Like many museums, the team found that after many years, management of the collection needed some attention. A lot of time and effort had been invested in these databases, but none were complete.

In December 2017 we announced the Project Ark: Digitising Southland’s heritage collections. We are happy to now release the Cataloguing Standards for Project Ark and eHive.

We have given the eHive home page a new look to include an improved way to search for objects.

eHive is adding some new features for images. You will now be able to upload larger images and have tools to pan and zoom into the detail. Original size image are now always stored, so you’ll need to make sure you upload the size of image you want to permanently keep on eHive.

In the past eHive would have automatically reduced the size of images over 800 x 800 pixels. Going forward you will need to make sure that the images you are uploading are the scale you wish to display. In some cases this will require you to resize your images prior to uploading them.

We know that many of you are interested in the challenges small museums face when digitising their collections. In the Southland region of New Zealand, there is a fantastic project that is tackling those challenges head-on.

Putting your collection online can be a great way to reach out and engage a new audience. Rather than waiting for people to come to you why not highlight specific objects? Give your audience a reason to revisit your collection with regular sharing.

Four steps to creating an eHive record
The eHive Create screen can be overwhelming. There are so many fields to fill out and different tabs to choose from. The good news is that you do not have to fill out every page or field.

In the background, it has been a very busy time as we moved the entire eHive environment to the Amazon web services infrastructure.

Make it easier for your audience to find your content.

Extend the information that you make available through your eHive record by adding an external link. It could be a link to a video, a Wikipedia page or a research source.

Many museums start their cataloging in Excel. Unfortunately, as this spreadsheet becomes more complicated, Excel is increasingly difficult to use.