Can a Museum be Too Small, Large, or Weird for a CMS?

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Rachael Cristine Woody. My name is Bradley, and I will be your moderator for this webinar titled can a museum be too small, large, or weird for a CMS?

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 would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter, Rachel Christine Woody. Rachael 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 Lucidea’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, Rachael.

Great. Thank you so much, Bradley. Thank you to Lucidea for hosting us today, and, of course, thank you all for joining us. Today’s topic is going to be, a fun and lighthearted one. It’s essentially a frequently asked questions version of when museums are at a point where they feel like they might be ready for a museum collections management system, but there might be aspects of their museum, their collection, their staff, their budget that they may be concerned about or may have questions about in terms of whether it’s appropriate to be shopping for a CMS. So for us today we’re going to cover aspects of a museum that can be too small and some things to look out for when you have, either collections or staff or budget that are too small.

We’ll also cover the opposite, which is aspects of a museum that can be too large. So too large in terms of collection or data or staff.

And then aspects of a museum that can be too weird. And I tend to get this portion of the question the most from museums because, of course, all of our collections can be so different. Our setups can be different. There can be different security requirements, for example.

So there can be so many different challenges to consider at a museum and the particular setup in place that may seem like a barrier for acquiring a collections management system. But there’s some creative ways we can think about it, and there’s also so many great robust CMS products out there now that really there’s quite a few options for any one thing. And the restrictions that used to be in place are certainly not as restrictive or prohibitive as they were ten or twenty years ago. So let’s get into it.

So aspects of a museum that can be too small. There’s a few different ways a museum can be considered small. Usually first at least top of my mind is if the collection size is really small and this is more the case if you’re a, more localized, perhaps a community museum or historical society. This can also be present if you’re a collection in a nontraditional area. So for example, if you’re a part of a company that’s been around for more than a century and over that century you’ve accumulated artifacts and archives. And so while your company, the primary organization may not be a museum or archive, you have now found yourself with a museum type collection. And so there are many aspects of which, like, a too small can occur.

And when people are shopping for CMS or if they’re thinking that they may be ready or that their jobs may be easier to finally have a collections management system in place, sometimes the concern is that the collection size is too small to quote unquote warrant a working database.

And for this, there are so many great options now, especially options that are off the shelf that can have the functionality that would benefit your work and the collections, but at a very budget friendly price that would reflect perhaps the smaller size of your collection.

So in this day and age and certainly currently, there are several, at least half a dozen excellent off the shelf products where collection sizes that are small are excellent matches for.

And I would encourage you, even if you think you might be a little too small, the moment you start wanting to capture data or starting to gather data, that is the moment where it would be so handy to have a database in place.

If you’re not quite ready or a database is not in your future, then even having a spreadsheet can be helpful. So the whole point being as you’re getting that data, having somewhere to store it, knowing that eventually you are heading towards a collections management system.

So size is not the limiting factor it used to be and especially not from like a budget to collection size ratio.

Another aspect of perhaps the the too small is the data size. So similar to collection size, perhaps you only have a little bit of data or perhaps you’ve not even been, for previous reasons, no, current collecting of data just yet, but you are embarking on that journey.

And similar to your smaller collection, having database as soon as possible once you start professionalizing the collection, the sooner the better. But if you have to wait a little bit, having that spreadsheet in the interim can be quite a time saver and a place to stash your data knowing that it can eventually make its way into a collections management system.

So, similarly, having that data size with budget ratio with the off the shelf options is not the limiter or quite as prohibitive as it used to be.

The other aspect of being too small can be a budgetary aspect. And so for a lot of smaller and modest sized museums, and especially as most museums tend to be more of a nonprofit arena, budgets are always tight. And so in previous time, collections management systems, especially any that would have all of the functionality we would desire, used to be too cost prohibitive, expensive for us.

In these last even just few years now, we have not only seen an increase in different collections management system options, but we’ve also seen a cost economy occur with these options. So they’re becoming more affordable.

Part of that is because some of our larger, collections management system vendors have a off the shelf product of their larger product that could be further customized. So there’s sort of two different offerings of a similar type platform. One is off the shelf, very little configuration. One is the big robust. You can implement it and configure to your heart’s desire.

So the budget for you, depending on what that is and, of course, other specifications you may have, the budget size, if you are on the smaller end, going for an off the shelf can actually be quite affordable.

And for our last aspect of perhaps being too small is some concerns of the staff size being too small. And for a lot of museums, they may be entirely volunteer based or predominantly volunteer based.

And in these instances, there can be a concern maybe at the board level of, well, if we get a collections management system in, but all we have are volunteers, they may not know or be able to use the collections management system that we bought, which is a very valid concern. You don’t want to invest in technology that perhaps can’t be utilized to the intended extent by the staff in place or the volunteers in place.

The collections management systems, so many of them have gotten so much better.

The cheapest software that used to be so popular ten years ago used to be the most prohibitive to use.

