Melanie Rowntree, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK

Object Information at the Victoria and Albert Museum: Successes and Failures in Web Delivery

Keywords: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, online collections

With the V&A’s first database-driven, object information interface on the web entering its second year of delivery, this paper reviews the Museum's history of presenting collections data online. Looking at four projects, namely Images Online, British Galleries Online, Exploring Photography and Access to Images, this paper discusses their aims, planning and content creation. The successes and failures within each project and the potential for re-purposing data are also considered.

Images Online

Aims

Images Online was the V&A’s first attempt at web delivery of its collections data, featuring over 1,500 objects and images. The development of this web resource falls into two phases. The first phase of the project was instigated by V&A senior management who perceived a need for images of the collections to be accessible via the Museum's website. Senior management staff who drove the project were keen to make this happen within a matter of months. One of the main aims of the first phase was to have Images Online ready for the launch of the new V&A website in late 1999. The aim of the second phase was to slightly re-package the same content as part of another new V&A site designed in house in 2001.

Images Online focused on image delivery rather than textual content. The project primarily aimed to deliver basic object information, such as the place, date and artist/maker attribution for over 1,500 of the important objects in the collection.

Deliverables

There is little documentation available on the development of the Images Online web interface. The specifications from Oyster Partners, who designed the 1999 V&A website, show an intention to search by category and not to provide free text searching (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Specification from Oyster Partners for the Images Online interface.

It is possible that the screen shot in Fig. 1 is the final specification for the web page. This, however, cannot be verified because the archived pages from the 1999-2000, Oyster-designed V&A website are inaccessible. Images Online is unavailable on all web archiving pages and in-house archiving of the V&A website had not been instigated at that time.

By phase 2 of Images Online, free-text searching and browsing were available (Fig. 2). It is unclear whether free-text searching was added to the specification illustrated in Fig. 1 and delivered in the first phase, or added to the redesigned search screen in phase 2. In both phases users were able to search by associated place, a time line or by classification. It is unclear, however, whether the Associated Name field was present in the initial interface and removed in phase 2. It is possible that the relevant field was not populated with sufficient data to justify this search.

Fig. 2. Images Online interface from V&A website launched in 2001.

Planning and Content Creation

Images Online was first delivered on the web in 1999, yet it is now virtually impossible to find any evidence of project planning and little information is available on the project overall. It is possible that formal content creation plans never existed.

Content creation began with a set of primary images being chosen by curators from the Photo Catalogue (the V&A image database). This system was used as the source because the necessary image content was not yet available from the Museum’s Collections Information System (CIS, based on the MUSIMS database from System Simulation Ltd). CIS had been the primary repository for textual object information since 1998. By 1999 the system had just entered phase 2 of its four-phase development. At that time it held little electronic content, included no images, and was not yet capable of delivering object information to the web. Textual object data in CIS was reasonably scant when Images Online was proposed. This left senior management with the choice either to wait several years for completion of CIS' phases 3 and 4 and the subsequent creation of 1,500 catalogue records, or to look elsewhere for object data. They decided to take the object data from the Photo Catalogue, which contains brief and unfortunately unauthoritative object information associated with images of the objects.

In the initial stages of Images Online’s development, object data was exported from the Photo Catalogue into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. As the object information in the Photo Catalogue was not authoritative, it was important that the spreadsheet be checked and, if necessary, corrected by curators to ensure its accuracy. The whole project took two to three months and was, during that time, an absolute priority for curatorial staff. The impending deadline reduced the amount of time curators were given to check the accuracy of the 1,500 object entries to between just four and six weeks. Although many amendments were made to the data, some errors remained at the time curators were told to hand back the content for loading. Consequently when the site went live and errors were apparent, curators felt uneasy about claiming ownership of the information.

In terms of the technical delivery of the site for phase 1, the MS Excel spreadsheet containing the data was converted into a small MySQL database, a light version of an SQL database which is frequently used for the web and which works in a similar way to any spreadsheet.

No content was planned or created for phase 2 of the project. As stated, data was re-presented through an interface designed by a new Web Team (employed after the original team left in 2000).

Issues

In phase 1 there were a number of issues which negatively affected the outcome of the project. First, the lack of project planning led to the presentation of inaccurate data. Second, technical problems with the Oyster V&A website launched in 1999 meant that data was essentially locked into the website once loaded. Third, Images Online was powered by the Media Surface content management system, which did not run the searches very effectively, delivering unexpected result sets.

