Institutional Use Cases and Scenarios

The following institutional use cases represent the range of institutions that the Advancing OpenCollection project seeks to serve.  This document is a draft intended to encourage discussion among the project team members to confirm the key goals of the project.

Institution Use Case 1: Small Museum

According to the American Association of Museums (AAM), there are approximately 12,000 small museums across the country.  Several of these institutions have already implemented OpenCollection and one of the goals of this effort is to ensure that others have the opportunity to do so as well.  To support the discussions at the Community Design Workshops, we will adopt the AAM's Small Museum Administrator Committee definition of a small museum. 

A small museum is defined by three key attributes:
•    It has a combined annual budget of $350,000 or less.
•    It has a staff size of 5 or fewer.
•    One or more staff members has the responsibility of one or more roles within the museum (i.e., curator/volunteer coordinator, development director/IT expert,  educator/exhibit designer).

This museum uses technology primarily for communication purposes, i.e., to correspond with donors, respond to inquiries by researchers, teachers, students; produce and send newsletters.  In addition, it uses technology to program the museum building and manage volunteers.  The information ecology of this museum has attributes such as limited technical expertise, re-purposed hardware, frequently no dedicated hardware, minimal or no network connectivity, basic security and back-up capabilities, and minimal annual budget for projects that involve technology. This museum has a web site and highlights collections, artifacts, specimens, and objects through an online exhibit or 'featured artifact' page. Collections management activities are carried out by core staff with volunteers playing a significant role with regard to cataloging and documentation activities.  Inventories and acquisition files are maintained in paper files as are donor records, unless Word or Excel or another off-the-shelf software application such as Access or FoxPro or FileMaker Pro has been purchased and implemented for this purpose.  This museum may have purchased a collections management system or one was developed for them by a volunteer or staff member.

Institution Use Case 2: Medium Size Museum

The Museum of the Moving Image is the model for this scenario.  It is an institution with a staff size of between ten and fifty, some of whom have technical expertise.  This museum relies on outside resources to help it accomplish its technology objectives.  For example, this museum might have its web site developed, managed, and hosted off site; it may have a donor management system, it may produce its own publications, and it has an active curatorial and educational program.  This museum already has a collections management system, and at least one full time professional staff member devoted to collections management.  The existing collections management application is likely to be either 1. a system developed in-house over a period of years, 2. a turnkey system purchased from a commercial vendor, or 3. a recently implemented version of OpenCollection. This museum has already put some of its collections information online but wants to increase its online offerings and provide better access for research, education, exhibitions, etc. Existing technical staff and resources are dedicated but stretched to the limit.

Institution Use Case 3: University setting with Multiple Museums

The museums on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley are the example for this scenario.  These museums represent a variety of disciplines including fine art, anthropology, natural science, library special collections, scholarly collections, media arts, performing arts, teaching collections, decorative arts, textiles, ceramics, etc.  These museums have very different needs based on the disciplines they represent, their use in an academic setting, and in the local community setting, the institutional rules that govern collecting, lending, exhibiting, and access practices, and in the size and scope of staff and program activities. 

All of these museums have access to a central University IT staff yet many have a dedicated IT staff as well.  The central IT staff set campus-wide standards, develop services that are used throughout campus, and recommend, and in some cases mandate prescribed approaches to the use of technology.  Infrastructure capabilities are unevenly distributed.  For example, the campus network might be excellent in one building and very poor in another. Many of these museums have multiple systems for collections management, silo databases that are organized based on department or discipline.  These applications also include legacy systems (systems purchased or developed over ten years ago).  Others of these institutions maintain a combination of commercial and in-house developed systems, and still others are in the process of implementing OpenCollection.  Many of these museums have already begun to digitize their collections and make them available online.  These museums exist to support research, teaching and public outreach activities.  Towards that end, volunteers, scholars, researchers, and students, all contribute to the documentation held by the museums about their collections. 

Institution Use Case 4: Large Museum

The information ecology of the large museum most closely resembles the academic profile above. Comprised of fewer than 10% of museums in the United States, the members of this group have annual budgets greater than $5 million and over fifty full-time professional staff members.  This museum tends to have in-house technical staff skilled in network administration, website design and maintenance, and programming. These institutions frequently have technological solutions for each administrative unit, i.e., finance, development, retail sales, collections management, digital asset management, web publishing, publications, etc.. These solutions are likely purchased from large commercial vendors, and then customized. In addition to the solutions found across business units, many large museums may also have multiple instances of their collections management systems across curatorial departments. Because of their size and organizational structure, technological change, and standardization can sometimes be difficult to accomplish at large institutions. Calls for increased access to collection information and the creation of online exhibits can lead to a blurring of lines between curatorial, IT, collections, and educational staff.