The aim of this project is to make the collections of the Cultural Centre more accessible to staff, the public and visitors through easily searchable, accurate, multi-lingual catalogues of the Cultural Centre collections.
This project involves staff from every unit of the Cultural Centre and has been facilitated by a two-year CUSO IT (Information Technology) placement which began in 2005 and the recruitment for the first time of a dedicated IT staff member, Billy Bakeo. In an organization such as the Cultural Centre, cataloguing must be an ongoing process. A further one year CUSO IT placement will commence in August 2007.
The intended outcomes of the project are:
1) Standardized cataloguing procedures and a mult-lingual thesaurus (keyword list) to be used by all units of the Cultural Centre;
2) Up-to-date, accurate catalogues for each of the collections of the Cultural Centre;
3) New cataloguing applications for each of the collections of the Cultural Centre:
National Museum, National Library, Public Library, National Cultural and Historical Sites Register, oral traditions (Oral Arts Project), sandrawings, as well as the audio, video, and photographic collections of the National Film and Sound Archive. A meta-application will also be developed to allow users to simultaneously search all of the collections;
4) A Cultural Centre local-area network with a server to allow wider access to the catalogues, exchanging files, and regular backups;
5) Additional computers for public, staff and visitors to use in accessing the catalogues over the network.
In 2006 significant progress was made in each of the five areas of the project. We have developed a working set of cataloguing procedures and completed multi-lingual thesaurus. We have made progress in updating and checking the existing catalogues, and new cataloguing applications are in development for most of the collections. Finally, through a number of related projects we have acquired funding for much of the networking equipment required. The Cultural Centre has also received a donation of a number of old, mostly non-working computers from Australia and New Zealand we have repaired and upgraded a number of these computers for use in accessing the catalogues.
See a paper presented by William Mohns, the CUSO IT cooperant (volunteer) who was instrumental in developing the database system, on the status of the database at the end of 2006.