In phase 2 the new Web Team had no site documentation and were left with the job of unpicking a piece of software which they had no experience of. While preparing for the launch of the new website in November 2001, the Web Team rebuilt the navigation for V&A website. They managed to export and then re-import the Images Online data and finally clean up some of the problems, such as images attached to the wrong objects and obviously incorrect data. At this stage the new Web Team were working towards a very tight deadline for the launch of the new website in November 2001. No assistance was available from curatorial staff who were committed to delivering the British Galleries re-display and material for the British Galleries Online interactive display.

Conclusions

Looking back on the project it now seems clear that although putting object information on the web was an important step for the V&A, the lack of time and resources allowed for content creation negatively affected the success of the project. Senior management placed the delivery of the web material as their priority and for this reason, did not allow time for planning how the project would be achieved. Data consistency was undermined by the decision to reuse existing but unreliable object data without either allotting time for a thorough clean-up or using terminology controls. Images Online was locked into the V&A website as static web pages, thus restricting any data re-purposing. Before Images Online was removed from the V&A website to make way for a new object information and image delivery site, documentation staff were forced to re-key the information from an MS Excel spreadsheet of material into CIS in order to save any valuable data. These implications were not anticipated when planning the content creation.

British Galleries Online (BGO)

Aims

The British Galleries was a seven-year gallery refurbishment programme encompassing more than 15 rooms over two floors of the V&A. The project generated about 200 high-tech, low-tech and no-tech interactive gallery displays including 18 web-based interpretative applications served to 40 kiosks.¹ The British Galleries Online (BGO) was the largest and most complex of the gallery interactives. The main aim of the BGO was to provide detailed object information and broader contextual information for every object in the British Galleries. The BG project team intended to provide a personal, educational experience through BGO, encouraging visitors to engage in an exploratory relationship with the objects in the collection. The BGO was scheduled to be delivered simultaneously in the gallery study rooms and on the new V&A website in November 2001.

Deliverables

The project team wanted to deliver a database of 3,000 objects containing additional contextual information such as biographies, object type and place descriptions. The British Galleries Online would allow the visitor to approach objects via associated text on either the four main gallery themes: ‘style’, ‘who led taste’, ‘fashionable living’ and ‘what was new’, or four additional themes: ‘timeline’, ‘place’ ‘people’ and ‘types of object’ (Fig. 3). Linked text and a selection of stories about how objects were used in daily life would be available on the BGO , as well as a free text and field-specific searching of object records. In addition, associated media files would be attached to individual object records in the database. Interpretation of individual object records would be detailed and suitably worded for public access, providing contextual information about what the object was for and how it was used (Fig. 4).

Fig. 3. British Galleries Online Homepage.

Fig. 4. British Galleries Online Object Record.

Planning and Content Creation

The development of the twenty hi-tech British Galleries interactives was planned to occur in three main phases: prototyping, full development and acceptance/ commissioning.² In the ‘prototyping’ phase, seven proposed prototypes were chosen to represent a selection of the final twenty. Each of the BG team members took responsibility for explaining in seminars and workshops the concept and content of one of the seven interactive displays to Oyster, who had been chosen as external service providers for the BG interactives,. The Multimedia Manager for the project then gathered all the knowledge gained during initial prototyping to develop final specifications for all the gallery interactives, including the BGO . The BG project team defined the final content for the BGO and prepared a detailed schedule for the final development. In the second phase, ‘full development’, the V&A began preparation for the final content.

Content creation was managed by a BGO Content Manager, who was appointed 18 months before the project was to be delivered. Over 700,000 words of text were created for the BGO by more than 70 authors and edited by six editors. In addition 25,000 images were generated. These were prepared off-site, under the management of the Multimedia Manager. Creation of the BGO content ran from September 2000 to November 2001. Content was planned to be delivered in four phases which corresponded to the four gallery themes. Editing work developed for the project was delegated to the editors, divided in a similar way by gallery subject and themes.

Gallery construction delays compressed a planned six-month equipment installation and commissioning into just six weeks for all twenty gallery interactives. For this reason acceptance was necessary before final software completion and the BGO had to be tested over the V&A intranet rather than in the galleries to check content and functionality.

