Welcome to a new way to explore eHive! The eHive.com home page has been revamped and there are extended options for searching for objects on the public website.

Explore eHive records through the Recently Added Objects, Popular Objects, and Catalogue Type lists, or views records through our links on the most popular Object Types.

From the count next to each Object Type, we can see that there are more photographs than any other medium.

You can use the search box to look for any objects recorded in eHive, which now includes over 1 million objects. At the time of writing, there are 3,571 boats, 172 bras and 12,477 records to do with brass bands.

When you’re on the search results page you can refine your search even further with different facets. You will find a range of facets (or filters) on the left side of the page.

These filters give a whole new dimension to searching eHive. You could restrict your search to only records with images, or only the records related to a particular maker. You could refine your search for plants so that your results only showed you records of Object Type photograph or fossil.

Once a single record has been selected, then you will see high resolution copies for some images using pan and zoom options added earlier this year.

You can read more about this new way of treating images here.

How to get your records ready for Faceted Search

This new faceted search functionality may have you revisiting your records to see how they will be affected.

The search box will search all text in the object record, so you do not have to move terms to specific fields for them to be searched.

You may want to see what other terms might make your objects easier to find or more relevant to the visitor. You may want to add Object Type, Maker, Subject and Association Keyword, Images and Documents to your records to give better access to your collection.

You can also add tags to your object records. Find out more about how to add tags and comments .

We’re now working on extending the search facets options into the logged in application (my.ehive.com) for eHive account holders to make use of. This will be available in December 2019.

Improved image storage and viewing tools

eHive has added some new features for images. You can now upload larger images and have tools to pan and zoom into the detail. You can still include multiple images in a record and define the square crop thumbnail.

Here’s an example of a cameo lamp with a publicly accessible high resolution image:
https://ehive.com/collections/6335/objects/991404/cameo-lamp-carved-into-a-red-helmet-conch-shell

In the background we have been working to offer more options to host large images. To meet best practice we have employed the International Image Interoperability Framework (or ‘triple I – F’ as it’s commonly known) to make this happen. You can find out more about IIIF here and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

What is changing

Support for larger images

You can now upload larger images to eHive and then view them in greater detail. In the past you had the option to store original images, but the image could only be viewed in eHive at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels.

Original images are ALWAYS retained and these use up your eHive storage allocation

You can upload images up to 20 MB (we will be reviewing this image size restriction with a plan to increase this) and you have the ability to view them at their full size within eHive.

However, we have simplified the way we store images and calculated your account storage use. The image you upload is now always kept and will use up storage space according to the image size. You MUST resize images down to the size you wish to store in eHive otherwise you will end up using up your storage allocation more quickly. We encourage you to store larger images as this will provide better access to your collection team, and also to public visitors as well if you choose to.

Controlling the image size public visitors have access to

You’ll have access to the original image when you’re signed in, and you can choose what size images that the public viewers have access to. You can restrict the public view of your images to the current 800 x 800 pixels display maximum (as you do know), or  (depending on the copyright licence) you can provide higher resolution images.

By default eHive will ONLY provide access to the original size image on images marked as No Copyright Restrictions (public domain). You can choose to allow access to the original image for other licences. You can review and change these settings when you’re logged in. Go to Account Settings > Preferences and Data Access. Read more about this in our help topic on Internal Account Settings.

Image size

You can still choose the image size that is displayed on eHive. This is also aligned to the Public Access Settings by default.

If a record is classified as All Rights Reserved then the default public view of the associated images will be 800 x 800 pixels.

If the record is classified as No Copyright Restrictions then the largest available image will be displayed publically with pan and zoom functionality.

These default settings can then be customised by the record or by the individual image.

Upload small image = Display small image

Upload large image = Display large image

Upload large image = Display small image

Any questions?

We have recalculated the amount of storage used by individual eHive accounts to March 2019 levels. If you have to this date chosen to store original images in your eHive account you will now have access to these larger size images in eHive with exactly the same storage use as before.

eHive will no longer automatically resize images at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels. If you wish you conserve the storage of your eHive account by only uploading smaller images you will have to resize these images before uploading them to eHive. This blog post offers some advise on resizing images.

If you have any questions please contact us and we will be happy to talk with you.

Why do you need to resize images

Up to this point eHive has had a maximum image size of 800 x 800 pixels. This included an option to keep the original image, but the image that appeared on the eHive account remained at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels.

With the new improvements to eHive launched in March 2019 you can attached images up to 20 MB. These can now be viewed in eHive with the pan and zoom features. Of course this is optional and you can choose to only allow public access to images at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels as we always the case.

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.

Software

The following are applications that you can use to resize images.

Adobe Photoshop (Paid)

Affinity Photo (Paid, Mac only)

Preview (on Mac)

Fotosizer (Free, Windows only)

Gimp (Freeware)

Online platforms

The following are online software (SaaS) that you can use the resize images

PicResize

ResizeImage

WebResizer

Managing Image Collections

When you resize your images it is best practice to save the original image so that you can always return to the original at a later date. Following that you can save your new resized image. Take a minute to think about what you will name the image. Popular naming conventions often include accession numbers, object ID’s or dates to help keep images organised.

Here is a good summary of Managing Image Collections from the University of Michigan

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.

