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Welcome
Welcome to the first issue of the EMu Newsletter for 2009.
Organisation of this year's EMu User Group Meetings is well under way and this time around there are opportunities to share your experience, benefit from the experience of others and pick the brains of EMu's developers at meetings in Bristol, Sydney and St. Paul, Minnesota. Registration and other details are provided below.
As always, we're delighted to introduce a selection of new members of the EMu family.
You'll also find an update on EMuUsers.org, the community website for all users of EMu, which continues to grow, as well as news about the release of EMu 3.2.05. This release is definitely on the way, and with new and exciting functionality continually being added, we guarantee that the wait will be worth it!
We take a look at the Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service's implementation of iMu, an EMu guided tour facility designed for use with iPods; and profile two clients: Peabody Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Health and Medicine, both of which have been EMu Users since 2005.
In Did You Know you'll find information about a previously unnanounced feature added to EMu 3.2.05: a statistics facility that allows statistical information to be generated on a regular basis (hourly, daily, weekly or monthly) using a variety of periodic tasks and stored in the Statistics module for later use.
And finally, in Tips and Tricks we examine how to display all records attached to multiple selected records, which is a something our Support staff are asked about fairly often.
We hope you enjoy the newsletter, and find it useful.
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In this Issue
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EMu User Group Meetings 2009
Planning for this year's User Group Meetings is well under way, with interest building for all three events. Time and again these gatherings are proving to be superb venues for networking and sharing EMu knowledge and experience and we hope you will take the opportunity to join us and other EMu users in Bristol, Sydney or St. Paul.
You will find presentations and photos from previous meetings on our website.
7th European User Group Meeting, 3-4 June 2009
 The 7th European User Group Meeting will take place in Bristol, UK, on 3-4 June, and will be hosted by Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives, a group of seven institutions under the custodianship of the Bristol City Council. This year's event is shaping up to have the most geographically diverse attendance of any EMu User Group Meeting to date, with interest already indicated by users and other parties in Britain, Egypt, Qatar, France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the US.
While a list of topics has yet to be finalised, the following topics have been suggested:
- Content management systems vs. Collection management systems
- Mapping and georeferencing tools
- Digital asset management
- Pest management
- EMu developments
- Developments in Narratives
- Further developments in iMu
If you would like to make a presentation, please contact Christelle Hyppolite (
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); you may of course suggest topics other than those listed above.
This event is supported by Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives and KE Software and there is no registration fee to attend. More information is available on our website, which will be updated as details firm up.
For more information in the meantime, or to register your interest in attending the Meeting, please email Christelle (
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)
8th Australasian User Group Meeting, 26-27 August 2009
 The 8th Australasian User Group Meeting will take place in Sydney, Australia, on 26-27 August, and will be hosted by the Australian Museum.
If you would like to make a presentation and/or suggest a topic for discussion at the Meeting, please contact Nick Margiolakis (
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) by 26 July 2009.
This event is supported by the Australian Museum and KE Software and there is no registration fee to attend. More information is available on our website, which will be updated as details firm up.
For more information in the meantime, or to register your interest in attending the Meeting, please email Hannah Rochester (
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).
5th North American User Group Meeting, 20-21 October 2009
 The 5th North American User Group Meeting will take place in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, on 20-21 October, and will be hosted by the Minnesota Historical Society.
If you would like to make a presentation and/or suggest a topic for discussion at the Meeting, please contact Sylvia Nikolova (
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) by 14 September 2009.
This event is supported by the Minnesota Historical Society and KE Software and there is no registration fee to attend. More information is available on our website, which will be updated as details firm up.
As usual, the EMu User Group Meeting will be preceded by the EMu Natural History Special Interest Group (SIG) on 19 October 2009.
For more information in the meantime, or to register your interest in attending the Meeting, please email Lisa Lee (
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) no later than 14 September 2009.
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The EMu Community Grows
KE Software is pleased to welcome the following institutions to the community of EMu Users:
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Art Museum, Brisbane, Australia
Located in Brisbane's central business district, the QUT Art Museum is a modern art gallery with a reputation for displaying the finest works from its collection in thought-provoking exhibitions. Established in 1945 the Museum has a history of commitment to contemporary art, and the majority of works in the collection in fact date from the 1960s onwards.
