With renovated facilities and improved access to the collection, the Gold Museum is heading into another golden age.
The updated website, with the Gold Museum’s entire 65,000 item collection, went live in August 2013. Since the launch visitor numbers have significantly increased, averaging over 200 hits per day. The best day saw 1358 hits. Also, through eHive (Vernon System’s hosted museum software) the Gold Museum’s published objects are automatically included in Trove, National Library of Australia’s online archive, expanding the context and the audience.
In the words of Roger Trudgeon (Manager/Curator), “People are viewing our collections from a range of countries … comments tend to make us think that it is helping us to engage two kinds of new audience – people who may not have known about our collections before and people who may not have been into history research previously – both of which are great to now be engaging. “
The aim was to construct new state-of-the-art storage facilities, develop new working areas for staff, volunteers and public researchers, and to improve overall access to the collection through a new collections management system, Vernon CMS.
On the 22 May 2014, the Gold Museum, Ballarat, Australia, became the proud recipient of the Sir Rupert Hamer Award (presented by the Public Record Office of Victoria) for Community Archives Category – preservation of records of significance.
Vernon Systems develops innovative software for cultural organisations to manage and share their collections. We've been dedicated to the cultural sector since 1985.