h4. Introduction

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One of the goals of the CollectionSpace project is to develop a platform for a collections _information_ system. Within that platform, we intend to deliver a set of modular solutions and services that match functional requirements for managing museum collections and publishing them for various use-cases. Rather than develop a traditional collections management system, however, we are interested in pursuing a service oriented solution so as to take advantage of new open source technologies that to date, have not been used within the museum community. By creating services tailored to specific tasks that museums engage in daily, such as acquisitions, loans, inventory, audit, we will be better able to develop flexible, customizable, and extensible solutions to fit a wide range of staff needs, collection types, and institutional sizes.

The CollectionSpace functional team is working toward delivering an application that is:
* A core resource, used to manage every aspect of a collection - from location and condition to display and dispatch;
* Familiar to its core users, reflecting the way they interact with collections each day;
* A tool for collecting insight and knowledge in order to build a collective intelligence;
* A way to bridge gaps between a museum and its community; and
* A way to de-couple information process and function, reconciling conflicting information uses within an institution.
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h5. On This Page
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View the complete list of [CollectionSpace Functional Requirements|CollectionSpace Functional Requirements List]. Join the [functional|working groups] requirements working group to contribute to the ongoing discussion about this list. The project team is always interested in institutional [use cases|Use Cases], which help us expand our functional requirements, create inclusive designs, and develop services that accurately reflect our community's needs.

Development activities in CollectionSpace Phase One (through May 2010) will center on a subset of eight SPECTRUM procedures (workflows): Object Entry, Acquisition, Location and movement control, Cataloging, Object exit, Loans in, Loans out, and Retrospective documentation. Functional requirements for the eight procedures, along with requirements for functionality that supports the procedures, is below.

The [first development milestone|Hello World (Release 0.1) Functionality Requirements], to be reached in the spring of 2009, will represent a significant integration effort of various tools and technologies around the core procedure of object entry. This work will lay the groundwork for ongoing development, and includes: resolving technology stacks; developing and testing tools and workflows; designing and implementing the testing strategy; setup of the code repository and commit standards; installation and experimentation with development platforms; finalizing service families and detailing the initial service contracts; establishing lightweight governance mechanisms for services shared with other projects such as Kuali Student Services (KSS); designing the configuration and customization language and tools; and prototyping the application's user interface with Fluid/Infusion tools.

h4. [Use Cases]