And now we’re seeing so many more fresh options that are very user friendly, and several of them can even be geared towards or configured towards being more supportive in a volunteer or a non nonprofessional helping to enter in that data. So there are easier to use softwares. There’s also functionality and guardrails to put in place to help support successful and appropriate inputting of data into your system.

And those all tend to be included in the the base functionality of these products out there. So the key for small museums, especially knowing that the general sense is that resources are tight, is shopping across the products and looking for software that is easy to use and that comes off the shelf because that will help solve some of the resource constraint problems, but it will also help be supportive of an already small staff with smaller budget resources be able to use the CMS to the extent that they need or wish to.

Alright. Opposite side of the spectrum here, can a museum be too large? This one from technical perspective was quite a constraint even ten years ago.

And it can also be something to still consider in terms of cost. So there are a couple different ways a museum could be too large across these aspects and I’ll walk you through how in each of these bullets.

So being too large for a collection size.

This means the hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of artifacts, which can have an indication of data size, which we’ll get into separately because there’s a few different things we need to be aware of with data size. But for collection size, that’s sort of the first thing I hear from museums or a consortium of museums where conceptually, when you’re talking of that many types of objects, it can seem too large. Like, it can seem incomprehensible to be able to fit that many objects into one system.

And at least for us, the benefit is is that this seems to be more of a conceptual problem. And especially now that collections management systems are so robust, the amount of items one has, number isn’t as consequential. What I will highlight though is when you do have collections that are that large, there’s going to be functionality that is more important perhaps to you. And I’m thinking more of the sheer functionality of collections management and, in particular, location control, inventory, and even auditing. So our concern as humans is that it’s too large and it can seem incomprehensible to manage.

And yes, but only in the sense of you will have more importance on shopping for functionality that helps with that management piece. So it’s not a barrier to you getting into a CMS, but it is definitely something to highlight as a specification for when you go shopping for your CMS.

Now getting to the collection data size piece of it, this did used to be a technical constraint.

Museum, well, databases in general, once you have reached a certain data size or once we started adding also digital assets and you hit a certain, scale of asset and size, it could really bog down the system.

And now with technology being as great as it is, now with collections being in the cloud and Internet being as good as it is, the actual data size has no bearing essentially as far as we can perceive really on the performance of your collections management system. What it can still have a bearing on is the cost. And, of course, every collections management system and every vendor does their pricing a little differently. So what you want to look for then as a museum that may have a very large dataset is if the products you are shopping for base at least some of their pricing on the total amount of data, and digital file storage.

So this may matter less with data size because data can be relatively small, but it will matter more with your digital assets, especially if you are combining, as many of us do, into our collections management system. And so data size can impact cost of the system you choose, but that’s about the extent of that impact. No impact on performance.

The other aspect that can be too large is staff size. And this main concern, it’s similar to collection size where you just the problem as in human brains it can be like is so large we can’t quite conceptually figure out how we meet the different needs and restrictions that need to be in place. Which means it’s less about the number of staff and more about our concern of needing to set up appropriate security groups and user permissions.

So what you will want to look for here is functionality that is specifically geared around permissions and the nuances of being able to divide that into controlling of some different security groups. For example, maybe you have a whole team dedicated to accessions. Perhaps you have, your mounting and installation team that need to access exhibition object stuff. So needing specific staff to have very specific access to only certain areas of your database.

And then having that additional cross layer of not every user is the same in terms of permissions because in any one of those areas you may have administrative level staff that need administrative level permissions or you may have entry level staff that just need to be able to have, like, a read only permission. So we’re looking at different, in a few different ways, different cross sections of where that user security group with user permissions meets.

And that is actually the key concern here when staff is so large is needing that finite control and variation in what security use and permissions can look like.

For more, like off the shelf software depending on the vendor you go with, if you go with a vendor that also offers larger full suite software the, functionality of security and user permissions is usually baked in and nicely included with your off the shelf piece.

Smaller vendors that may only offer that their one software and it’s naturally off the shelf, you may find some limitations in the variety of security groups and permissions. They it’s still present. Functionality is still present, but just be really careful to make sure that the software you choose will meet those very specific staff concerns.

And for the fun one, and the question I get most often is if a museum can be too weird for a collections management system. And short answer is no. If you are collecting something, then you can have a collections management system. My favorite example is you could be a museum of rubber bands and if you are collecting information and if you are administering collections management and care then a collections management system is appropriate for you. So for our first bullet, the collection type, the main concern we want to think about here in translating it to specification is looking for functionality that supports the data entry and the data use and management that is important to you and your collection type.

Perhaps a more helpful than rubber bands example are archaeological collections, for example. Those can be a little bit more common, especially as pockets of a larger collection, but have some very specific types of data and some very specific ways that we want to manage that data for archaeological type collections. And so it’s identifying what your collection types are and what those specific needs are in terms of functionality and data capture for your collection type.

Any kind of software out there now can offer use of fields that aren’t previously assigned. Many software vendors offer relabeling or field creation, even changing field types. So you’ve got quite a bit of flexibility now especially in our options today to meet and customize or at least a little bit of configuration to your collection type.

