CollectionSpace is a collaboration that brings together a variety of cultural and academic institutions with the common goal of developing and deploying an open-source, web-based software application for the description, management, and dissemination of museum collections information. The partners involved in the project include Museum of the Moving Image, University of Toronto, University of California at Berkeley, Cambridge University, the Walker Art Center, and many others.

The CollectionSpace team did extensive research and conducted a series of workshops at which leading museum, library, and archive professionals worked together to provide insight and define community needs with regard to the design principles, functions, and features that will make the software widely effective. This formed the basis of all of the personae and scenarios used to create the main interaction of the software. The application that is in development not only allows the institutions to customize the interface to suit all of their needs, but is designed to facility usability to the highest degree possible. It takes into consideration the needs of all domains of knowledge; the desire for an application that can be customized not only on the institutional level, but on the individual user level as well; and the need for an affordable solution in the collections community.

Agency: OffRegister
www.collectionspace.org