June 2017
Staff News
Conference season around the world
It’s been a busy few months with conferences in England, New Zealand and USA. Paul and Darren attended the Museums and the Web conference in Cleveland, USA. One of talks looked at how The Mauritshuis museum in the Netherlands is using social media through tags such as #mygirlwithapearl to encourage discussion about their collection. You can view their lightning talk on Youtube.
Kate was at the Museums Galleries Australia conference in Brisbane where she had a chance to meet prospects and clients.
Leisa and Cherry attended the Museums Aotearoa conference (New Zealand’s national museum conference) in Palmerston North. Tamara Patten, who we’ve worked with for many years on the NZ Museums website, has written a great summary of the Museums Aotearoa conference.
Alex attended the Museums and Heritage Show in London and the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) in Cambridge. You can read the write-up from Liz Hide, of University of Cambridge, on the NatSCA conference.
Upcoming Events
eHive workshop, Wanstead, London, 28th July 2017
Alex von der Becke will be running an eHive workshop where you can learn about our low-cost system for cataloguing and sharing collections.
Vernon News
Using Topic in the Activities module in Auckland Museum’s Pou Maumahara Gallery
Topic records can go through draft, approval and publication stages, with carefully authored text and subject referencing being retained as an archive for future publication. Auckland Museum has employed the use of the Topic file to collate stories around medal groups, using the system to pull together object data, Cenotaph biographies, photos and narratives.
Making recent visitor comments easier to find on Nelson Provincial Museum’s website
Nelson Provincial Museum has recently completed a redevelopment of its website. The new design is a beautiful combination of clear design in a responsive format. The museum receives regular online comments but with thousands of objects, it would be hard to keep up with new conversations. To solve this problem, at the bottom of each object page is a “Recent Activity on the Nelson Provincial Museum Online Collection” section where recently added comments can be found.
Read more about the comments features on Nelson Provincial Museum’s website »
Museum Survey 2017
Half of the museums planning to publish their collection online in 2016 have done it…… Did the other half give up? This is the second year that Vernon Systems has surveyed New Zealand and Australian Museums about how they share their collections online.
How do I catalogue a smartphone app?
We recently had a question on our users’ forum asking for advice on cataloguing a smartphone app. Here are some general tips about cataloguing born-digital objects, as well as some notes on multimedia material that you might only have in analogue form (such as reels of film).
Gold Coast City Gallery has adopted the Vernon Collection Management System
To date, Vernon CMS has facilitated the standardisation, monitoring, and digitisation of a variety of policy and procedures.
Farnsworth Art Museum updates their online collection site
Farnsworth Art Museum have upgraded to the latest version of Vernon Browser. Their new site now provides a range of ways to explore the collection, including navigating by type of artwork and options for filtering search results. Their collection of over 5,000 works online looks great on mobile and tablet screens.
eHive workshop at the Fan Museum, Greenwich, London, 13 March 2017
The Orangery at the Fan Museum in Greenwich, London, was the stunning venue for a recent eHive workshop on the afternoon of March 13th. The event which was co-hosted by Alex von der Becke from Vernon Systems and Camilla Hiscock from the Fan Museum.
Vernon CMS 10.2
The latest minor update to Vernon CMS was released on April 20th. Vernon CMS 10.2 extends our integration with 3rd party systems. The SmartTrack RFID-based location tracking system can now send Location Mover & Location Notes data to Vernon CMS, along with the previous supported location data. 10.2 also adds closer integration with the Piction digital asset management system. The update also includes several bug fixes, including a problem with searching by id number did not work in List Manager.
You can download this from the Customer Support Portal.
Vernon Systems develops innovative software for cultural organisations to manage and share their collections. We've been dedicated to the cultural sector since 1985.