Another way to be too weird is the security requirements aspect. We talked a little bit about user security groups and user permissions and our is our is staff too large considerations.

That all stands.

Where it can get a little weird though with security requirements and what is becoming perhaps more common are museums and even archives partnering with different nonprofits or different community groups that want access to parts of the collections in that collections management system. And this can look like a couple different ways.

One aspect or one scenario could be a museum that’s partnered with a cultural group. Some of those cultural artifacts are in the museum. The museum and community groups formed partnership and the cultural group wants to be able to see and access aspects and data of those objects that aren’t necessarily available to the public, perhaps for cultural sensitivity reasons.

There could be a variety of reasons why the objects may be in the database but not necessarily freely available online. So there can be ways to facilitate access for just that group who aren’t staff, and so we may not want to grant editing permissions, for example, and who still need to access that data even if it’s not published online for the public. And so being able to have more nuanced approach to having those items available online but not publicly.

Another way this can look is where the community group that you’re partnered with is more active. And actually, we do want them to help collaborate in data creation revision. And so being able to grant them in this case, user permissions and ability to access that data in a way where you’ve both agreed to to be able to edit that without being a staff member.

Now depending on the security setup at your museum in general, this may require non CMS stuff in terms of assigning them like a security single sign on and then connecting that SSO, for example, with whichever product you have chosen.

So many collections management systems now partner with museums and have to work with that SSO anyway. So it’s just sort of a two step for you to keep in mind as a museum that if you’re having an outside staff person in your data, you’ll need to set up security on your end and also making sure that security is appropriately set up with your vendor in the collections management system that you’ve chosen.

And then as we think of communities of users, nuance to this and sort of most common example that I’ve been seeing over the last few years is an example of museums perhaps being under a broader, apparatus. So muse museums that may be under a larger university, museums or archives that might be under a larger corporation. So they’re not the the primary. Like, we’re a museum, and that’s all we do here.

And their collections are naturally actually created by but also used predominantly by whatever their larger apparatus is. So predominantly used more by university, for example, or predominantly used more by the corporation and the people who work there. And so in this case, it’s everybody is staff of the university, for example, but we wanna have different, access here. And so similar to the cultural group I had mentioned and security requirements to consider, there can be a flavor of that for your community of users.

And so while everyone is staff, we can similarly leverage who are the roles and user groups that can access everything and edit everything versus who are the community of users where they can only access things and maybe it’s only specific things. So there’s quite a level of flexibility for these sort of nontraditional museums or nontraditional partnerships that can support these now really beautiful and really unique applications of different communities or different areas or affinity groups of our collections data, which is, of course, the whole reason why we do this. Right? Help to take care of the collection so that it can be used and enjoyed.

And it is fortunate for us that collections management systems predominantly have caught up to help support us in providing these areas of access responsibly.

So we’ve covered aspects of a museum that could be too small and how that is not a barrier to getting a collections management system but it can, help to reveal some of the limitations that translate to functionality that we want to make sure we shop for in a museum CMS.

Similarly, looked at that opposite end of the spectrum of a museum being too large and how that can have some similar to too small but very different sort of functionality requirements that we want to think about and translate into specifications.

And then we had some fun with thinking about how a museum can be too weird. So covering how a museum can be too weird perhaps collection type wise, but ultimately anything we collect and are stewards of deserves a collections management system. And overall, how we can help, support and provide appropriate security and access to our community of users and those who help us steward these collections.

I have a few resources for you because, of course, this was just like a a dip into a few different FAQ areas. But if you want more support, the first one being helping to remove any barriers or challenges, especially if you’re new in choosing a collections management system for the first time. We have a couple of different blog posts. So one talking about barriers that we can remove to help get to a CMS. If you’re curious more about what off the shelf means and where to even begin to find off the shelf software, we have a blog post to help walk you through that, as well as a follow-up post in terms of what to look for as you shop for things. If you’re just starting to think about functionality and specifications, this is a great place to start.

And then how to sell that off the shelf, system to your boss, which can be helpful whether or not they’re thinking off the shelf. If it’s just like needing to sell a CMS to your boss in general, this can be very helpful.

And then if you are considering working with a consultant to help you do the shopping and implementation process, there’s a blog post that talks about what that can look like, which can be helpful for those who are perhaps short staffed or short on time and yet really need to get a better CMS in place.

And before I leave you, I am partnering with Lucidea. They are offering a free e copy of one of my books, How to Select, Buy, and Use a Museum CMS.

This book is a great primer especially if you’ve never been through the collections management system procurement process before. It starts at the very beginning from how to find and craft your specifications, helps guide you through what to look for, what to shop for, all the way through the selection and implementation process. So if it’s been a minute or if you’re completely new to shopping for CMS, I highly recommend you pick up a copy.

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

Thank you, Rachael, for the wonderful presentation. And if you’d 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’d 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.