Welcome

In this issue of the KE EMu Newsletter: Ben Sullivan reports on the 4th UK EMu Users Meeting held in London in April; details are provided for the EMu 3.2 release; a new training option is introduced; we profile the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, UK, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization; we explain how to search for punctuation in EMu; and more.

We hope you find the Newsletter interesting and useful.

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
• EMu Client Profiles
• Did You Know?
• Tips and Tricks

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

(Update from Ben Sullivan)

The annual UK/European EMu Users Meeting was held in the week prior to Easter at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

For a day and a half the 45 attendees were kept busy with a full program of presentations on a range of topics that included: data clean-up techniques in EMu; future Conservation module developments; delivering collection information through EMu Narratives; plotting object information using Google Maps; and future EMu developments.

Attendees received a bag of goodies with souvenirs from a variety of museums and galleries in attendance. The mini EMu eggs were a handy snack during the day and the EMu drink coasters worked well with a beer or glass of wine at the evening function.

Thanks must go to the people who helped organise the event, in particular Louise Andersson-Gylden, Marion Raiser, Keri Myers, Julian Tomlin and Samantha Pettit. Sam was away on maternity leave at the time of the meeting and we congratulate her on the birth of her second daughter, Ruby Elizabeth.

Thanks to Janet Snowman and Frances Palmer from the Royal Academy of Music for their interesting tours of the academy and the stories that surround the collections, building and past students – Elton John included.

The Natural History Museum also hosted the attendees on various tours through the Mineralogy Department, Palaeontology Conservation Unit (PCU) and the Darwin Centre “Tank Room”. I'm not sure how well the smell of all the preserved fish in alcohol went down after the evening reception the night before but it was definitely worth the visit and nothing a clothes peg couldn’t fix.

Thanks to Dave Smith, Caroline Smith, Mike Rumsey, Chris Collins and his team in the PCU, and Clare Valentine for their time.

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 both the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, and the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario. 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 .

The Canadian Museum of Civilization, which celebrates its 150th Anniversary this year, is profiled below.

KE on the road - Conferences and Trade Shows

In recent months KE Software has attended 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.

Museums and the Web 2006, the only annual conference exploring the online presentation of cultural and heritage content across institutions and around the world, took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA in March. More than 800 attendees considered the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organisational issues of culture and heritage online. The   American Association of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo™2006 was staged in Boston, Massachusetts, USA in late April and was a great success. A record breaking number, more than 7,500, attended from all parts of the globe. Together they celebrated the year of the museum and AAM’s 100 year anniversary, an opportunity to look back but also forward to the future of museums and the challenges that await over the next 100 years. Next year's meeting will be held in Chicago.

In coming months KE Software will be participating in a number of meetings and we encourage you to join us and stop by for a demonstration of EMu's new features:

American Public Gardens Association (APGA) formerly American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta: Sustainability: Walking the Talk

The 2006 APGA National Conference in San Francisco will address the provocative and timely theme, Sustainability: Walking the Talk. Located in the “greenest city in the nation,” this year's conference will focus on all areas of sustainability and how we can implement sustainable practices in everyday life at our public gardens.

26 June - 1 July, San Francisco, California, USA

Botany 2006: Looking to the Future - Conserving the Past

This year in Chico, while Looking to the Future—Conserving the Past, the Botanical Society of America recognises more than 100 years of scientific achievements in the botanical sciences and strategically plans for future advancements.

28 July - 3 August, Chico, California, USA

Western Museum Association: Frontier Without Limits: High Desert Rendezvous

11 - 15 October, Boise, Idaho, USA

Museum Computer Network Conference (34th Annual Conference): Access to Assets: Return on Investment

Against the beautiful backdrop of Old Pasadena the MCN 2006 will explore useful, successful methods for accessing technology; we’ll share our challenges and triumphs as we network together to creatively and effectively improve our bottom lines. We’ll discuss the many ways we’ve found to maximise the compelling value of our technology collateral (Ed: hopefully with an explanation of what that actually means!), keeping in mind that the bottom line is not always financial, sometimes it’s intellectual, and sometimes, it’s just for the greater good.

8-11 November, Pasadena, California, USA

The EMu Community Grows

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

In North America:

Judah L. Magnes, Berkeley, California, USA

Founded in 1962 the Judah L. Magnes Museum explores the depth, vitality and complexity of Jewish life and culture. The Magnes accomplishes this mission by presenting important exhibitions that draw on its rich collections of fine arts and ceremonial objects, the archives of the Western Jewish History Center, and the Blumenthal Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Through innovative educational programs, special exhibitions and publications, the Magnes engages with significant issues in contemporary life, promotes public dialogue and scholarship, and encourages understanding of the Jewish past for present and future generations, serving as a vital cultural resource for the entire community.

In Australia:

Sydney University Museums, Sydney, Australia

Sydney University Museums is administrator for the three public museums at The University of Sydney. These are:

The University Art Collection: founded in the 1860s the Collection now holds more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Australian, Asian and European artists.

The Macleay Museum: originating in the collection of insects begun by Alexander Macleay in the late eighteenth century, the Macleay Museum has developed into an extraordinary collection of natural history specimens, ethnographic artefacts, scientific instruments and historic photographs.

The Nicholson Museum: containing the largest and most prestigious collection of antiquities in Australia, the Nicholson Museum is also the country's oldest university museum. It features masterpieces of ancient art and objects of daily life from Egypt, the Middle East, Greece, Rome, Cyprus and Mesopotamia.