Issues

The British Galleries database (BGd), which feeds the British Galleries Online interactive, was designed primarily as a project database. Initially the design of the BGd did not match the proposed BGO interface in terms of content collection and generation. Although the BGO interface was designed to give access to individual object records through the four gallery themes and four additional themes, no authority records existed in the BGd for these contextual texts. Further, the texts (on individual styles, places, people and object types) had no way of linking to the 3,000 object records. For this reason no relationship could be made between the object records and contextual data in the authority records (i.e. chairs as types of furniture). A lack of content management control within the database, e.g. controlled fields to note when record text had been edited, was another issue. The partial redesign and expansion of the BGd, instigated by the BGO Content Manager, ensured that each of these issues was resolved as authority records for contextual text and authority controlled fields were added to the system.

The interactive displays were initially not designed to be web-compatible. When the proposed conversion cost exceeded the budget for the BG project, it became impossible to deliver the BGO or any of the other interactives on the new V&A website in 2001. Some of the interactives have subsequently been converted (e.g. Style Guides), however no funding is currently available to convert the BGO and, for the time being, the core object information data is being hosted on the SCRAN website (www.scran.ac.uk)³ as well as delivered via the V&A Access to Images site.

Conclusions

All the British Galleries interactive displays have been incredibly successful. A public evaluation study conducted six months after delivery showed that 69 per cent of all visitors used one or more interactive area and 64 per cent of these considered that they had increased their appreciation of the objects on display. The project as a whole also received a BAFTA nomination for the ‘Best use of Multimedia for Education purposes’. Considering this success it is unfortunate that the full visitor experience of the BGO is unavailable on the V&A website at present. It is also unfortunate that although much of the data within the BGd was re-purposed by loading it into the Museum’s Collections Information System (CIS), this data transfer has been a lengthy procedure. The time consuming edit of some 2,400 records by Documentation staff and the re-keying of data for the 300 records rejected from the load indicate that compatibility with CIS could have been considered more carefully when planning content creation for the project.

Exploring Photography

Aims

The V&A holds the national collection of the art of photography, which comprises 300,000 photographs dating from 1839 to the present. From May 1998 for five years, Canon sponsored a photography gallery which was the showcase for this collection. Canon also sponsored the creation of an interactive for the new gallery. The development of this interactive fell into two phases. The first phase began in 1998 and the second in 2002. This paper describes each phase separately.

The primary aims of the 1998 project team were to deliver an interactive that would show the diversity of the photography collection and provide an alternative perspective on the history of the art of photography. Other aims included a desire to give access to a greater range of images, to supply layers of detail and to give visitors the opportunity to choose the type of information of interest to them. One perceived need for the project was the introduction of a non-‘curatorial’ interpretative voice, to encourage visitors to feel confident in their own responses.

Building on the 1998 work, the aims of the 2002 project team were to convert existing content into a format suitable for hosting on the V&A website and to deliver it through a browser in the Photography Gallery. This was proposed in order to make the content accessible to a greater number of people and to encourage web users to visit the V&A. The intention was to put the same, or a slightly edited, version of the original program on the web. The project team aimed to simplify structure and navigation for the user without reducing the quantity of content, as well as enhancing that content with additional information.

Deliverables

The main deliverable of the first phase (1998) was a touch screen kiosk offering three different routes to audio interpretation of selected photographs. In the first section, ‘Guided Tours’, visitors would be able to choose from twelve audio tours from different interpreters ranging from young adults and school children to photographers, musicians, journalists and V&A curators. The second section, ‘Theme Tours’, would allow visitors to choose collections of photographs by themes such as architecture, fashion and landscape. The last section, ‘Photographers’ Stories’, was intended to focus less on the individual photographs and instead offer visitors a chance to hear photographers talking about their work while viewing a selection of photographs by each of the four artists.

In the second phase (2002) the project team decided to deliver a mainly text-based interface, replacing audio and video with text transcriptions. This was proposed to enable a more user-friendly interface that would allow the user to approach photographs through five sections or themes. These included the three original sections (‘Guided Tours, ‘Theme Tours’ and ‘Photographers’ Stories’) and two additional sections (‘Photographers’ and ‘Photographic Processes’) (Fig. 5). An extensive search facility was also planned as well as mouse, rather than touch screen, browsing. The look of the proposed microsite was also to be updated.

Fig. 5. Exploring Photography Homepage.

Planning and Content Creation

In the first phase of the project curators from the V&A Photography Section and staff from the Education Department conducted a gallery survey asking visitors what they wanted to see in the kiosks. Using this input they produced a route map of how the project was going to work, which was set down in around two weeks by curators and educators. Digital Arts (a subsidiary of Cannon’s PR company the Sure Group) were hired to deliver the product.

