Welcome

Welcome to the second issue of the EMu Newsletter for 2008, a little later than usual but all the more full of news for that.

In this instalment you will find a report on the 6th European EMu User Group Meeting held in London in June, as well as details of forthcoming meetings in New Zealand in September and the US in October. If you haven't already registered your interest in attending either of these meetings, and perhaps making a presentation, there is still time. These EMu Meetings are proving time and again to be valuable experiences for new and old hands, as well as KE Software staff. They're your opportunity to share your experience, benefit from the experience of others and pick the brains of EMu's developers.

In this issue, and amongst other things, we welcome several new clients; look at Te Papa Tongarewa's online collection and profile the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and introduce some exciting new functionality on the way in EMu 3.2.05.

In this Issue

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

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

The 6th European EMu User Group Meeting was held at the Natural History Museum, London, on 2-3 June 2008. Some 50 attendees were treated to a wide range of presentation topics from Pest Management to Oral History projects. With ample time for questions and socialising, there was much opportunity for attendees to share their experiences and for newcomers to EMu to ask for help and advice.

Of the many tours organised by the Museum, the Rare Books Collection proved to be most popular.

Special thanks to those who helped organise this year’s event, in particular Darrell Siebert from the Natural History Museum, as well as the Museum staff for their interesting tours.

Thanks also to those who provided feedback regarding the success of this year’s meeting; your feedback is an invaluable resource for planning subsequent meetings. Finally, thank you to all who attended the 2008 European EMu User group Meeting.  The meeting  was a great success and we hope to see everyone again in 2009.

Presentations made at the Meeting are now available on the KE website.

Dates for the 2008 EMu User Group Meetings

• 7th Australasian EMu User Group Meeting, 9-10 September 2008,  Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
• 4th North American EMu User Group Meeting,  21-22 October 2008, Las Vegas Springs Preserve, USA

The EMu User Group Meetings are proving time and again to be superb venues for networking and sharing EMu knowledge and experience and we encourage you to join us in Wellington and Las Vegas this year. Please contact your local KE Office to register your interest in either of these meetings.

Details are available on the KE website.

KE on the Road: Conferences & Trade Shows

Over the coming months KE Software will be attending conferences and trade shows, including:

Collect: The Collections Management Exhibition
UK, September 2008

Museums Association Conference: Annual Conference
UK, 6-8 October 2008

Details are available on the KE website.

The EMu Community Grows

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

Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo, Egypt

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to the most extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in the world. Established by the Egyptian government in 1835, the collection has been housed in several locations over the years. The present museum was built in 1900 in the neo-classical style by the French architect Marcel Dourgnon, and exhibits over 120,000 objects.

Museum of Science, Boston, USA

The Museum of Science, Boston, is a hub of research and invention, and New England's most visited cultural institution. The Museum has always moved visitors to think like scientists through hands-on, minds-on experiences. Today, with 1.5 million visitors a year, the Museum is redefining the way people think about, learn about, and interact with science and technology.

Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Illinois, USA

The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is a project of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois. Founded by Holocaust survivors more than 25 years ago, the organisation is dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust and the dangers of unchallenged hate.

Chelmsford Museums Service, Chelmsford, UK

The Chelmsford Museums Service comprises two museums, the Chelmsford Museum and the Essex Regiment Museum, plus a science resource centre and open store at Sandford Mill. Chelmsford Museum is set in a Victorian House, with permanent displays on the Story of Chelmsford, natural history and geology, coins, art and social history. The Essex Regiment Museum displays the collections of the Essex Regiment Association in a purpose-built extension opened by Princess Margaret in 1973, and tells the story of the county regiment from its mid 18th century origins up to its incorporation in the Royal Anglian Regiment. Sandford Mill is Chelmsford Museums' industrial store and science resource centre. It is open on special open days to the general public and from April to November for school visits.

EMuUsers.org Update

370+ EMu users worldwide are currently registered with EMuUsers.org. 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.

Plans for KE Software to take over the management of the site are underway. Details about EMu User Group Meetings, previously maintained by EMuUsers.org, are now available on the KE website.

EMu 3.2.05

EMu 3.2.05 will be available soon and will include:

1. Range Indexing:
   Tools have been introduced to allow Administrators to tune EMu's range indexing. Support for automatic optimisation of range indexes has also been added. Using these tools EMu can now provide optimal range indexes with significantly faster range based searches.
2. Drag/Drop multimedia resources onto a Multimedia tab to create Multimedia records automatically:
   It is now possible to drag multimedia resources (images, videos, audio, documents) from the Windows Desktop (etc.) onto any Multimedia tab in any module, automatically creating a Multimedia repository record.
3. Record Recall:
   A complete history of changes to a record is maintained by EMu. It is now possible to update a record with data from an earlier version of the record. Note that this does not Undo changes (the complete history is always maintained), but it does allow you to amend a record with data from an earlier version of the record.
   
4. Record Templates:
   Details available below (see Did You Know?).

Full details will be available from the KE website soon (and included in the latest version of the EMu Help, which can also be downloaded from the KE website).

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.

Client Profiles

Te Papa's Humanities and Art Collections now available online

The key tasks of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa are to preserve and present the taonga (treasures) of New Zealand's peoples and to interpret the country's heritage for national and international audiences.

