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Sydney sunshine greeted Vernon User Group

We recently travelled to Sydney to welcome 23 people to our first Australian Vernon User Group (VUG) meeting in five years.

Our last VUG meeting over the ditch was in the Gold Coast in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to cancel our travel plans in 2020 and we developed an online VUG conference instead. We’re now returning to our usual schedule of holding VUG meetings in New Zealand and Australia every year and will continue our annual online conference.

Left to right: Kathryn Sawyer (Museum of Contemporary Art); Jesmond Calleja (Art Gallery of New South Wales); Claire Campey (Museum of Contemporary Art).

Anzac Memorial tour

Our visit kicked off with glorious weather on Tuesday 21 May with a tour of the Anzac Memorial, kindly hosted by Brad Manera and Michael Lea.

Anzac Memorial
Anzac Memorial
The Hall of Service
Soil from 100 Significant Military Sites are set into a ring embedded in the floor of the Hall of Service.
The eight walls of the Hall of Service display soil from 1,701 New South Wales’ towns, cities, suburbs and homesteads
The Hall of Memory
The Hall of Memory
Passchendaele Diorama
Passchendaele Diorama

VUG meeting

The VUG meeting started at 1pm at The Great Southern Hotel, a heritage-listed hotel located in a historic 19th-century building in the heart of Sydney CBD.

Vernon Systems Update

Paul Rowe, CEO of Vernon Systems shared an update on Vernon CMS and Vernon Browser.

Paul Rowe speaks at the Vernon User Group meeting.

Eager Egret

Our latest version is Vernon CMS 12.5 (Eager Egret). It includes improvements to the Person file and XML Import.

Fantastic Fantail

Our next version is Vernon CMS 12.6 (Fantastic Fantail) and will include a new Call Number field and Publication Series field for library collections.

One area of increasing work for us is keeping on top of security. This affects the securing of our own network and systems, and the securing of hosted Vernon CMS and Vernon Browser sites. We follow security news sites, investigate issues that could affect us, apply patches, and improve our code on an ongoing basis.

Vernon CMS is built using the OpenInsight database and desktop application platform. We’re currently using version 9.4, and this is reaching its end of life. The provider, Revelation Software, is no longer releasing updates for version 9.4. We’ve been working on version 10 this year, and it’ll be the most critical part of next year’s Vernon CMS upgrade.

The new version of OpenInsight will give us improved tools for building the user interface and performance enhancements. Other planned enhancements are dependent on the OpenInsight upgrade being completed first.

New Vernon CMS clients

We’ve gained some new clients recently:

Vernon Browser

Vernon Browser implementation projects continue to be a large part of our work. This includes helping sites decide on what to publish to a website, setting up symbolic (calculated) fields to reformat information, and customising our website templates to match the branding of a particular client.

New and upgraded Browser sites include:

Paul also spoke about Vernon Browser’s latest features. Check out what’s new in Vernon Browser for the full list of enhancements.

Vernon Browser Development – Anzac Memorial

Michael Lea, Jacqui Reid, and Rebecca Jones spoke about the Anzac Memorial’s collection management, how they currently showcase the collection, and the development of their Vernon Browser website.

Objects have been acquired at the Anzac Memorial since around 1934. The collection comprises about 7,000 objects that are mostly smaller items such as medals, badges, photos, letters, postcards, documents, souvenirs, weapons, equipment, uniforms, and posters.

The team explained some of the background issues with cataloguing and numbering. A huge amount of work has been done to establish policies and procedures and form a unified approach.

This work has allowed them to focus on their audience and prepare their collection for sharing with the public on their new Vernon Browser site.

Vernon Browser allows the team at Anzac Memorial to make their processes more efficient, save resources, and better showcase their collection and its inherent social and historical significance.

Check out the Anzac Memorial’s Vernon Browser website, and read about Vernon Browser’s features to see if it’s right for your collection.

Left to right: Jacqueline Reid, Michael Lea, and Brad Manera (Anzac Memorial).

Barcoding Project – Museums of History NSW

Sascha Gloor shared her work on the barcoding project at Museums of History NSW. This project aims to make it easier and more accurate to do stocktaking and manage object movements. Introducing barcodes has helped automate their data entry processes. Staff can use a handheld scanner to scan an object’s barcode so that location data can be changed, confirmed, and shared automatically with Vernon CMS.

The team has created and attached barcode labels to thousands of objects across their collections. They use location tracking software called LocaFi which integrates with Vernon.

The benefits of this project are impressive:

  • Collection stocktake times have reduced by two thirds.
  • Object location changes are completed at the time of movement.
  • Object locations and data are retrievable “in the field”.
  • Over 10,000 images have been added to Vernon.

To find out more about how barcoding works in Vernon, read our Explainer article about barcodes.

Left to right: Rebecca Pinchin and Yulia Belan (National Trust of Australia (NSW)); Rebecca Jones (Anzac Memorial).

Digital Asset Management – Museums of History NSW

Julieanne Rabier spoke about how they are managing digital assets at the Museums of History NSW. Over the last couple of years, the team has undertaken many collection photoshoots and has been working to create digital assets. Fotoware is their digital asset management system (DAMS), and it contains over 12,000 digital assets, with over 9,000 objects digitised.

