A Shared CMS Case Study: The State of Utah

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Rachel Cristine Woody. My name is Bradley, and I will be your moderator for this webinar titled A Shared CMS Case Study The State of Utah.

Before we start, I would like to provide some information about our company and introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions, as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include ArchivEra, Argus, Presto, and SydneyDigital.

Now I’d like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter, Rachel Christine Woody. Rachel is the owner of Relicura and provides services to museums, libraries and archives. She specializes in museum collections management systems, digitization technology, digital project management and digital usership. During the course of her career, she has successfully launched multiple digital projects that include advanced digitization technology, collaborative portals, and the migration of collection information into collection management systems. She is also a popular guest author for Lucidia’s Think Clearly blog and has provided us with many great webinars that are listed on our website. So please feel free to check those out after today’s session. Take it away, Rachel.

Great. Thank you so much, Bradley. Thank you to Lucidea for hosting us today. And of course, thank you for joining.

So as Bradley indicated we’re going to talk about the state of Utah and specifically a partnership between Utah Arts and Museums which is, one museum department underneath the Utah Cultural Division and the Utah Historical Society.

We have a webinar precursor that is a nice little setup for this particular topic. It’ll focus on, power partnerships and I’ll give you those details in a moment. But for today’s webinar you don’t necessarily need to have watched that one because we’re going to focus on a case study with the state of Utah. We’ll talk about why Utah chose a shared CMS approach which is collections management system.

We will then get into the details and all of the things to consider when entering into a partnership, especially when we are sharing a shared database and essentially how to help maintain and build in protocols and communication to make that successful. So with that in mind, we’ll talk about how to build and maintain catalog cohesion. We’ll talk about how blended practices help support the shared approach and ultimately collection discovery.

We will also then talk about one of the unique aspects of this particular partnership, which is bringing together an art collection, art museum, and of course a historical collection, in the historical society.

With that, there is one tool I want to highlight, that is available with Lucidea’s Argus platform and that’s the aggregates functionality and how that particular tool especially has been very heavily leveraged by the state of Utah to have their two collections play nicely together and be, like super discoverable.

And then we have some, remaining sort of logistics and protocol things to think of in terms of removing barriers connecting collections and ultimately using security and functionality around security as a catalyst to help ensure their partnership success.

And ultimately providing you a blueprint to consider in terms of what potential partnerships could look like, especially when it’s a partnership involving shared tools and in this case a shared collections management system.

So a couple a few different things for us to cover, to make sure you have that foundation. But for that, ultimately, partnership concept and a bit more of a foundational piece and a way to think about partnerships, especially when thinking about different iterations of partnership and a collections management system. We did just recently offer a webinar about powerful partnerships and sharing a collections management system. This could be a great, webinar to watch after you have seen this one. It can give you a bit more of, broader higher level things to think about and provides a few other examples of, sharing a potential collections management system without necessarily sharing the database which is the case today for today’s case study. So anyway, another webinar that could be very helpful for you in thinking about partnership.

So for State of Utah, and again this was Utah Arts and Museums Division and the Utah Historical Society, they ended up choosing the city as Argus platform for their museum collections and their ArchivEra platform for the Utah Historical Society’s archives.

For today’s purposes we’ll talk about and focus on Argus since that is where the two museums, really had to think about and put structure in place for their two collections to enter into a system together and cohabitate nicely.

And for them, it’s, I think, very helpful to think about why they chose to enter into this particular partnership structure. And there were a few different reasons, several of them being it increases buying power. So anytime two different museums or in this case two different divisions enter in together the budget increases because both museums are able to bring their resources, in this case financially, to shop for a more robust, in this case collections management system and is really one of those partnership aspects we’ve been reflecting on these last few webinars of, regardless of what tool or service you are going for, whenever you partner with somebody the budget typically increases which means you can usually get more bang for your buck so to speak.

Another, major benefit and that was certainly on the forefront of Utah’s mind was sharing resources potential.