For the first time the public will be able to access the full catalogue (over 120,000 objects) of the national art collection and Te Papa’s history and Pacific cultures collections, together with many objects from the photography, taonga Mäori and natural environment collections (http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/). Collections Online is a searchable database of objects and specimens from Te Papa's permanent collection. Each database record includes information about an object or specimen as well as an image, when available. It is possible to zoom in on many of the images.

Due to the extremely large number of objects and specimens in Te Papa's collection, not all objects or specimens are currently available in Collections Online. Further, many of the records available were created from historic documentation that does not necessarily represent the best available knowledge about the objects or specimens. Imaging of collections is also a resource intensive process, so not all records have images. Some images may contain colour bars or other devices to help in accurate capture and reproduction of the objects.

Over 30,000 high quality images are available, most of which can be zoomed into, allowing the online visitor to explore the detail of an artwork or specimen.

As well as being able to search Te Papa’s catalogue, online visitors are able to browse the catalogue via links to other similar objects – for example, objects of the same type, objects made by the same artist or objects that depict the same place or person.

"We are engaged in an ongoing programme of digitisation of the objects in the collections and upgrading the information relating to these objects," observed Dr. Seddon Bennington, Te Papa’s Chief Executive. "With a collection the size of Te Papa’s, this work will take some time to complete, so we have started with a standards-based catalogue of objects in the collection together with digital images where available."

In 2008 the entire Art, Photography, History and Pacific Cultures catalogues will be made available via Collections Online.

The next step is to make available the full standards-based catalogue for Te Papa’s taonga Mäori collection and eventually the vast photography and natural environment collections. More information and images will be added to existing records on a monthly basis and new features will be added over the coming year.

This three-storey tower displays photographs from the Yaffa Eliach Shtetl Collection. Taken between 1890 and 1941 in Eishishok, a small town in what is now Lithuania, they describe a vibrant Jewish community that existed for 900 years. In 1941, an SS mobile killing squad entered the village and within two days massacred the Jewish population.
Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, located on the Mall in Washington D.C., was dedicated in 1993 and is considered one of the most popular Washington tourist attractions.  A public-private partnership, the museum is a memorial to the Holocaust and serves as a learning centre for professionals from many disciplines, including:  law enforcement, the military, medicine, diplomacy and religion. It is also home to the Academy for Genocide Prevention and the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

The museum’s mission is to educate and further knowledge about the Holocaust and to preserve the memories of those affected.  Since its dedication the USHMM has received over 25 million visitors; in 2006 alone the website had some 15 million hits.  Portions of the website are available in 20 languages.

The Collections Division of the USHMM consists of eight branches: Archives, Art and Artefacts, Film and Video, Music, Oral History, Photo Archives, Collections Management, and Conservation. The Collections Division identifies, collects, and preserves the documentary, photographic, and artifactual record of the Holocaust and makes it available for research and display. It seeks to enhance the accessibility of this material through user-friendly databases, online catalogues, web presentations, and extensive reference service.

USHMM’s initial migration to EMu was completed in 2006.  At that time the museum’s Art and Artefacts collection, some 10,000 objects, was documented in EMu. Since then the museum’s Archival collection has been migrated into EMu and we are currently in the process of migrating the Film and Video and Photo Archives collections. This brings the total number of objects and archives catalogue in EMu to over 70,000. We anticipate that the Oral History and Music collections’ data will soon find a happy home in EMu as well.

We look forward to a continued excellent relationship with the USHMM and many successful projects in the future.

Did You Know...

• A number of records can be created in a batch and added to a set of one or more currently listed records.
• An optional starting IRN can be specified, allowing consecutive IRNs to be allocated.
• Data can be extracted from the current (source) record and added to new records. Data may be mapped from one field in the source record to another field in the created record.
• A starting number and incrementation can be specified, allowing a range of consecutive values to be allocated.
• A wizard is provided to walk through the process.
• A report is generated listing the IRN and incrementing numbers allocated for each record created.
• An XML based template description is used to specify what data is placed in created records.

Some useful applications of the Record Template utility include:

• Creation of Part records for an existing object record.
• Insertion of preparation records for a specimen record (e.g. tissue samples).
• Reserving a block of IRNs or Registration numbers.

Full details will be available from the KE website soon and can be found in the latest version of the EMu Help (published after 2 July 2008).

Tips and Tricks

If you edit a record in a module and have more than one instance of that module open, there are circumstances in which it may take a long time to save the edited record.

The reason for this could be that by default EMu will refresh any instance of the edited record currently on display in another instance of the module.

For example, two instances of the Parties module are open and searches have been performed in both. Record A in Parties 1 is edited. When it is saved, the records currently displaying in Parties 2 will be searched to locate any instance of Record A and update it to match changes made in Parties 1. If a large number of records are displaying in Parties 2 (e.g. >100,00 records), this process might be lengthy.

By default, EMu will automatically refresh any instance of an edited and saved record that is currently listed in another instance of a module. This is specified on the General tab of the Options dialogue box (select Tools>Options from the menu bar in any module window):

By entering a value in the Only refresh if less than text box, it is possible to specify a maximum number of records to be searched in order to refresh an edited record. For instance, if this number is set to 5000, another instance of the module will only be searched if the number of records currently listed is less than or equal to 5000.

In our example, if the number of records currently displaying in Parties 2 is greater than 5000, Parties 2 will not be searched for Record A in order to refresh it with the changes made in Parties 1.

When set to 0 (zero), there is no maximum number and a refresh will always take place.

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