There is the Specify software for natural history collections: http://specifysoftware.org/ The source code has apparently just recently been deposited on SourceForge. -hilmar On Apr 14, 2009, at 3:12 PM, Ethan Gruber wrote: > Hi all, > > I've been a software developer in a research library for several > years, and > I have worked with objects typically viewed as museum collections to > a large > degree (particularly ancient coins and eighteenth century European > sheet > music). Since I'm from a library and am familiar with library > technological > standards as far as metadata practices and software applications go, > I tend > to apply library standards toward the museum collections I have been > in > contact with--which involves Encoded Archival Description for > metadata, > opensource applications like tomcat, cocoon, and lucene/solr. My > knowledge > of museum practices is fairly limited, but I have noticed that many > museums > have tended to adopt proprietary databases to describe their > collections. I > feel museums tend to lag behind their library counterparts with > respect to > the adoption of opensource frameworks and open standards, but if you > think > about it, museums are scarcely different than many archives/special > collections libraries in content and organization. I'm thinking of > PastPerfect in particular. It's quite common in the museum world > and costs > almost $1000 per license. > > I'm wondering if anyone else on code4lib actually works for a museum > or has > first-hand experience in providing access to museum collections and > has > noticed the same general differences between libraries and museums > that I > have. > > Ethan Gruber > University of Virginia Library -- =========================================================== : Hilmar Lapp -:- Durham, NC -:- hlapp at duke dot edu : ===========================================================