The Museum selected EMu to manage its collection of more than 2000 objects, including paintings, sculptures, decorative arts and works on paper, chiefly by Australian artists. A small group of international works, mostly ceramics and prints, augments the Australian holdings.
QUT also manages the historic Old Government House, the official residence of the Governors of Queensland from 1862-1909. In addition to the art collections, EMu will be used to manage the collections of this historic building - as well as the building structure itself. A future project will consider the use of iMu for providing guided tours of the building (see below for more details about iMu).
Heritage Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Heritage Victoria administers the Heritage Act 1995 and maintains the Victorian Heritage Register. Its prime responsibility is to assist in identifying, protecting and interpreting Victoria's most significant cultural heritage resources, advising private owners, local and State government, industry and the general community on heritage matters. The organisation's aim is to make heritage identification, protection and management accessible and easily understood.
EMu was selected to manage Heritage Victoria's records for a variety of reasons, but in particular for its content management capabilities and facility for capturing and storing multimedia.
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EMuUsers.org Update
390+ EMu users worldwide are currently registered with EMuUsers.org. KE Software staff regularly submit answers to FAQs and participate in the site's many Forums. If you have a question about EMu, you're likely to find the answer (or someone able to answer your question) on EMuUsers.org.
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EMu 3.2.05
Yes, it's true that we've been announcing the imminent arrival of EMu 3.2.05 for some months now, but rest assured that its delay is due to a growing list of new features and functionality!
To the long list of features we mentioned last time around, we've added the following:
- Statistics module (see below for details).
EMu 3.2.05 introduces a Statistics facility that allows statistical information to be generated on a regular basis (hourly, daily, weekly or monthly) and stored in the Statistics module for later use.
- Support for specifying the Compression Quality for JPEG images is now available. The Compression Quality is also extracted from JPEG images as part of the image metadata.
- A Duration field has been added to the Multimedia module for audio based media. This allows the duration of an audio file to be recorded.
More information about EMu 3.2.05 can be found:
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Support
Hours of operation for KE Software support are:
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North America:
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9:00 AM - 8:00 PM
6:00 AM - 5:00 PM
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(EST)
(PST)
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Europe: |
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM |
(BST) |
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Asia-Pacific:
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9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
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(AEST)
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EMu Help
The EMu Help is constantly being improved and updated as new features are added to EMu.
As the Help is updated frequently (and more often than a new release of EMu becomes available), the most recent Help files have been made available from our website. Download the latest version (International English, US English, French), rename it to emu.chm or emu_en-US.chm and replace the existing file.
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Client Profiles
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Guided tours in Rochdale with iMu: Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service
 The Arts & Heritage Service for Rochdale manages an Art Gallery, Museum, Local Studies and Archives collections on behalf of Rochdale Borough Council, Rochdale, UK.
To celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the incorporation of the original County Borough of Rochdale, a guided tour with points of interest and historical buildings within the Rochdale area is being developed using iMu, EMu’s guided tour system.
Designed for a wide variety of iPod devices, iMu supports both fixed tours (those following a pre-determined route) and self-selected tour options (in which visitors select the objects or destinations they wish to see).
As well as a guided tour of the City, a tour of the collection at Touchstones Rochdale is being implemented by KE Software. Before visiting Touchstones, visitors will be able to browse its collections online, selecting items that they wish to see; when ready they simply download a personalised tour that will direct them along the shortest path from one item they selected to another. A map is displayed for those with a video supported iPod with visual directions complementing the audio directions. As each item is reached, a story is narrated to the visitor.
Peabody Museum of Natural History
The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University was founded in 1866 by philanthropist George Peabody at the behest of his nephew and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. Said to be one of the oldest, largest and most prolific university natural history museums in the world, the Peabody's mission is to increase understanding of Earth's history through biological, geological and anthropological research and to communicate those findings to the widest possible audience.
The Museum has eleven curatorial divisions: Anthropology, Botany, Entomology, Herpetology, Historical Scientific Instruments, Invertebrate Paleontology, Invertebrate Zoology, Meteorites and Planetary Science, Mineralogy, Paleobotany, Vertebrate Paleontology and Vertebrate Zoology. Between them they hold more than 12 million specimens and objects, of which less than 1% can be displayed to the public at any given time.