For example in their shared Argus and ArchivEra instance I am partnered with them currently as a consultant to help support their database administrative and management needs that don’t necessarily fall under general Lucidea support in this case, helping them think through data cleanup. They’re also in the midst of a major large scale move to a different building. So helping them in areas of their system and being able to help both of them in this case because they are in that shared ecosystem for their database and means that they both have access to me as an expert and, offering those types of services which means they get to share in that particular resource. And there’s I’m sure you can think of a number of ways where, sharing resources can be helpful whether it’s a person or, outside sort of service.

A third major aspect of strength that Utah was, that was on Utah’s list in terms of why they were entering into this partnership is being able to pool their collective expertise. Previously, and as is the case for many museums even when they’re under sort of similar division or, structural umbrella, by the nature of how museums have evolved many just sort of chose their own system at different times that made sense for them at the time.

And so for the state of Utah both of those divisions, the Arts Museum and Historical Society, they were coming from two different systems. And so even though they were sort of experts in their own right they didn’t really have any other staff or expertise that they could have access to or bounce ideas off of. And that meant that also any sort of IT support in either of those respective museums was also limited just to their departmental division area.

And so now that they’re in a shared system that means that both teams now have the ability to pull and tap the other team’s expertise, which has certainly come in handy many times already. And it means that any sort of IT support or the city support is that much easier with both the museums in that one system. So they have some advantages there in sharing a system.

And the fourth item on their list and is perhaps for Utah the most important or was sort of priority for them as to why they chose this approach is so that it presented a unified collection to their audience. So they’ve really wanted and what was really important for them was even though it was an arts collection and historical collection, that the collections could regardless play nicely together, be searched across within the same system, and present as a united cultural resource for their community. So for many reasons, both logistics but also for stakeholder and ultimately how we’re serving our communities, these were the main items for the state of Utah as to why they chose this approach.

So for any sort of partnership requirement there are two aspects that are very important and this is especially true in the instance of a partnership where we’re sharing a system and in this case a database which is an inherently complex and very data driven tool. We need trust and we need protocols. Trust is imperative just for relationships in general if we’re entering into one especially where we are sharing a resource together.

And in this case when we are sharing a database knowing that some of the shared aspects of the data are present, there’s of course some inherent risk which we’ve touched on before in a previous webinar and we’ll touch on again in a moment.

So having that trust aspect is important because there is vulnerability that is inherent to any sort of partnership.

And the next aspect is the protocols. So having protocols in place can be very helpful both for just how a museum operates within a system, but in this case is even more important since there are two museums sharing a system and therefore two sets of data sharing in a system. And having protocols to help ensure consistency and quality of data to help maintain that quality of the collections playing nicely together and being discoverable together.

But also on the back end piece having protocols to help ensure that there are certain security measures that are in place, that we are identifying all of our records and data sets appropriately between the two museums so that all data is very easily identifiable for the two museums and that the users assigned to those respective data sets have the access that is appropriate for them. So two factors very important for any partnership but especially so when we are doing a shared CMS.

So how to build and maintain catalog cohesion. So this is sort of the first part of our protocols building to make sure that the two different museums sets of data and their collections play nicely together and again ultimately with that discoverability piece in mind.

First aspect establishing record forms. So for many systems and this is true for Lucidea’s Argus there are collection record accession type records. Each of those has a particular form and so we can dictate as Argus users what sort of data we are collecting in those particular forms.

For Argus there’s also an activities area which has some different record forms. So as the state of Utah entered into this partnership and went through implementation with Lucidea, they went through the steps with the Lucidea representatives to set up these record forms to identify and choose what sort of data areas they wanted. And this leads me to our next point, which is thinking about with our partners and identifying areas of data unity. So when we’re thinking about the record forms and in Argus for this specific instance you can have different flavors of forms. So there can be in the catalog for our collection area, for the objects you can have several different object type forms.

And so both the museums have their own form but they have chosen to have a great overlap of data in their forms that are essentially the same fields. So there had identified areas where there’s going to be data unity.

This is very important for that discoverability piece because if data is in the same place and is called the same thing, it makes it that much easier for the system to then generate and deliver search results that are appropriate to the user.

As they went through this process and certainly, as they’ve gone through using the system over the last year or so they have started to build their best practices. So they made some of those decisions early on during implementation And now as they’ve used the system, there’s been an amending and updating of best practices among both museums. And that’s best practices for the shared areas where they’ve identified data unity and best practices for these separate areas of where understandably either collection has specific or separate data needs and their best practices, independently in those regards.

