Museums and the Web

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Museums and the web 2013

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museum data electronic archives

jschmitt's picture

By Jennifer Schmitt - Posted on 25 February 2013

Hello everyone -

I'm hoping someone out there might point me to a solution for a data storage problem. We are reaching the limits of our data servers storage capacity because of all the backlog of years worth of exhibition files. The staff would like them easily accessible, but perhaps on the daily use server isn't the best.

Has anyone out there created a digital archive that is searchable and accessible by staff but relieves a load on a daily use file server?

We will be investing in a digital asset management but there are 10 years worth of exhibition files that aren't needed on a daily basis.

Thanks for any advice!

Jennifer Schmitt
deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

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richr's picture
Simple museum data electronic archives
Submitted by Rich Roth on April 26, 2013 - 10:48am.

Jennifer,
You asked a two part question - cheap archive and making it searchable - at least for a reasonably priced solution.

There are some great very low priced network storage devices, some even web enabled - we use Drobo and Synology - terra-bytes can be had for under $1K. These units are specially interesting because they run linux internally and can add applications.

The 2nd part is the archive -- can't be too specific w/o knowing how your exhibitions are saved - between a sql database load of categoried files and using a search system like Lucene (solr and elastisearch are versions), a repository can be quickly built.

Check http://welovemuseums.com/webservices for some of our work on the topic.

Rich