Perhaps most famous are the Vertebrate Paleontology collections, which are amongst the largest, most extensive and historically important fossil collections in the United States; and the Hiram Bingham collection of Incan artifacts from Machu Picchu, named for the famous Yale archaeologist who discovered the Peruvian ruin.
The Peabody Museum of Natural History has been an EMu User since 2005.
National Museum of Health and Medicine
The Army Medical Museum was founded by Army Surgeon General William A. Hammond in 1862 with the objective of studying and improving medical conditions during the American Civil War. It was renamed the National Museum of Health and Medicine in 1989. Located in Washington, DC, the institution remains part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and is dedicated to preserving, collecting and interpreting medical objects, specimens, photographs and documents over the centuries.
The Museum comprises five collections: Historical Collections, which documents changes in medical technology since the early 19th century; Anatomical Collections; Otis Historical Collection, which contains photographs, illustrations and documents related to health and medicine; the Human Developmental Anatomy Center, which contains the largest collection of embryologic material in the US; and the Neuroanatomical Collections, which contains nine different collections focusing on human and non-human neuroanatomy and neuropathology. Together the collections hold some 25 million specimens, including 5000 skeletal specimens, 10,000 preserved organs, 12,000 items of medical equipment, medical historical documents and other objects related to neuroanatomy and developmental anatomy.
Perhaps the most famous elements of the collection are those related to Abraham Lincoln's assassination, which include the bullet from the pistol that ended his life, the probe used by the surgeon to locate the bullet and pieces of Lincoln's hair and skull.
The National Museum of Health and Medicine has been an EMu User since 2005.
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Did You Know...
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...that EMu 3.2.05 introduces a Statistics facility?
The Statistics facility allows statistical information to be generated on a regular basis (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) and stored in the Statistics module. System administrators and managers need only search the Statistics module to locate the information they require and then produce a report (Excel Pivot table) from which tables and graphs may be generated.
The Statistics facility consists of two parts:
- Statistics Module
The Statistics module contains records with computed statistical values. Each record contains one value, a floating point number, that represents the result of a statistical criteria. For example, a value of 10 may indicate the number of records inserted by user james into the Catalogue module on 17 February 2009. A standard EMu module interface is provided to the Statistics module:
An Excel report is supplied that presents the records in a Pivot table for further manipulation.
- Periodic Tasks
In order to provide useful statistical information it is necessary to have statistic records generated at regular intervals, removing the need for information to be obtained manually. The Periodic Tasks facility implements a framework in which individual tasks (scripts) can be placed and executed on a regular basis. It is the purpose of the tasks to generate statistical records by examining the various system reports and data within an EMu implementation. Periodic tasks can be run on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis. It is possible to add new periods (e.g. fortnightly) if required.
Full details can be found here and will be available in the latest version of the EMu Help.
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Tips and Tricks
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It is possible to select multiple records and display all of their attachments. Put another way, it is possible to display the records to which a selection of records have made an attachment.
Remember that the direction of an attachment is from Record A to Record B, or Primary record to Target record: a Bibliography record for a book makes an attachment to a Parties record for the author. The Bibliography record is the Primary record, the Parties record is the Target record.
Using the following technique it is possible to display all of the Target records for a selection of Primary records.
Give it a go - it always makes more sense in practice than theory:
- Search for or otherwise list a group of records and select them in List View or Details View.
- In Details View, place the cursor in an attachment field.
- Select Edit>View Attached>Selected Records.
All target records to which the selected records have made an attachment from the current field will be listed.
Full details can be found in the EMu Help (search for How to view attachment records; and ensure that the Search titles only checkbox is ticked).
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EMu 3.2.05
Yes, it's true that we've been announcing the imminent arrival of EMu 3.2.05 for some months now, but rest assured that its delay is due to a growing list of new features and functionality!
To the long list of features we mentioned last time around, we've added the following:
- Statistics module (see below for details).
EMu 3.2.05 introduces a Statistics facility that allows statistical information to be generated on a regular basis (hourly, daily, weekly or monthly) and stored in the Statistics module for later use.
- Support for specifying the Compression Quality for JPEG images is now available. The Compression Quality is also extracted from JPEG images as part of the image metadata.
- A Duration field has been added to the Multimedia module for audio based media. This allows the duration of an audio file to be recorded.
More information about EMu 3.2.05 can be found:
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EMu New Developments - Part 1