And then of course to help facilitate both the implementation of a shared collections management system but as well as the continued good use and maintenance of the system and their data, they have set regular meeting cadences. This can be very helpful to continue building a relationship of trust, but is also very helpful to ensure that there is continued data unity, that we are continuing to use the same or similar best practices, and that the system is working and being used appropriately for both teams. So wanting to make sure ultimately that the tool is working for everybody and everybody is working within the tool as, in a similar consistent and, making sure we’re meeting quality kind of way.

So the power of the blended best practices piece, to spend a moment on this because the discovery part is so important and as you know was a main driver for the state of Utah in this decision, is first and foremost it helps to enable cross searchability. So again for this particular use case it is two different museums and two different collections. It’s an art collection and a historical collection.

And so we want to make sure that while we have perhaps different best practices that suits either collection type that there is a shared or blended best practice in the areas where it makes sense. So first benefit being enabling that cross searchability. We’ll talk about as I mentioned aggregates and some functionality that helps to support and make that flexible.

And the next major benefit being of course improved search result quality. So the more, we use the same fields the more that we follow the same or similar best practices will help to make sure that the search results both we and our users get are of the highest quality and high accuracy.

Having blended best practices and having sort of that data unity, how the data goes into the specific fields that we’re using, helps to synchronize filtering and timelines and other sort of data driven functionality that is perhaps present on the front end for our users. And so filtering and facets, is something available back end and front end, but is especially important for our researchers as they get to know our collection. And then, of course, functionality that includes any sort of timelines where the data needs to be in a specific format in order to show up appropriately in these filters or facets area as well as the timeline area.

And then of course presenting that unified collection experience.

So the arts collection and historical collection going into a shared database had the state of Utah in this case not done any work to try and have data unity or have overlaps in their collection data, it would still be a very segregated collection even though it’s in a shared database. So going through that effort for that data unity for the blended best practices is key to helping present that unified collection experience. So not enough to just share a database, they also made some very thoughtful and intentional decisions with their data to help make sure they are delivering that unified collection discovery piece.

All right bridging the art and history part and especially with vocabulary. So again two different types of collections which makes it a unique type of partnership. There are of course different, data standards that an arts museum would reference versus a historical collection. But there is of course overlap. Our field in, the museum world, while we may have slightly different standards for the different types of collections that we steward, we have done an excellent job making sure that they relate to one another and that there is an overlap of areas. So we might call the field by a different name, but essentially the data is the same or similar enough.

So quite a bit of overlap. We’ve got object name versus title. So object names usually for historical collections, title is usually more of the artwork collection types. Going to be very similar though. And so this is an area where depending on the partners, depending on their collections, they may decide that those are similar fields where they want to have some data unity.

Creator or artist maker. So again, creator is usually more typical for the historical collection, artist maker for the art collection, but similar type of data. So another area where they can have data unity.

Then medium versus material, different vocabs but having both of them together very similar even though one is for art one is for the historical collection.

And then of course there’s shared areas that aren’t necessarily different whether it’s art or museum like geography, nationality, cultural groups. They may have slightly different vocabularies that you reference but are even more aligned in terms of this is the same type of data.

We have categories versus classifications, which is, again depending on the collection type you could be using one or the other but there’s quite a bit of overlap. Even choosing to use some of the broader areas classification across to share collection can be very helpful for browsing, especially for new users. And then concept of subject. So for some collections they stop at categories and classifications. Sometimes that’s enough if it’s just one museum.

But when you’re entering in a partnership and with multiple collections, choosing to use subject and subject, vocabulary or thesauri can be more desirable. And certainly the way that our more general users think about collections, they will think about and understand subject first far more frequently than if they would understand and choose to engage with category or classification first. So things to be aware of in terms of both sharing a collection with a museum that is perhaps a different type of collecting institution, but also very helpful when we think about our end users and what will help the ultimate discovery piece of this.

All right, aggregates.