Content was created by both curators in Photography Section and a dedicated project staff member, who was hired for six months (using Canon funding). The main body of caption content (photographers’ names, work titles and dates, and photographic techniques) was taken from books, departmental records and gallery labels. Audio and film content was generated by taking some 300 colour transparencies and recording the responses to this material by various groups, from school children to art historians. This resulted in eight hours of audio and film data recorded for presentation in two identical kiosks.

In the second phase of the project, work was planned based on a 1999 gallery survey made after the installation of the kiosks in the Photography gallery. The survey results reinforced the success of the project and were useful in that they highlighted the fact that visitors responded well to the kiosks and found them easy to use. The results also showed that visitors found the sound quality poor. This was one of the issues addressed in the project planning. The second phase of the project was again planned by the curators in conjunction with the Online Museum web team.

Data was extracted from the kiosks by Cognitive Applications, who re-designed the interactive displays. (Digital Arts were out of business at this stage and V&A staff did not have the expertise to work with the Director software used for the Digital Arts kiosks.) Cognitive Applications provided transcripts of the audio and film, while the caption information (photographers’ names, work titles and dates and photographic techniques) was re-keyed into an MS Excel spreadsheet by Photography Section staff.

The additional content for the second phase (artists’ dates and museum numbers, which were added to the Excel spreadsheet) and the copyright checking was completed in four to five months. Two Photography Section staff shared the work. One member of staff also spent three weeks editing the audio transcriptions and adding two additional routes into the information through a section on photography techniques and a list of photographers. These sections had existed in the previous kiosk, but were accessible only through the object records and not on the home page of the website. Caption information (i.e. the data in the Excel spreadsheet) was also delivered to the web via a MySQL database.

Issues

There were very few issues affecting the success of the Exploring Photography project in both phases 1 and 2. Free text searching, which was originally intended but not added to the site, would have enhanced the users’ browsing capabilities and led them more quickly to the information they were looking for. It is also important to note that because the terminology was not controlled, the data were neither completely consistent nor accurate throughout. Attaining copyright permission for web use of images and text was time consuming and some artists refused permission to re-purpose the material associated with them on the new web version. Project staff wanted to deliver the web version in the Photography Gallery and so this material was excluded.

Conclusions

Exploring Photography has been one of the V&A’s success stories. Survey results from 1999 (before the web delivery of the project) show that in most cases users found the kiosks easy to use, that they enhanced the visitor experience and helped users to discover something new. Visitor responses to the re-worked 2003 interactive display and microsite have not yet been measured, but as the essential elements from the 1999 kiosks remain unchanged, it seems likely that they will continue to be well received.

Unfortunately, as with Images Online and to a much lesser extent British Galleries Online, the potential to create easily re-purposable data for the 2003 Exploring Photography web browser was not realised. The project time-scale for the redevelopement of the kiosks (May 2002-March 2003) ran parallel with project planning and content creation for the Access to Images project. Data could have been entered into CIS and exported to the MS Excel spreadsheet, creating parallel, web-ready Access to Images catalogue records. Unfortunately Documentation staff were forced to re-key this data into CIS, essentially duplicating the work already done by Photography Section staff.

Access to Images

Aims

The aim of the Access to Images project was to deliver object information and images to the web for initially 10,000 objects in the V&A collections and a further 10,000 the following year. The number of objects to be delivered was agreed with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as part of the V&A’s funding agreement for 2002-2003. The project was organised to deliver the first tranche of object records by April 2003. The second target of a total of 20,000 records online by 2004 was also agreed as part of the V&A’s funding agreement. The project intended to create a fully-searchable site, delivering high-quality object information to an easy-to-use web interface. Having learned from previous projects, staff planning Access to Images were careful that data be derived from primary source systems. A longer-term aim of the project was to associate the object records with wider contextual information (such as artist biographies, explanations of object types/usage and subject).

Deliverables

The project planned to deliver data directly from CIS. The CIS database has the capability to run a search through all the available fields (free text searching) as well as searching in specific fields. The interface would offer this search capability to web users (Fig. 6). Two different search screens, a simple and an advanced search, were provided. Once retrieved through a search, object images would appear in a ‘lightbox’ format from which the user could select individual object records to examine in detail. As with the BGO , the interpretation of individual objects would offer detailed information to users. A small selection of CIS data elements would be provided, including artist/designer name, dates, dimensions, techniques, etc. along with the free text description of the object. This descriptive text would be worded suitably for public access, providing contextual information about an object’s form and function, as well as why it is interesting or important (Fig. 7).

