Welcome

With momentum building for September's Australasian EMu Users Meeting we look at what this 6th gathering of EMu users in Australasia has to offer. A number of interesting presentations have already been proposed, and there is still opportunity for other attendees to present a paper. The EMu Users Meetings are excellent opportunities to learn from other users and to share your experience and ideas and we encourage you to attend and to consider making a presentation.

Amongst other things in this issue of the EMu Newsletter we glance at what is promised in EMu 3.2.04; explain how to link a field's Field Help description to related information; and in Tips and Tricks look at how best to make use of the EMu Help.

In this Issue

• EMu User Group Meetings
• KE on the road: Conferences & Trade Shows
• New Members of the EMu User community
• EMuUsers.org Update
• Release Info
• Support
• Training
• Did You Know?
• Tips and Tricks

6th Australasian EMu Users Meeting, 5-6 September 2007

Co-hosted by the Art Gallery of South Australia, the South Australian Museum and the History Trust of South Australia the 6th Australasian Users Meeting will be held in Adelaide on 5-6 September. The ever popular Q&A session with KE Software will once again put the KE team in the spotlight, and presentations will include:

• A look at new features in EMu, by KE Software
• New Tissue, Genetics and AQIS tabs in EMu, by Di Bray (Museum Victoria)
• The Lecythidaceae Pages: An EMu based electronic monograph, by Melissa Tulig (New York Botanic Gardens)
• Trends in using collections information on the web, by Darren Peacock (Sweet Technology)
• One year on after going live with EMu  - an overview, by Kristy Dermody, SA Maritime Museum and Allison Russell, National Motor Museum

Attendees will have the opportunity to tour the South Australian Museum, Art Gallery of South Australia and the History Trust of South Australia with tours offered on both days of the meeting depending on the number of takers.

It is not too late to propose a paper presentation and any interested attendees should contact Nick Margiolakis ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ). More information about the Users Meeting, including registration details, is available from EMuUsers.org.

3rd North American EMu Users Meeting, 15-17 October 2007

This year's North American EMu Users Meeting will be hosted by the New York Botanical Garden on 16-17 October. As last year, the Users Meeting will be preceded by the Natural History SIG meeting on 15 October, this time hosted by the American Museum of Natural History.

Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (with a Subject of: 2007 EMu Users Registration) to register your interest.

More details are available from EMuUsers.org.

Natural History Museum, London: Zoology Department goes-live

The Zoology Department at the Natural History Museum in London went live with EMu in May. The fourth of five departments in the Museum to adopt EMu, the Zoology Department itself comprises five sub-departments: Mammals, Birds, Reptiles & Amphibians, Fish and Invertebrates, and has a total of 465,000 specimen records and 150,000 associated preparations records.

The Department makes extensive use of EMu’s Parts management capabilities in order for different preparations of a specimen (skin, skull, skeleton, etc.) to be associated with a single set of taxonomic and collection event data, at the same time that each element can be managed independently (loaned, conserved, etc.). The Zoology Department also required modification and extension of EMu’s Analysis module to record details of DNA analyses performed on material collected from specimens.

It is anticipated that the Botany Department – the fifth NHM Department to adopt EMu – will go live in September.

KE on the road - Conferences and Trade Shows

Over the coming months KE Software will be attending conferences and trade shows in North America and Europe (details are available from the KE Software website).

Museums Association Conference: Annual Conference
Glasgow, UK, 22-24 October

Museum Computer Network (MCN) Conference: Building Content, Building Community: 40 Years of Museum Information and Technology
Chicago, Illinois, USA, 7-10 November

The EMu Community Grows

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

The University of Queensland Museums, Queensland, Australia

The University of Queensland has a diverse range of museum collections, many of which have evolved from the interests of individual scientists, while others have developed specifically to enhance teaching and learning. The collections play a vital role in the University's core activities and double as a valuable community resource.