EMuUsers.org Update

KE Software has recently submitted several comprehensive FAQ on indexing options in EMu 3.1, Record Level Security and the new Page View. All this information can also be found in the EMu Online help which can be accessed from within EMu (select Help from the Command Centre or use the What's This Help button in a module toolbar).

EMu 3.2 now available

XML Import facility (details to be added)

More detailed Release Notes can be found here.

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. North American clients who would like more information, please contact Danielle Knight at 604 877 1960 ext. 114.

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.

Client Profiles

Whitworth Art Gallery

The Whitworth Art Gallery, which is part of the University of Manchester, is home to an impressive range of modern and historic prints, drawings, paintings and sculpture, as well as the largest collections of textiles and wallpapers outside London. The gallery's collection has been designated "outstanding" by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (UK).

The generosity of wealthy local collectors and their gifts of British watercolours and European prints saw the nature of the collection begin to shift away from its original conception as a museum of industrial design and crafts. This growing emphasis on fine art was redressed however with the gift of a collection of historic wallpapers from The Wall Paper Manufacturers in 1967 and these days the Gallery sees itself primarily as a specialist centre for the study and display of works on paper and textiles.

The EMu web interface has been refined by the Whitworth to provide four ways of searching its collections. These include an exhibition search with access to information on over 100 exhibitions from the collections. Over 43,000 objects and 3000 narratives are published with more than 6500 images, the latter loaded using KE's data loading software. The Whitworth Gallery website can be found at www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk

Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (CMCC)

The Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC) has a lot to celebrate! Not only is the CMC to host the North American EMu Users meeting in October 2006, but last month saw the Museum kick-off the year long celebration of its 150th anniversary. Founded in 1856 under the auspices of the Geological Survey of Canada, the Canadian Museum of Civilization has grown from a single shelf of artefacts to one of Canada’s most visited museums (with average attendance over 1.4 million visitors each year), and one of the top cultural history institutions in the world. Its collection comprises more than 3.75 million artefacts across multiple disciplines, including history, archaeology, folk culture, ethnology and postal communications. Located on the banks of the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Quebec, the Museum offers a spectacular view of Parliament Hill across the river.

To commemorate its 150th year the Museum is launching an exhibition featuring artefacts and archival photographs from its origins to the present day. A beautifully illustrated book has also been produced, profiling the Museum’s colourful and often dramatic history. Rounding out the celebration, special programming and events for the entire family will be held throughout the year, from workshops and lectures, to performances, a gala, a contest and more.

Interesting facts and figures:

• The Canadian Museum of Civilization now has http://www.civilization.ca. It also has extensive collection databases available online, and various audiovisual material. more than 30,000 screens of information in English and French on its award-winning website at
• More than 140 North American Native cultures are represented by artefacts in the collection.
• There may be more than 3 million specimens in the Museum’s archaeology collection, a figure that can only be estimated as more items are numbered and catalogued every day.
• In addition to its collections of artefacts and archaeological specimens, the Museum has a photographic collection of more than 300,000 negatives and transparencies, a research library containing 100,000 books and other publications, and its own corporate and historical archives.

Did You Know...

... It is now possible in List View to copy selected records and paste data that displays in the List View's columns into other applications, such as MS Excel and Word:

1. Run a search in an EMu module, select the List View with the appropriate columns and select the required records:

   

2. To copy data, select Edit>Copy from the Menu bar
   -OR-
   Right-click the selected records and select Copy from the menu that displays
   -OR-
   Use the keyboard shortcut, CTRL+C.
3. Open the required application, MS Word or Excel for instance.
4. To paste the EMu data into the application, select Edit>Paste from the application's Menu bar
   -OR-
   Ensure that the application is active (click its Title bar for instance) and use the keyboard shortcut, CTRL+V.

Tips and Tricks

Searching for punctuation

It is possible to search for punctuation in EMu if you have access to the Show Search function.

Note that some punctuation marks have special significance in an EMu search (a ? substitutes for any single character in a search term, for instance) and it is necessary to modify the syntax described below when searching for these characters:

^  $ *  ?  ~  @  (  )  [  ]  {  }  $

In this example we search for a dash (-) in the Notes field of the Catalogue module:

1. In the field to be searched, enter any letter followed by the punctuation character to be located, e.g. a- or m?z! or

It doesn't matter what letter is used, but it is necessary to include a letter before the punctuation character in order to generate a texql search expression.

1. Select File>Show Search from the Menu bar.

Access to the Show Search function is an Operations permission (daEditQuery) that must be set in the Registry for a user by the System Administrator. If you do not have this permission, the Show Search option will not appear under the File menu.

The Edit Search box displays:

1. It is necessary to edit the search statement. In this case the search is for a dash (-) in the Notes field of the Catalogue module and the statement to be modified is:

NotNotes contains 'a-'

Edit the search as follows:

1. Replace contains with like.

2. Delete the letter (a in this case).

3. Enclose the punctuation character in asterisks (*).

The result is: NotNotes like '*-*'

To search for one of the special characters listed above (a question mark for example), it is only necessary to place a backslash (\) immediately before the special character, e.g.: NotNotes like '*\?*'

1. Select OK to run the search.

Note that Punctuation searching is not index supported, which means it could be very slow on large collections.

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