Fig. 6. Access to Images Advanced Search screen.

Fig. 7. Access to Images Individual Object Record.

Planning and Content Creation

Project planning for Access to Images began with a project proposal to the V&A Management Board outlining the scope and purpose of the project, the objectives and the three main sections of the project: image/data quality, technical approach and resources/timescale. This proposal was prepared by the Director of Learning & Interpretation, Head of V&A Enterprises, Head of Information Systems Services, Head of Records and Collections Services, Head of Photography and Picture Library and the Director of Collections Services, and was approved by the Management Board in June 2002. After an initial meeting of the project team in July 2002, the team was divided into two planning groups: a Technical Group, which decided the technical issues and requirements for the project (interface design, field selection, image standards and authority-assisted searching) and a Content Group, which defined content requirements and issues (interface content, creation of content, potential sources of content, copyright, data clean-up, the approval process and data presentation). The groups met approximately every two weeks and would also link up to discuss overall plans.

One of the most important developments to come out of the project technical specification was the merging of CIS and the Photo Catalogue, which was achieved in February 2003. This enabled each system to access data from the other application. Images in the Photo Catalogue were visible in CIS through a direct link (rather than via image records as previously). Object data from CIS were similarly visible in the Photo Catalogue and hot links allowed instant movement between systems. A new ‘Access to Images’ layout tab was also added to CIS in December 2002 to enable contributors and editors to see all the web delivered fields. The fields selected to appear on the web were Object Name, Museum Number, Title, Artist/maker (name and dates), Date and Place of attribution, Materials and techniques, Dimensions, the Public Access Description, and Credit Line. Additional fields – Subjects Depicted, Category and Styles/Periods – are not displayed, but are searchable key words on the web interface.

The design and development of the web interface was a collaboration between the V&A Design Section, the V&A Web Team and Systems Simulation Ltd who supplied the software. The interface was ready by January 2003 and was the first microsite on the V&A website to comply fully with the new V&A brand style (colours, look etc.).

Content sources were decided by the Content Group based on two principles: first, an image (either analogue or digital) being present in the Photo Catalogue, and second, on reliable object data already existing either in CIS or in easily accessible sources. For this reason a load of 3,000 records from BGO made up a large part of the 2003 target of 10,000 records. The remaining 7,000 records were generated either from existing publications (where data and images were easily accessible), from other electronic data-loads (for which image scanning would be initiated) and from data already available on the web via Images Online and the ‘Grand Design’ exhibition microsite (which had to be manually entered into CIS by Documentation staff). Content creation was managed by the Documentation Manager, who is head of Records Section, part of the Collections Services Division. Detailed guidelines for the creation of Access to Images catalogue records were written by the Documentation Manager and passed to the Collections.

Content creation began in October 2002. Contributions to this content were made both by Curatorial Departments and Documentation staff in Records Section. The Curatorial departments agreed to deliver content for three deadlines, the last of which fell less than a month before 1st April 2003, the project delivery date, leaving very little time to edit the material. Access to Images delivered text and image content for just under 10,000 objects in April 2003. Over 70 authors and a team of copy editors contributed to the project. In the second year of delivery (ending March 2004) content contributions were delivered on a monthly basis and were again generated from data-loads and publications. However, the organisation found its target more difficult to deliver in this second year.

Issues

The decision to go ahead with Access to Images in July 2002, leaving eight months to plan the project and begin content creation, meant that contributors were faced with a short time to identify and deliver content. Although all content contributions were planned in advance and mainly re-used existing data (i.e. did not require new research), not all contributors were able to deliver the full number of proposed contributions for any of the three deadlines. The timescale and the apparent one-off nature of the project meant that instead of creating content as part of the Museum’s everyday ‘business’, Access to Images was viewed as a finite project.

Based on the experience of creating the BGO , an approvals system was designed for the 2003 Access to Images records to ensure data quality and accessibility. Text records were signed off by four different groups: Collections (as authors), Educators (content review), Records (structured text edit) and the Copy Editor (free text edit). Having had to abandon the content review in 2003 due to lack of resources, it became apparent that it was not feasible for educators to check each individual record. Subsequently educators reviewed a sample of texts by each author and then fed back comments through the Documentation Manager to the Curatorial staff. Managing the free text editing process using contract staff proved time consuming and complicated, and Documentation staff felt uncomfortable dealing with this aspect of the project.

