The Arts Centre in Melbourne is home to two collections of national significance - the Performing Arts Collection, and the Public Art Collection. The Art Collection can be seen on permanent display throughout the grounds, theatres and foyers of the Arts Centre’s venues, including the State Theatre, Sidney Myer Musical Bowl, Hamer Hall and the Playhouse. Some of Australia’s most celebrated artists are represented in the collections, including Arthur Boyd, John Olsen, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, and Jeffrey Smart, along with sculptures by Inge King and Clement Meadmore.

The Performing Arts Collection is Australia’s largest and most important collection of performing arts history and traditions. It comprises more than 450,000 items documenting nearly 200 years of performance in Australia across the areas of circus, dance, music, theatre and opera. The broad appeal of Australia’s performing arts history – from classical traditions to popular entertainment – underpins the Arts Centre’s collection and exhibition philosophy. Varied costume and archival material from flagship companies such as The Australian Ballet, Bell Shakespeare Company and Circus Oz are complemented by collections from influential independent companies, including Playbox, Handspan and New Theatre. From rare 19th century theatre posters and the delicate performance gowns of Dame Nellie Melba, to Kylie Minogue’s famous gold hotpants (featured in the EMu Calendar) and AC/DC guitarist Angus Young’s schoolboy outfit, the Performing Arts Collection is a celebration of the rich history of Australia’s performers, artists and companies.

The Collections, Research & Exhibitions department at the Arts Centre has used EMu to manage the two collections since 1997. A major cataloguing project was funded in 2007 to document the collections electronically in preparation for a major relocation. Tens of thousands of records were created by expanding upon existing collection lists and uploading them using the EMu Import Tool. Barcoding and wireless location management were introduced using MVWise, and the separate Art Collection and Performing Arts Collection systems were then merged into a combined departmental catalogue.

Comprehensive coverage of the collection in the catalogue enabled more integrated use of the support and activity modules in EMu and streamlined work flows. Sub-classing the Accession Lots module allowed Acquisitions to be tracked from the time of offer, through the approval process to accessioning. The Arts Centre is now working with KE to implement the new IMu product which will publish collection level narratives to the Centre's website, providing a more seamless experience for the user to browse through collection level overviews and drill down to more detailed catalogue records.

The Museum of Writing is an ambitious two year project, funded by the University of London, to catalogue a unique and eclectic collection of some 15,000 writing objects, and to develop an innovative and rich website which will explain the evolution of writing materials over a five thousand year period.

The collection itself is almost single-handedly the creation of one man, Alan Cole, who has been building it for more than fifty years; as such it is not only a huge assembly of historically significant objects but also the autobiography of a collector and his culture and times.

One challenge in creating this new online resource is to find effective ways to capture and use the collector's imprint to inform the collection. The project will record Cole's account of the acquisition of key items in his collection and develop a range of audio-visual material explaining and demonstrating how objects work or would have been used; this narrative will then be richly woven around the objects in a way that will bring the collection to life and make a significant contribution to provenance and heritage studies.

In addition to giving access to the complete collection for the first time, the website will allow users to curate their own digital collections of objects for interest, personal research or pedagogical use, and will also serve as an online hub for new scholarship associated with the history of writing and communication.

The project is a collaboration between the University of London School of Advanced Study, UCLA, and King's College London's Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), which has selected EMu as the most appropriate collections management solution. CCH will be collaborating with KE Software to develop middleware for connecting the Museum of Writing's EMu repository to the Omeka web platform. Omeka, sometimes described as WordPress for museums, is an Open Source platform which simplifies development of effective and attractive websites for museums and archives, and offers a range of exciting functionality for end users (including collection building and learning tools). Paul Vetch, the project's technical director at CCH, comments:

Omeka is particularly well suited to smaller museums and collections, particularly those without enormous resources to dedicate to web development; we're very keen to support it, and by releasing the Omeka EMu plugin developed for the Museum of Writing project back to the Open Source community our hope is that many others will benefit in the future.