This is a functionality available within Argus and in other systems it may be called other things, but the concept is the important part here. So we’ll use aggregates for today but if you’re looking at other systems just note it may be called something else. And aggregates is a way to tell the system that there is two different fields but that they are essentially related. And so this gives, in the State of Utah’s case, the ability to still maintain individual identity in terms of their data structures and the data fields they are using while still supporting ultimately the flexibility of that discovery piece. So we reviewed some of the fields that are similar or have overlap.

This means that in the state of Utah’s case, the art collection can use title and the historical collection can use object name. And we can create in this case an aggregate where we are telling the system those two fields can and should be searched together via a keyword search. So for our two institutions they are essentially dictating to the system, hey these these two data pieces, these are linked. And in using that keyword search it means that either institution does not have to use the exact same vocabulary in order for the results return to be accurate.

So for example, if the historical collection had an object and they called it an oil painting and the art collection has the title of canvas painting by such and such we can have it direct the system to use keywords to make it super flexible and identifying okay I know these two fields are related. I’m seeing these words in both of these two different field areas so I’m going to pull both of those for the results. So very helpful in terms of, helping to support that data unity concept while still giving some flexibility to both of our museums in this case to still maintain the record forms and data fields that they are used to.

Alright removing barriers and connecting collections. So continuing that aggregate concept this helps to maintain individual museum data needs which can be very important especially for our museums where there’s different types of collecting happening.

It instructs the search engine for the database in this case on where like data resides.

It shifts from requiring the correct characters to more of a broader connected concepts.

And it removes that correct field burden. So for these last two, thinking about our user and how they might be searching our collections, having the aggregates in place and having it be keyword searchable means that our users don’t need to already know somehow that they need to search these two different fields to get results from both. That burden is removed and they also don’t have to know exactly what they should be searching for. For example, if they needed to search for oil painting of state of Utah Capitol they don’t need to know the exact title of that art piece.

They can enter in enough of what they think their, data or details are in that search result and the aggregates does the rest of that heavy lifting with knowing to check those two different fields and knowing that it’s doing keyword. And so it’s not going to hold our end user, in terms of having to have all of that knowledge somehow in being able to search our database across two different systems or excuse me two different museums in one system that are using perhaps different data fields. So very important both in terms of for the partnership maintaining individual identity but also, being able to have that flexibility of search and, that end user piece having the benefit of removing the burden of being the user somehow supposed to know how to use and search our system for our collections.

All right getting into the security piece now. For two different museums entering into a shared collections management system security is going to be a strong piece here. And so for Argus there are a few different aspects of security or how security can help sort of partition the collection data for the two different teams.

First is security code. State of Utah is using Argus security code to help identify which of the museums that data or catalog form etc is within. So security code for them is going to be one of their two museum names.

The next piece is collection. So for the arts museums specifically there are a couple different sub collections that for a variety of reasons may have different staff members working only in that sub collection and or those sub collections may have different, catalog record requirements.

So they can further identify at that point if there are different aspects of their museum that they require some slightly different security around.

And then the actual and directly applicable security piece of having users identified and user groups. So in Argus for user groups you can set and assign people and that particular group will have a shared set of guidelines of what they can and cannot access, and if they can access it what the level of read, view, edit, delete sort of activities are available. And then depending on your use case or needs you could even further identify or narrow out or add different restrictions in within each of the templates or per user. So you’ve got quite a bit of scalability of security depending on what the museum needs are and what your security for your user needs are.

And then using security and having that help to support partnership success is also very important. It is important for state of Utah even though they’re sort of under a similar cultural division umbrella and is even more important if your museum enters into a partnership that maybe does not have that shared sort of governing apparatus. And so knowing that security can be a concern and a potential risk, it can also then be used if you have the appropriate tools. It can also be used just to help enforce and ensure collection success and the appropriate securities involved. So having shared administrative load of account creation and maintenance.

So they’re under the same contract with the shared database. And so it is helpful for them in their budgeting and department internal creation, as well as in their connection to Lucidea as their provider to help receive support in that regard.

And then next point, highly customizable user and group access. So being able to really define at a shared partnership level, at a museum level, and then even within the museum the subgroups and sub collections.

