts, Resources, Record Level Security and the Thesaurus.  We are also reliably informed that a new Wiki page will be available some time in May (a Wiki is a website or web pages that can be collectively updated by users).

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , EMuUsers.org administrator, is keen to hear from anyone who is interested in maintaining an EMu and/or Collection data management "blog".

EMu 3.1 now available

EMu 3.1 was officially released on 28 February 2006. Much interest and anticipation was generated throughout 2005, in particular at EMU Users Meetings where promised features were discussed and often previewed. New features include:

More detailed Release Notes can be found on the emudev website.

MDA (formerly known as Museum Documentation Association) is the UK's leading organisation in the management of information for collections. KE Software recently joined MDA's Partner program which promotes compliance amongst service providers with SPECTRUM, the industry standard for information and knowledge management. KE's UK Head of Operations, Ben Sullivan, has commented that:

"From the Natural History Museum in London through to smaller sites such as the Dulwich Picture Gallery, all our clients want to ensure common standards with their museum documentation. KE has joined the MDA Partners Scheme so as to better participate and contribute to the development of SPECTRUM and other MDA projects."

More detail can be found on the MDA site.

MVWISE

KE Software is entering into partnership with Museum Victoria to provide the MVWISE system to new KE EMu customers. The Museum Victoria Wireless Input System for EMu (MVWISE) allows collection staff  to view and update data from EMu using portable hand-held computers (PDAs) and has already been successfully implemented at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Under the new agreement Museum Victoria will continue to develop and support MVWISE and will market it directly to existing EMu users, and KE Software will introduce new clients to its exciting potential.

More details can be found on the MVWISE site.

Support

Hours of operation for KE Software support are:

EMu Help

The EMu Help is constantly being improved and updated as new features are added to EMu.

As the Help is updated frequently (and more often than a new release of EMu becomes available), the most recent Help files have been made available from our website. Download the latest version (International English, US English, French), rename it to emu.chm or emu_en-US.chm and replace the existing file.

Training

In recent months a number of our training courses have been updated and fully reworked. In particular:

• Introduction to KE EMu
• Cataloguing in KE EMu
• Collections Management in KE EMu

have undergone a major overhaul, not just in terms of content but also in their training methodology. Far more hands on than previously, the courses are based on exercises that commence by leading trainees through the steps necessary to achieve a  task in hand and progressively become less assisted. Other courses, including Reporting in KE EMu, will be reworked in coming months.

The following one day training sessions are scheduled for the Melbourne office:

• KE EMu for Cataloguers (Cultural History) - Monday 27 March
• KE EMu for Cataloguers (Natural History) - Tuesday 28 March
• Introduction to KE EMu - Monday 3 April
• KE EMu for Collection Managers - Tuesday 4 April

Client Profiles

Natural History Museum, London

The Mineralogy Department in the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, recently went live with EMu. Their collection comprises over 400,000 minerals, rocks, building and decorative stones, meteorites, ocean bottom deposits, soils and ores. An initial pilot installation of EMu was completed two years ago for NHM's Fish Group, however Mineralogy's implementation represents the first of five Departments to go live with EMu. The implementation was a great success thanks largely to the hard work put in by NHM and KE's project teams. The main development phase for the next Department, Entomology, is currently in progress.

"KE EMu is the key to unlocking opportunities for a more imaginative use of the collections we hold at the Museum, as well as opening them to a wider audience through the web."

Marion Raiser, NHM EMu Implementation Programme Manager

For more information about the Mineralogy implementation or the Museum wide implementation project, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it in the KE UK office or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it at NHM.

(Courtesy of the Trade Union Congress)

The Workers’ War: Home Front Recalled website is a partnership initiative between London Metropolitan University, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the National Pensioners' Convention. The website illustrates the part played by trade unions and workers on the Home Front in Great Britain during the Second World War and is both a celebration and commemoration of working men and women in such roles as fire fighters and rescue workers, health staff and factory workers, miners and dockers.

Using EMu the TUC Library is able to store and display digital images of rare and fragile material held in the collection, providing access via the web to those who would not otherwise be able to visit the collection in London. Another exciting aspect of the project is the availability of digitised audio files of interviews conducted with veterans who worked on the Home Front. The Voices from the Home Front pages present a picture of the interviewee, a PDF of the oral history transcript and an mp3 snippet of the interview. The latter, in particular, gives the narratives more substance and provides listeners with a better understanding of the individuals and their war time experiences. Through EMu the project is able to classify interviews by location and occupation, allowing for efficient searching methods and an easy to navigate web interface.

The website can be found at  www.unionhistory.info/workerswar.

Tips and Tricks

Searching for nothing

It is not uncommon to want to search for records with nothing in a particular field. Which search string you use will depend on what it is that you don’t want to find! In EMu, the exclamation mark specifies NOT. Thus:

!+ in an attachment field will return all records where there is no attachment in that field.

!* in any field will return records where there is no value in a field.

Keep in mind that when using !* in an attachment field you are actually searching the Summary Data of any attached records (technically not the attachment field itself). It is not an accurate method to determine whether there is an attachment in a field as the fields that make up the Summary Data in the attached record might be empty.

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