Museum professionals generally agree that cataloguing standards like CCO, CDWA, AAT, TGN andULAN are important standards for museum collections, but collection management systems often do not directly incorporate these standards into their structure and data-entry fields. Many museums have invested in commercial collection management systems like The MuseumSystems (TMS) that claim compliance with cataloguing standards. However, TMS and othercollection management databases are only compliant in that data can be extracted from them to map to structural frameworks like CDWA. This paper examines the question–should museum collection management systems more directly integratecataloguing standards?
Eve Perry
Eve currently works for Whirl-i-Gig, the creator of the open source software Collective Access. At Whirl-i-gig, Eve performs data modeling and develops digital management solutions for clients including museums and artist endowed foundations. Before joining Whirl-i-gig in 2019, Eve worked as the Collection Information and Digital Asset Manager at the Joan Mitchell Foundation. In her five-year tenure at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Eve built a custom database solution that successfully supports the foundation’s collection management, image management and catalogue raisonné research. Eve’s background as a museum registrar informs her ability to represent inherently complex artworks, exhibition environments and workflows within the structure of a relational database. As a freelance database developer, she has worked on projects for The National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress and The Association for Recorded Sound Collections.