While senior management support for the project existed, it could have been made both more vocal and more visible. Issues with museum-wide communication about the importance of Access to Images and its tie-in with the Museum’s Funding Agreement meant that some V&A staff did not ‘buy in’ to the project at an early stage. Senior management could have positively influenced these early opinions.

Conclusions

In future we aim to improve the mechanisms to manage the work flow of Access to Images. Collections Services intend to focus on contributing in its area of expertise and encouraging other departments to do the same. They would like to share the ownership of the project with the Collections and Interpreters while continuing to contribute to the project. Instead of the content creation being solely managed by the Documentation Manager, Collections will take ownership and control of their contributions. In their role as interpreters of the collections, curators and educators will work together to determine how and what they should present to the public, whether those descriptions need editing and, if so, how the editing process should be managed.

It is clear from looking at each of these projects that certain factors can adversely or positively affect the success of a project. Time is an important factor in each of these projects and when it is placed as a constraint, it can negatively impact the results of a project to a great extent, as was the case with Images Online .

Planning is one of the most important factors for the successful delivery of any project. A lack of planning can mean that problems which might have been foreseen are not resolved, as with the Images Online project. In the case of Access to Images, it was planning that essentially saved the project. A strict editing procedure for records implemented from the outset enabled the project to deliver consistent data despite tight deadlines.

The importance of creating data that can be re-purposed is essential today when resources are limited and expectations for ever greater access to electronic information are high. While the Exploring Photography project was successful in terms of delivering contextual information and an easy-to-use interface, data re-purposing was never considered in the project planning for either project phase. The BGO development did consider data re-purposing and for this reason it could be used to contribute significantly to the first Access to Images target (i.e. one third of the total). It is essential that the V&A ensure that all data creation, e.g. for microsites and interactive displays, should be re-usable for future projects.

When planning a project it is important that staff involved in creating content experience ‘buy-in’ to the project and feel owbership of it. In the case of the BGO , the high profile of the British Galleries project and its support by senior management had a very positive effect in encouraging contributors to ‘buy-in’ to the content creation. This has not been as much the case for Access to Images . However, in its third year of delivery, with content coming much more from the V&A ‘everyday business’ (acquisitions, publication, exhibitions etc.), staff have begun to make a more obvious long-term commitment to the work.

Future plans

What does the future hold for the V&A in terms of system developments? How can we expect to see these lessons built on in future projects?

The Technical Group responsible for the creation of the Access to Images web interface has recently reconvened and is meeting regularly to discuss the ongoing development of the application. The group is considering a number of options to enhance the user experience. These will be informed by the results of a user survey recently carried out by the Web Team. The survey collected the responses of over 300 users, examining why they use the Access to Images site and measuring many aspects of their user experiences. The results show that Access to Images has been very well received and users have responded positively to most aspects of the site, particularly the quality of the images. Users want access to more object records and images, as well as help finding objects and clues as to what is available. This has prompted the Technical Group to consider developing browsing further, e.g. by artist name, object type etc., as well as search enhancements such as improved date searching and searching for related objects.

The Museum is embarking on a Core Systems Integration Project which aims to integrate all the systems at the V&A. The aim is to deliver to any interface such as a gallery interactive display or web application by taking and refreshing data from the Museum’s core systems: CIS and the Photo Catalogue, the National Art Library database, Concise (the conservation information system), and the Loans Module. This will mean that if an interactive display such as the BGO is planned in future, accurate data from each of these systems will automatically be available to the project management system and can be delivered directly to the gallery and the web. This opens up many avenues for development and points to a future where data from all museum systems can be easily manipulated to deliver services and access to the on-site and online visitors of tomorrow.

November 2004

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to Frances Lloyd-Baynes, Head of Records at the V&A, who contributed to this paper. Thanks are also due to the following for talking to me about individual projects: Martin Barnes, Kate Best, Peter Ford, Mark Hook, Alan Seal, James Stevenson and Seonaid Woodburn.

Notes

1. Lloyd-Baynes, F. (forthcoming), ‘Managing the Unmanageable: Lessons in Content Management from the V&A’s British Galleries Project’, Dramaturgy in Museum Communication: The Change of Meaning in Virtual Spaces.

3. Lloyd-Baynes, F. (forthcoming), ‘Managing the Unmanageable: Lessons in Content Management from the V&A’s British Galleries Project’, Dramaturgy in Museum Communication: The Change of Meaning in Virtual Spaces.

3. Editor’s note: Scran is part of the Scran Trust – a registered charity – whose aim is to provide educational access to digital materials representing material culture and history. See www.scran.ac.uk

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