The upcoming August update includes a major upgrade of eHive functionality, both behind the scenes and for eHive users. Exporting enhancements Currently, exporting records is in XML format only. We are finalising work on further exporting formats, including exporting public, core or full record details in comma separated values format (CSV) for use in other applications. This means you could easily import your records into Open Office for example. We’re also adding export options for the same subsets of fields
Museums and the Web 2009 Conference Presentation
28 April 2009 Paul Rowe (Vernon Systems) and Pamela Lovis (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) spoke about NZMuseums and eHive at the annual Museums and the Web conference. This year the conference was in Indianapolis. The conference attracts hundreds of museum technology experts from around the world, showcasing new internet related development in the museum community and with discussions on a range of issues facing museums on the web. The conference presentation is now available on Slideshare
29 April 2009 Update
Today’s update to the site included some major additions: Sign up for an account After running a closed beta on the site over the first part of the year, we’re now ready to open it up for all interested users. You can now sign up through the link on the top right. New Administrator Options for Communities Any communities can now have an additional approval step before an account can join the community. The community administrator can view lists of
31 March 2009 Update
A minor update to eHive was performed on 31 March 2009. It included: New short aliases for common fields to save typing when searching. You can read about search aliases in the Help Topic –http://en.wiki.ehive.com/wiki/Searching#Internal_field_names Payment screen now live for account purchases and renewals
12 March 2009 Update
It’s been seven weeks since the last update to eHive and the team at Vernon Systems have been busy. The 12 March 2009 update includes: New tab in the create/edit screen for Acquisition – 13 new fields covering acquisition notes, value, funding, credits and provenance. New tab in the create/edit screen for Administration – 29 new fields covering status, activities, deaccessioning, copyright, research and comments. New tab in the create/edit screen for Conservation – 27 new fields covering original and
New features added January 2009
Two minor updates to eHive were performed during January 2009. These included several fixes and enhancements: Stylesheet changes to fix page displays in some browsers (particularly Internet Explorer 6.0) Fixed a problem saving changes to the edit (create) screen Added new sorting options in the result views Reduced the compression in image thumbnails to give better quality
User Tagging of Online Cultural Heritage Items
‘User Tagging of Online Cultural Heritage Items’ is a paper that has been prepared by a team of four staff from various Australian museums, archives and libraries on the value of user tagging. The paper is the result of a survey of Australian and New Zealand cultural institutions, and comes to some interesting conclusions.
Coming in early 2009
The beta version of eHive is currently available. If you want to request a beta account now, write to us at info@ehive.com The eHive team is hard at work enhancing features and creating new ways to get the most out of eHive. There are several features that you will see on eHive in the coming months.
Communities
The major focus for the development team over the last month has been the community functions of the system. With eHive, all content is stored in a giant database running on parallel servers. Individual account holders (e.g. a museum or private collector) can manage their collection in their own private area just like they would in a traditional package installed on their computer. However, having all of the information stored in one place makes it very easy for users to
Tag clouds
It’s been relentlessly cloudy and wet weather here in Auckland over the winter, so it feels somehow appropriate that we’ve been working on tag cloud functions. Tags are descriptive keywords and phrases that users can add to page to help others find content. For example, a painting might have been described as an oil on canvas by Picasso featuring a clock. Additional tags could be added for ‘painting’, ‘Pablo Picasso’ and ‘Grandfather clock’, all of which will help with finding
New Copyright Laws
Whether you are a small museum or individual collector, there are many things you can do now to prepare to digitise your collections. Since the Copyright laws in New Zealand have just changed for the first time since 1994, it is the perfect time to find out what you always wished you knew. Copyright – an easy introduction These guidelines provide you with introductory information on some of the copyright questions that are often raised in the museum, heritage and
The First Month for NZMuseums
The NZMuseums site has been up and running for one month now and has had great feedback. We are pleased at the positive reception it has had within the sector and from the general public. We have done a number of updates of the site, including minor tweaks behind the scenes and loading of new content. In the first month the site had 5,500 visitors from 60 countries (and we’re fast approaching the 10,000th visitor milestone!). It has been fantastic
