DEFINING UNIVERSITY MUSEUMS` OBJECTS FOR THE WEB

DEFINING UNIVERSITY MUSEUMS’ OBJECTS FOR THE WEB
Lorisa Andreolia, Mariagabriella Fornasierob, Alessandra Menegazzic Sofia Talasd
a
Padua Botanical Garden library, University Library System, University of Padua, via Orto Botanico 15, 35123 Padua, Italy
b
Museum of the Geology and Paleontology (MGP), University of Padua, via Giotto, 1 35121 Padua, Italy
c
Museum of Archaeological Sciences and Art (MSA), University of Padua, piazza Capitaniato 7, 35139 Padua, Italy
d
Museum of the History of Physics (MHP), University of Padua, via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padua, Italy
Padua University
Museum System
(SMA)
http://www.unipd.it/musei/en/index.html
Padua University
Library System
(SBA)
http://bibliotecadigitale.cab.unipd.it/en/
The cataloguing system adopted for museum objects:
standards and software
Phaidra repository (Permanent Hosting, Archiving
and Indexing of Digital Resources and Assets)
In Italy, the cataloguing guidelines for cultural heritage are provided by the
ICCD, Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation of the Ministry of the
Cultural Heritage (http://www.iccd.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/473/standardcatalografici).
Phaidra is the digital asset management system used by the SBA (https://
phaidra.cab.unipd.it/). It is based on the Fedora Commons open-source
software and is maintained by the Computer Centre of the University of
Vienna, with which the University of Padua has collaborated since 2010.
For every different kind of cultural asset, the ICCD has developed a specific
cataloguing template. Each cataloguing template has more than 300 fields,
some of which are common to all assets, while others are typical of the single
cultural discipline. To deal with its heritage, Padua University Museum System
uses 14 of ICCD’s cataloguing cards.
Phaidra’s main features are:
As for the cataloguing software, the museums of Padua University use Artin XML
-web system, developed by the CRUI (Conference of Italian Universities
Rectors). Artin XML-web was originally created to set up a centralized data base
for Italian University Museums (http://www.liberologico.com/en/default/340/
ArtIn-XML.html).

long-term archiving of digital objects (images, documents, books,
video and audio)

description and indexing of digital objects (https://
phaidra.cab.unipd.it/help_long#3403)

management of licenses and access rights

enabling web-users to access rare and culturally interesting
documents
Web access to the museums’ collections
The ongoing project aims to develop a “tool” that will harvest data from the
different cataloguing templates of Padua University museums database (Artin XMLweb) and transfer the selected data into Phaidra repository, in order to provide
accessibility and visibility to the museums’ collections in a transversal way, and to
provide the public with links between museums’ items and the rest of Padua
University’s heritage (libraries, archives, etc).
As a first step three Museums are involved in the project: MSA, MGP, MHP.
Defining university museums’ objects for the web
One of the crucial issues of the project
consisted in defining what data to harvest, i.e.
the minimum necessary fields that can “define”
university heritage objects for the public. No
standard is defined for a short public-oriented
card in Italy nor in other countries, as far as
we know.
A kind of web semantic analysis was thus
carried out by the curators of three of the
University museums (MSA, MGP, MHP) in
collaboration with a librarian of the CAB. This
team worked on the cataloguing templates of:

archaeological objects

art objects

geological and paleontological heritage

scientific instruments
Technical development of the project
For
each
cataloguing
template a set of fields for
public-oriented cards was
defined. Some of the selected
fields were common to all the
cards and others were
specific, but six main
common semantic sections
emerged, common to the four
cataloguing templates:

Definition of the object

Dating

Description

Provenance

Access information

Bibliography
Further developments of the
project

The work done as of now for 4 typologies of
items will be extended in the next months to
the whole heritage of the University of Padua, in
order to achieve a portal of the university’s
heritage.

The web semantic analysis and the short public
oriented cards could be proposed to the ICCD to
be adopted as standards at a National level.

The harvesting of data from Artin XML web to
Phaidra could be easily extended to other Italian
university museums which use Artin XML web.
Layout: Luisa Marcolin