Project Ark is a two-year pilot to start to catalogue Southland’s heritage collections and share them online. The Pilot is a collaboration between the Invercargill City Council, the Southland District Council and the Gore District Council. It is funded by their combined heritage rates and overseen by the Southland Regional Heritage Committee.

Skill sharing

Project Ark employs three roving cataloguers who bring their cataloguing, research, imaging and collection care skills to smaller museums. In return, museums share their deep knowledge of their collections and communities. It is this fusion and skill sharing that is at the heart of the Project.

The Pilot recognises the importance of the region working collectively to form a stronger and empowered community of care for collections and history. Project Ark lead David Luoni, and the team agreed: “It’s a partnership with museums to capture the local knowledge and stories that underpin their collections”.

Formal standards and procedures.

With the help of Vernon Systems, Project Ark uses eHive to fully catalogue the collections. Each museum has their own independent collection recorded on eHive and also publishes their records to a new eHive community called Museums of Southland, which functions as a regional portal. Records are also included in eHive.com and the NZ Museums website.

A lot of care and attention has gone into designing a solid foundation for cataloguing all the objects in Project Art. Project Ark has partnered with Vernon Systems to develop a set of standards to give each of the region’s museums a clear understanding of what information to enter into the database. This promotes best practice, self-help and consistency.

Te Papa’s National Services Te Paerangi is also a key partner, providing ongoing advice and several Expert Knowledge Exchanges across copyright, significance assessment and photography. NZ Micrographics provided their imaging systems experience and the imaging team at Auckland Museum also generously lent their expertise to the selection of photography equipment.

End Goal

To date, Project Ark’s team has worked with 10 of Southland’s museums to catalogue and share 50 items chosen by each museum to establish partnerships and the seed of the regional database.  For the remaining 18 months of the Pilot, the team will work with the volunteers at the Wyndham Museum to catalogue, image and pack its collection. The end goal is to partner with regional and national stakeholders and funders to resource the longer term roll out of the Project across all of Southland’s Museums.  You can track the Pilot’s progress via these links:

eHive

Facebook

Instagram

Putting your collection online can be a great way to reach out and engage a new audience. Having your collection in eHive opens it up to a larger audience, but a little help can go a long way. 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.

eHive is designed to let you quickly and easily share your objects and your eHive collection page with others.

Each public page includes options to share on a range of platforms. Here is an example of how they look.

The object that we have used for this demonstration is Canterbury Museum’s Sno-cat that can be found at https://ehive.com/collections/3003/objects/48/snocat.

click to enlarge

When you click on each of the social media logos another tab opens with all set up ready for sharing. Here are some examples of the Sno-Cat

Facebook

Twitter

Pintrest

Tumblr

Finally, you can share a link to your object which looks like this.

Good luck 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.

You can return to a record whenever you like and add more details over time. You can even keep it private or save a draft until you choose to put it online.

All you need are 4 things.

1. A name or title
2. A brief description
3. A location
4. An image (No more than 1000 pixels on the longest side)

As an example let’s catalogue Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait at an Early Age. The original Rijksmuseum record has extensive information about the painting, 28 fields in 9 sections. While we are only looking for specific information, it is useful to see what information they have chosen to make public.

Creating our eHive object record

From your eHive account screen choose to Create New Records and we will choose Art as that is the most appropriate from our Rembrandt Self Portrait. We will go directly to Core Fields tab to begin.

Our first piece of information is for the Name/Title field where we will enter “Self-Portrait at an Early Age”.

This is followed by filling out the Brief Description. So far, so good.

Now we add the Current Location. If we simply type the text in the Current Location Field then a red outline appears and the text “The term must exist in the list” can be seen when you roll over the field.

What we need to do is click on the Term Pick List button at the end of the field and add our new location of “Storeroom”. Once the new location is entered you will be able to choose it as an option.

Now that you have created a new location of “Storeroom” you can select the term and save the record by clicking the save button at either the bottom or the top of the page.

Add an image

We are almost there. The last step is to include an image. From the record page choose Edit Images. This leads to a screen where we can drag and drop our Rembrandt. Remember to reduce the size of the image before adding it to eHive.

There are options to restrict the image’s access level, but we do not need to make any changes. We will leave it set on “Same as record access” and return to the object record.

That is everything

Congratulations. You have created your first object record. It is able to be published as it is, modified or added to in the future.

Good luck with your own collection in eHive.

You may have noticed some disruption to eHive. Hopefully, you didn’t. In the background, it has been a very busy time as we moved the entire eHive environment to the Amazon web services infrastructure.

What does this mean for you? To put it simply, we have improved our infrastructure so that you can continue to catalogue and manage your collection without ever needing to worry about how it works behind the scenes. No IT department. NO problems.

Speed

Now you will find noticeably faster performance over all parts of eHive. Your pages will load quicker. Images and documents will upload quicker. What will you do with the saved microseconds?

Reliability

The service runs within Amazon’s proven network infrastructure and data centres with a commitment of 99.95% server availability. Now there is even less chance of finding eHive unavailable due to maintenance.

Security

We are very serious about keeping your collection data as safe as possible. In this, we have found a partner in Amazon, as they have maintained a focus on security from the ground up. We are following their best practice web security processes so that you can be assured that your collection data is safe.