We did think about allowing tagging in Design Hub and we do actually have a keywords field in the database to make that happen but we found that when we started doing that (making our writers tag to start things off) we had a lot of problems with managing the diversity of words. If you go to a side menu category like GRAPHIC DESIGN you will see a row of four KEYWORD TYPES along the top - PEOPLE, MATERIAL, PERIOD, PLACE appear. Click on one of those and you get the keywords that have been assigned.

When you see these you’ll get an idea of the problem we are going to face with broader tagging - mainly one of managing the diversity of terms and presenting them in a neat manageable way. PLACE is the most obiovusly problematic and you will find a mix of countires, cities, buildings and regionds.

Design Hub uses the same PHP/SQL backend and adds a CMS layer to the collection management system harvesting tools we have built to handle the collection object data. Design Hub is really supposed to be *another* way for niche users in the design field to access our collection (and that of others too).

We built our own custom CMS for Design Hub - its very simple and it was decided that making something very straitforward would give us the ability to build addons as required. We did look at Typo3 etc but found that we’d spend just as long configuring and tweaing as we would have done in building our own custom system. For my team it is really important that we have flexibility with these sort of open user-centric projects because, from painful past experience we have learnt that it is exceptionally difficult to predict what users will actually do - no matter how much paper based testing and actual user testing you do prior to launch. This is one of the biggest challenges facing the museum sector actually - we never have enough money to promote the projects we build - meaning that we have less ability to chanel *how* users use our product or *which* users use our product.

The ‘related’ articles and subject is one area which we are going to be working on a lot next year once we do some heat mapping of the interface - this is really where the university partnerships for the project start to kick in.

Cheers
seb

Finally (then I will leave you alone, I promise!), how do you control the workflow process for publishing in Design Hub? Do you have a customized CMS, or are you using something like Drupal, Typo3, etc.? Inquiring minds would love to know. Thanks for sharing so much of the great work that is happening down under!

Best,
Jim

Thanks for the info on PodPress - actually I’ve been a bit slack in integrating the podcasts with our blogs - mainly because the podcasts were around well before the blogs. Rest assured PodPress will be set up next week!

Now, in answer to a couple of your questions.

Arms in our collection: In 1996 there was the Port Arthur Massacre that led to a lot of discussion and public policy action on gun control. Partially as a result of this and also because we no longer have a curator specifically trained and allocated to our substantial arms and armour collection, the museum has kept our apparently impressive collection of vintage arms in deep storage.

Love tokens: this was mentioned only because it is an example of about 150 objects that have had their ‘research’ enhanced by unsolicited public response/comment and the provision of extra information.

One thing I did neglect to mention in the talk (which was mainly because of time running out) was our Design Hub project. Design Hub is a magazine style front-end for research and our design collection. It is also in the process of expanding to allow federated searching other great design collections from around the world.

I’m really glad you enjoyed the presentation!