New Developments

The last month has been an exceptionally slow month in terms of technical development around museum-digital. There are however some newsworthy tidbits.

musdb

Recording external IDs for museums

Museums, like all of us, are present in more and more databases. For linking different databases, it is useful – sometimes necessary – to know the ID of the same entity in both databases. Hungarian law thus mandates collection management systems, which are to be accredited for fully paperless use in museums, to allow storing a museum’s ID with the Hungarian Statistical Office. musdb can now do exactly that: Store external IDs of museums in a given list of external source repositories / databases.

The list of available external databases and the regular expressions to validate IDs in them are available here. For now, the list only contains the Hungarian Statistical Office, but the more options there will be in the future, the better.

More fields covered by “list results” and Excel export

The “list results” page (a.k.a. table view) for object search results offers the option to view the selected objects’ data in a customizable tabular format. Mainly because of that exact tabular format, it is not possible to display everything a full database view of the object offers using the “list results” page. Over the last month, we have nevertheless extended the list of displayable fields in the “list results” table.

Thus, it is now possible to display all translations for the object type, object name, descriptions, etc. of an object. Similarly, it is now possible to list all Weblinks linked to the object as a compiled (comma-separated) field. As the automated report generation and the Excel export tools build upon the same basic code as the “list results” page, these new fields are now also available in those cases.

New field for objects: “Last change of permanent location”

It is now possible to manually record the last date, the permanent location of a given object has been updated. This obviously makes sense for tracking relocations and re-organizations within the museum. Importantly, the field needs to be manually filled out, as the date of the last change of the permanent location may be far in the past or frankly unrelated to the database, even if there is one (say, the museum moves the depot to a different place, but the date is only later updated in the database via a batch editing process).

User interface

After there were some reports of people not seeing the difference between a valid form in musdb and an invalid / incomplete one, we updated the design of submit buttons. Submit buttons in incomplete forms are now blurred out, to add another hint at the incompleteness of the form.

Frontend

Improved performance and decreased bandwidth usage: serving images in webp

Over the last years, there have been a number of new image formats seeking to combine all the features of older and well-established formats like JPG and PNG with an improved compression. The most established format of that newer generation of image formats is webp, which is by now well-supported by all modern browsers and most local image viewers.

To save bandwidth and improve loading speed, we now store and serve full-sized webp versions of newly uploaded object images along with the regular jpg versions. If possible, the webp version is served on object pages. An additional benefit is the aforementioned support for features jpg files do not support, such as transparent image backgrounds.

iFrame embedding now only possible from whitelisted sources

If a museum wants to embed their data from museum-digital into their own website, there are traditionally two ways to do so. The better, but much more complicated option is to use the API to fetch the relevant data and present them in any way one wants. Much easier (and cheaper obviously) is embedding the museum’s data using iframes.

Unfortunately, iframes can also be used for attacks on users’ login data. We have thus now restricted this option to only allow embedding from whitelisted sources. If a museum wants to embed their data this way, this means that they now need to notify their regional administrators beforehand.

Importer

The importer now supports imports for exports from Startext’s HiDa in the configuration of the Saxon State Agency for Museums.

Other News

In other news, the Youtube channel has picked up steam, with some new tutorials both in German and Ukrainian.

Realistically there is none. But musdb required one to enter a price for the acquisition of each single object thus far. Hence, users were left with no choice but to make up the price or to not enter one at all.

This problem is now solved, as is the tracking of shipments. Both of these are completely new sections of musdb that can be linked to objects (and in the case of shipments, exhibitions and loans as well).

Acquisitions

To access the acquisitions section in musdb, one can use the theee dots symbol in the main navigation (at the very top of a page) or enable the link to this section using the personal settings (accessible by clicking on one’s name).

Entering, filtering and searching acquisitions works roughly analogous to what one would do when managing loans.

Importantly, acquisitions are linked to a source of previous owner of the acquisition and possibly a source for the funding required to actually acquire the objects. Both of these fields are controlled by the contacts list / address book.

On object editing pages, acquisition processes can be linked to the given object using the object administration tab. Here, “acquisition” is a newly available select fields right next to the older fields for the acquition date, price, and currency. Once an acquisition process has been linked, a preview of the acquisition process and – if available – a preview of the contact information of the previous owner / acquisition source are displayed right below the select field. These new previews are now also available if an owner of the object other than the museum itself has been entered by the way.

Shipments

Shipments can now be added, listed and tracked in a similar way to acquisitions. They, too, build a whole new section of musdb that can toggled into the shortcut navigation by way of the personal settings – or they can be accessed using the three dots symbol in the navigation at the very top right of the window.

While everything else in terms of adding, listing and updating shipments works roughly analogous to the management of acquisitions, shipments can be linked to objects via the object’s destination tab and they can be linked to exhibitions and loans. Hence, there are new tabs on the loans and exhibitions pages for listing the shipments linked to a given loan or exhibition.

Image credits: Kulturstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt – Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale): Frachtschiff im Hafen von Göteborg, CC BY-NC-SA, photographer: Hans Finsler.