The Nuts and Bolts of Building a Digital Collection for the Whole Museum.
Instructors: Trudy Levy, Image Integration and Susan Jane Williams, Saskia Ltd./ Scholars Resource, Inc.

Do you find the prospect of building a digital collection that serves your museum's public relations, exhibition, curatorial, rights and reproductions, and educational needs overwhelming? So many different outputs, practices, and expectations can be hard to meet; but if you have a good foundation, it is possible. In this workshop, you will learn how to set standards particular to your needs; collect, re-purpose, and distribute data (and images) efficiently; and create a workflow that maximizes your staff's strengths. We will focus on the day-to-day ramifications of some of the technical jargon you have heard; we will provide resources and give you a pragmatic handle on building (or customizing) the tools you need. It is our goal that you leave with a plan of action that fits your needs. Time will be provided for discussion and Q&A.
Sponsored by the Visual Resources Association

Cataloging Cultural Objects Bootcamp
Instructors: Elisa Lanzi, Smith College and Ann Whiteside, University of Virginia, Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library

This workshop will offer hands-on use of Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), a new descriptive cataloguing standard for objects and their images. CCO provides guidelines for selecting, ordering, and formatting data used to populate catalog records. It is intended for museums, archives, libraries, visual resources collections and any other repository that cares for cultural materials. Workshop attendees will learn how CCO can answer their cataloguing questions and apply to their everyday cataloguing work. Participants will work on cataloging questions prepared by the moderators and suggested in advance by the participants. Workshop leaders Ann Whiteside, University of Virginia, and Elisa Lanzi, Smith College, are two of five CCO editors and are practitioners and theorists in image cataloging.

Managing a Digitization Project
Instructor: Howard Brainen, Two Cat Digital

This workshop is geared towards the museum and visual resources professional embarking on a large digitization effort. Participants will learn about the digitization of transparencies as well as original artwork and what kinds of staffing, equipment, software, image storage, facility improvements and productivity are required to successfully complete a digitization project. The workshop will include a detailed budgeting exercise and comparison of vendor and internal costs.

Content Management Strategies and Systems
Instructor: Darren Peacock, International Graduate School of Business, University of South Australia

Content management is a rapidly evolving approach to the integrated management of digital asset creation and dissemination. While content management software has been promoted for some time, successful content management in a museum environment depends as much on strategy as on software. Nor is content management simply about website management. This workshop is designed to introduce participants to the issues and opportunities of content management in a museum environment. Its purpose is to help participants to develop an integrated content management approach, including specification and implementation of appropriate software. At the end of the session, participants will be able to develop a content management strategy for their own museums and have an understanding of content management approaches and software.