They have the ability to assign access at both an institution as well as sub institution level, so quite a bit of granularity if that is needed. And the option to share access across collections for shared projects or exhibits. So another aspect that wasn’t necessarily at the top of the list of like these are amazing benefits when Utah first started out, but has certainly become a huge benefit now, especially as they are moving into a shared space.

There’s a lot more plans for shared exhibitions and of course all of the planning and logistics that goes with that. Having this shared system and having the ability through security permissions to share specific areas of their collections or their records has become incredibly helpful as they have started moving towards the shared more than just a shared system now an actual shared space.

So with that in mind and with thinking about the state of Utah as an example of partnership in this area, the blueprint for success, if we were to like boil it down, is process for system decisions or change requests. We’re in a shared system together so often decisions we make will impact other people in the system. So needing to make sure that we’re not making decisions in a vacuum, we need to make sure we’re making decisions as a group.

We need to have required use of department and collection. This is especially true because you have two different museums.

And so being able to identify at that level the data in that database which of the museums it belongs to and originated from.

We need clearly labeled forms. So thinking about their setup of their different catalog forms, having both, in the object record module for example they each have their own object record catalog form similar for in the accession and activities area and for both teams making sure that they know exactly what form they’re using and that it’s the appropriate form for their collection.

And then that regular meetings for discussion. Communication is key and the state of Utah has an excellent system in place for regular cadence check ins. They do a weekly check-in as a whole team. Some of that time is spent on the shared database, the rest of that time is spent on other shared aspects of their work.

And then we also have a monthly users group meeting where we talk about how both teams are using the system. This is where if there’s system changes that a particular team member wants to make this is where that discussion happens And really helps to, continue to generate that trust and relationship building. It provides another avenue of shared expertise and it helps to ensure that the system is being changed and maintained in a way that is working for both teams.

So we covered quite a bit. As a refresher there is a webinar recommendation, for the concept of shared partnerships and different sort of scenarios of how you might share or enter into partnership around a collections management system.

We talked about the specific reasons for why the state of Utah chose a shared CMS approach.

We then got into the details of it with the partnership requirements. So thinking through trust and protocols and how those show up and helping to build and maintain catalog cohesion, the blended best practices, where those are more typical or where they’re required.

We then had a moment where we talked about the partnership specifically with the art and history components, how they are two different collecting entities and different collection data, and how they were able to blend that together.

We reviewed aggregates which is a functionality within Argives and is likely a functionality maybe called by different names and different systems but something for you to think about in terms of leveraging to help maintain the individualism of the museum but providing ultimately the flexible connections and cross searchability of your data.

We got into a discussion of removing barriers and connecting collections, how aggregates helps to support that, and ultimately really a powerful tool for partnership of two museums in the same database.

We got into the security piece, which of course is a critical piece from, being a challenge and risk to think about and address proactively, but also how using security and the functionality around it can help to enforce the partitioning of data in a way that maintains data integrity as well as data security.

And having that security piece helped to continue the trust element, helped to continue the trust and relationship building of the different teams, as well as making sure that the data is working together in appropriate ways for collection discovery.

Which we then drew all together with the essential points for a blueprint for shared system success. So a lot of things to think through. And of course anytime you’re choosing a collections management system, even if it’s just for you, there are many things to consider as you implement. And so even more so when you’re entering in with a partner into a shared CMS system. So lots of things to think about. It’s one of those sort of high work, high, labor to think about but high rewards. So ultimately very worth the investment in this case.

Before I leave you, the most recent book collaboration has come out courtesy of Lucidea Press. They’re offering free e copies of Delight Your Dynamic Digital Storytelling. This particular book was very fun to write. It does focus on using our online collections, so very appropriate if you’re thinking about your collections management system and ultimately user discovery. So please feel free pick up an e copy, again courtesy of Lucidea.

And with that I’ll hand it back over to you Bradley.

Thank you, Rachel, for the wonderful presentation. And to our audience, if you would like to learn more about our museum collections management system called ARGUS, please feel free to visit our website or reach out to us at sales@lucidea.com, and we would be happy to have a chat with you.

If you have any more questions on any of our software or our company, our contact details are listed on the screen and please stay tuned for more webinars and content related to this series.

On behalf of the Lucidea team, I thank you all for attending today and until next time. Thank you.