Advancing OpenCollection

OpenCollection is an open source, web-based collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections. The software is designed to handle large, heterogeneous collections that have complex cataloguing requirements and require support for a variety of metadata standards and media formats. Unlike most other collections management applications, OpenCollection is completely web-based. All cataloging, search and administrative functions are accessed using common web-browser software, untying users from specific operating systems and making cataloguing by distributed teams and providing online access to collections information simple, efficient and inexpensive. An alpha version of the software is currently available for download through www.opencollection.org.

Who made OpenCollection?

OpenCollection was initially developed by Whirl-i-Gig, an independent software developer, in collaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image. Additional institutional users have contributed funding, planning, and software development resources related to their specific areas of interest. OpenCollection has gained many new capabilities through these contributions.

What's happening now with OpenCollection?

With a major grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Program in Research in Information Technology, we are beginning a two-year period of sustained and coordinated software development that will result in the creation and deployment of a significantly expanded and refined version of OpenCollection. This development process will leverage the existing software to create a truly scalable, flexible, internationalized and full-featured open-source collections management and access solution. During this period, successively upgraded versions of OpenCollection will be available online.

To aid in this accelerated development process, Moving Image and Whirl-i-Gig have been joined by two new strategic partners: the Information Services and Technology Group at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Fluid Project (www.fluidproject.org), led by the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto. These partners will add expertise in the areas of user experience design, museum informatics, and advanced software architecture.

We are also engaging the knowledge and experience of our colleagues in museums, libraries, archives, and higher education through a series of community design workshops. These workshops will focus on requirements gathering, functionality, workflow, interface, and user experience, and will result in a revised functional specification and blueprint for the upgraded software's underlying architecture.