+Project Description+

CollectionSpace is a collaboration that brings together a variety of cultural and academic institutions with the common goal of developing and deploying an open-source, web-based software application for the description, management, and dissemination of museum collections information. This report includes an update on the project team's activities for July and August. The next update will be released Friday, September 4th.

Updates are emailed to the [Announcements|Mailing Lists] list and posted to the project [wiki|Roadmaps & Updates] and [website|http://www.collectionspace.org] the first Friday of every month.

CollectionSpace Principal Investigator Carl Goodman and Project Manager Megan Forbes met with staff from the Getty Research Institute, Museum, and Foundation on July 27th-28th, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on July 29th. Staff members from both institutions learned about the software, discussed ways to contribute to the community design effort, and participated in user testing.

CollectionSpace Senior Advisor and Domain Expert Angela Spinazze spent several days with our newest collaborators at the [Walker Art Center|http://www.walker.org], bringing them up to speed on the project's activities, and kicking off their deployment planning process.

Project team members at the University of California continue their excellent work expanding and refining the project's functional specifications. Through a series of weekly meetings with staff from the [Hearst Museum of Anthropology|http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/], the team has added notes, use cases, and domain-specific requirements about loans, workflow management, storage location, accessioning, and more. Notes from these meetings are available on the project [wiki|Services Team Design Meeting Notes].

+Design+

The project's user interface designers have been incredibly busy refining wireframes for the 0.2 release. Faced with the challenge of creating screens that incorporate a very large number of data entry fields while still providing a pleasant user experience, the designers are experimenting with a number of widgets that allow users to quickly and easily enter and organize data. Click on the below thumbnail to view an annotated wireframe:

!object_cataloging_with_bar.jpg|thumbnail!