Julieanne explained their digital asset process and how they link images to Vernon. VUG attendees got a sneak peek into Fotoware’s interface and workflow and the benefits of using the system.

Fotoware’s features include:

  • All staff can have access at different levels.
  • Photographers can upload images remotely.
  • Staff can store corporate images (branding, marketing, events), images loaned for exhibitions, and professional photography of the collection.
  • Staff can create and share albums and search in numerous ways.

Read more about managing digital assets with our Explainer article about digital asset management.

Left to right: Aiden Silvestro (Department of Parliamentary Services – Art Collections); Julieanne Rabier (Museums of History NSW).

Vernon CMS Help Website Redesign

Penny Collins, Lead Technical Communicator at Vernon Systems gave an update on the development of the new Vernon CMS Help website. We’re designing the new site to be user-focused, clear, easy to navigate, consistent, and mobile-responsive. The project is progressing well and we plan to launch the site later in the year.

A screenshot of the new Vernon CMS Help website which is in development.

Vernon CMS Feature Prioritisation

The group participated in an activity to prioritise our planned and candidate features for Vernon CMS.

For each set of features, people had three dot stickers that they could stick on the features that were most important to them. They could distribute their dots across several features or use them all on one feature.

This was the first time we had done this type of activity, and we plan to hold similar activities at future VUG meetings.

Left to right: Rebecca Jones (Anzac Memorial); Claire Muir (Deakin University); Julieanne Rabier (Museums of History NSW); Yulia Belan (National Trust of Australia (NSW)).

Planned features – voting results

Here are the results of the voting.

We’re planning to deliver all these features, though we still need to investigate what’s possible in Vernon CMS.

  1. Bulk-delete tool (17 votes)
    Create a tool that allows you to bulk-delete data, such as removing all data from any field (whole system or selected records).
  2. Valuations – report on collection value (14 votes)
    Easily get the value of the entire collection or a subset of records.
  3. Deaccessioning – improve fields (11 votes)
    Create an aligned multivalued table on the Object – Deaccession & Disposal window and Deaccession window in Activities. Include Deaccession Reason, Method, Part, Date of Release, Transferred To, Proceeds, and Notes.
  4. Person records – improve duplicate-checking for individuals (11 votes)
    Ignore certain words in duplicate-checking for people as well as corporations.
  5. Valuations – foreign currencies (6 votes)
    Add fields to record the foreign currency value and conversion rate to the Object – Valuations window.
  6. Valuations – decimal places (3 votes)
    Allow decimal places (cents) in valuation figures.

Candidate features – voting results

These are features we could develop. For some, we need to investigate what’s possible once we have upgraded OpenInsight, the underlying database for Vernon CMS.

  1. External files – link checking (18 votes)
    Ability to check for and fix broken links to external files.
  2. Bulk Update – save a configuration (12 votes)
    Ability to save a configuration in Bulk Update so you can use it again (file, fields, and data).
  3. List Manager – save views (12 votes)
    Ability for users to save their own views in List Manager (display fields and sort order) so they can easily be used again.
  4. Image – larger thumbnail size (9 votes)
    Make the image thumbnail on the Object – Identification window larger.
  5. Bulk location tools – use a saved list of Packing Units (8 votes)
    Ability to use a saved list of Packing Units in Bulk Move, Bulk Inventory, and Batch Location Change.
  6. Restriction Type start and end date fields (5 votes)
    Introduce Start Date and End Date fields for Restriction Types.
  7. Security – password complexity (0 votes)
    Provide password complexity options.

Please note that even if a feature has low or no votes, it’s still on our backlog for investigation.

We intend to publish a Vernon CMS roadmap on our website to improve our communication to Vernon users.

VUG Training Day

On Wednesday 22 May, the fine weather continued as we held a training session. We covered the following topics.

Left to right: David White (Museums of History NSW); Claire Muir (Deakin University); Dean Beasley (Queensland Museum).

Advanced Searching

Audits and Data Reviews

Accessories and Consumables

Group and Member records

Person records

Correspondence and Documents

Accession Number Formats

Authority Term Hierarchies

Seeing the sights of Sydney

We were able to fit in some sightseeing and were lucky that our trip coincided with the annual festival of lights, Vivid Sydney, and the two-yearly Biennale of Sydney.

Sydney Harbour Bridge
Sydney Opera House
Circular Quay
Light installation
Museum of Contemporary Art
Lindy Lee sculpture, ‘Secret World of a Starlight Ember’
Sydney Opera House
Biennale of Sydney, White Bay Power Station
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales

Upcoming VUG meetings

We look forward to holding a VUG meeting in Christchurch in August, as well as our annual online VUG conference in October.

Watch our VUG playlists on YouTube

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About

Vernon Systems develops innovative software for cultural organisations to manage and share their collections. We've been dedicated to the cultural sector since 1985.

Contact

Email: vsl@vernonsystems.com
Phone New Zealand: +64 9 815 5599
Phone United Kingdom: +44 7949 979976
Phone South Africa: +27 72 578 52 41