Of the University's various collections the following are now members of the EMu community:

• Art Museum
• Sandstone Collection
• IT Collection

Qatar Museums Authority, Doha City, Qatar

Established in 2005 the aim of the Qatar Museums Authority is to upgrade the museums and archaeology sector as well as archaeological excavation projects within its jurisdiction. This includes managing, supervising and developing them; compiling, recording and protecting archaeological remains and preparing them for public use; and preserving the archaeological discoveries and the acquisitions of museums.

EMuUsers.org Update

300+ EMu users worldwide are currently registered with EMuUsers.org, a site maintained by and for users. KE Software staff regularly submit answers to FAQs and participate in the site's many Forums. If you have a question about EMu, you're likely to find the answer (or someone able to answer your question) on EMuUsers.org.

August 2007 release of EMu 3.2.04

The August release of EMu 3.2.04 will include:

1. New Mini-Multimedia Components which will allow the display of multimedia on any tab in a module (note that using this facility will require your implementation of EMu to be customised).
2. XML audit table, allowing complete auditing of operations in a module.
3. Field Help reports that produce Data Dictionary documents.
4. A Condition Check batch update tool.
5. The ability to set the display order of languages in a multi-lingual environment.

Full details will be made available with the release.

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

If you or your users require EMu training and you would like to save money, the solution may be to participate in joint training sessions with other KE Software clients in close geographic proximity to you. Training sessions can be organised in locations such as Ottawa, Washington DC and Chicago.

Training sessions are also available at all KE offices and at customer sites as needed. Please contact us for more information.

An overview of Training courses is available on our course information page.

... it is possible to provide a link from a field's Field Help description to related information? Links can be to a web page or even a page within the EMu Help, and they display under the See Also heading in the Field Help dialogue box for the field.  In this example Related Information has been specified for the Party Type: (Party Details) field:

When the Party Type details link is selected, the EMu Help will open and display the page that describes party types.

This functionality is built in to the Field Help module and is achieved simply (for those with the daEditHelp permission) by:

1. Locating a field's record in the Field Help module.
2. Adding a description for the link in the Description: (Related Information) field. This description will display under the See Also heading in the Field Help dialogue box.
3. Specifying the link in the Link: (Related Information) field (a URL or, as in this example, the Context ID of a page in the EMu Help):

Full details, including a list of all Context IDs for pages in the EMu Help, are available in the latest version of the EMu Help (which is available for download from our website and will also be bundled with the next release of EMu).

Tips and Tricks

EMu Help

When users have a problem with a software application or they want to try to do something with it that they've not tried before, turning to a Help system can often be a daunting prospect. Especially when the Help system is as huge as the EMu Help. The crux of the problem is often that users do not know the technical or use term for what it is that they want to do, which naturally makes it extremely hard to search the Help in the first place.

So, to facilitate locating a specific topic we have built a variety of features in to the EMu Help.

Let's consider a scenario in which a user wants to search an attachment field to return any record that has an attachment:

1. If a user knows what terms to search for she could search the Help for, say "wildcard attachment". This would return a list of topics, including one titled "Wildcard searches in attachment fields" and another titled "How do I search an attachment field?". Either of these would provide the solution:
   
   
2. If the user doesn't know to search for "wildcards", for instance, they could browse the Contents list, which has been organised in broad and, we hope, logical categories:

   

   
   If they select the Attach records heading under Working with EMu records, they will find "Wildcard searches in attachment fields"; alternatively, if they select the Search heading they will find "How do I search...?" and under this heading they will find "How do I search an attachment field?".
   Where appropriate, topics appear in more than one location.
3. A third option (and perhaps this should be the first) is to select the FAQ heading in the Contents list. Here we've included a list of categorised links to specific topics:

A user could select either the Attachments or the Searching page and they would find an FAQ: "How do I search attachment fields?"

No Help system is perfect and we continually strive to improve the EMu Help, which is why feedback and suggestions are always welcome. The latest version of the EMu Help can be download from our website and is also bundled with each new release of EMu.

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