Gestion Informatique Documentaire

Gestion Informatique Documentaire

Home | References |Natural History Museum Lille

references : The national history museum lille

 

Thierry Oudoire, assistant keeper of the Natural History Museum of Lille, in charge of Geologic Collections describes the project of publishing the museum’s collection on line:

Under municipal guardianship and labelled ‘Musée de France’, the Natural History Museum of Lille conserves close to 400 000 objects divided between 4 large collections. Collected since 1820 (zoology, 100 000 references) and since 1870 (geology, 180 000 specimens) by scientists from the university, the Natural History collections have been strengthened by the successive arrivals, during the 1990’s, of ethnographic collections from the town of Lille (20 000 objects), collections from its ancient “Industrial Commercial and from the Colonies Museum” (100 000 references).

In order to digitalise these collections, the museum has been using SNBase and Micromusée software since the mid 1990’s. Each department can therefore follow the specimen inventory. The museum is deliberating the idea of putting in place tools to communicate these collections:

A public access kiosk in the area that is available to the public,

Making various collections available on line,

Production of documentary files concerning specimens/objects that are currently on exhibition.

As for the temporary exhibitions that are celebrating the centenary of the opening of a particular wing of the museum, we have acquired E-Catalog, in order to make some of the collections visible.

Being subject to budget constraints and having a limited amount of time, we turned to E-Catalogue, a tool that allows the easy extraction of a limited number of files from the database. This extraction was carried out and was then made available from a public access kiosk during the temporary exhibition.
The utilisation is quick and simple and the tool is adaptable and can be personalised: after 2 days of training on the Mobydoc site, we were able to carry out the extraction and two members of the team (with computing knowledge) refined the presentation in just three weeks.

 



The acquisition of modules that develop the database software is of great importance: they allow you to enhance archive and input work without demanding an investment of time or an investment in supplementary materials. The company was remarkably adaptable, which is indispensible for the public services that are subject to administrative and financial constraints.
We are completely satisfied with the responsiveness of the team and with the quality of training that was provided.

The test that was carried out through the acquisition of E-Catalog has allowed us to envisage a more complete publication of collections on line. The Natural History Museum of Lille is currently examining the possibility of acquiring OPACWeb within the next two years.