Welcome

Welcome to the third and final issue of the EMu Newsletter for 2008. With the end of year fast approaching, Seasons Greetings to one and all!

In this issue we report on two recent User Group meetings, one in Las Vegas, the other in Wellington, and take a look at the Hull Museums website, which is driven entirely from the Narratives module. The next EMu release, EMu 3.2.05, is very nearly here and has a huge number of enhancements (details below); and finally, in Tips and Tricks we take a look at reporting in Microsoft Excel.

With the new year just around the corner, all of us at KE Software wish you all the best for 2009!

In this Issue

• EMu User Group Meetings
• New Members of the EMu User community
• EMuUsers.org Update
• Release Info
• Support
• EMu Client Profiles
• Did You Know?
• Tips and Tricks

7th Australasian User Group Meeting,  9-10 September 2008

The 7th Australasian EMu User Group Meeting was held in Wellington, New Zealand, on 9-10 September at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Although the number of attendees was slightly down on previous years (due to the greater than usual distance to travel for most), the consensus of those who did attend is that this was another successful EMu meeting. Not only was the location excellent but the program, discussion topics and catering drew extremely positive feedback.

Day one commenced with a traditional Maori welcoming ceremony (Powhiri), a perfect start to the meeting. It also gave us a chance to hear KE's CEO, John Doolan, speak in Maori and provide us with some interesting historical facts about his ancestors! At the end of Day 1, following the formal sessions, attendees were invited to participate in behind the scenes tours of the Museum. Judging from the feedback, these were a highlight of the Meeting and all Te Papa staff did an excellent job.

Day Two commenced with the ever popular Q&A session and a demo of new features to be released in future EMu versions.

Presentations and photos from the Meeting are available on the EMu website.

We can also confirm that the location for the 2009 meeting will be the Australian Museum in Sydney in September (dates to be announced).

Thanks to all who attended and contributed to this successful Meeting.

4th North American EMu User Group Meeting, 21-22 October 2008

The 4th North American EMu User Group Meeting was hosted by the Las Vegas Springs Preserve (LVSP) on 21-22 October 2008. LVSP is located on a relatively untouched, historically significant site of 180 acres, a few miles from downtown Las Vegas. The site was the location of the original water supply for the city of Las Vegas via aquifers, long since exhausted.

An EMu user since 2003, LVSP has collections spanning many disciplines. Its museum, exhibition and educational facilities have been constructed to an extremely high sustainability standard and LVSP is one of only a few North American sites to have a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum rating.

This fourth meeting of the North American User Group was well attended with some 85 attendees from US, Canadian and international institutions, and it was great to see so many first time attendees alongside the regulars.

The program included an enlightening and entertaining cross section of presentations from EMu users. An informative welcoming address from Andy Schuricht of LVSP was followed by a thought-provoking and inspiring presentation by Marcel Parent on Creating a Culture of Sustainability at the Springs Preserve. This highlighted interesting sustainability programs that LVSP has undertaken and detailed ways in which museums can become leaders in this area.

Other presentations included the usual and much anticipated sessions by Bernard Marshall, KE's Chief Technology Officer, describing new EMu technology; Larry Gall from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History described the brilliant simplicity with which the Peabody interfaces with EMu to facilitate the physical movement of the museum's collections. Also, Paul Cretes from the Canadian Museum of Civilisation discussed the CMC's data analysis project, in which object data was assessed using who/what/where/when/how criteria to determine completeness. This will be of interest to many EMu customers, particularly those who have passed the implementation stage, and who may wish to consider practical methods for assessing data quality and breadth.

Presentations and photos from the Meeting are available from the EMu website.

Three streams of discussion groups were held each afternoon. These informal discussions were facilitated by EMu users or KE staff and provided a great opportunity for relaxed information exchange on key topics. LVSP staff also kindly hosted a number of informative tours of their facilities in the late afternoon of each day.

As always, program breaks provided plenty of time for discussion with other EMu users and KE staff. The break areas were very pleasant places for chatting and catching up, and the reception hosted by LVSP was a delightful evening of conversation (and lots of laughter!).

Many thanks to LVSP for extending exceptional hospitality to the EMu community - the meeting was a great success.

We look forward to the next meeting of the North American EMu User Group in 2009 and encourage users who have never attended to consider coming along to make new friends, renew old acquaintances, learn some new things and share mutually beneficial information.

Ian  Turnbull, Chief Operating Officer, KE Software

Dates for the 2009 EMu User Group Meetings

Dates and venues for the 2009 EMu User Group Meetings in Australasia, Europe and North America will be announced soon. Time and again these meetings prove to be superb venues for networking and sharing EMu knowledge and experience and we encourage you to join us next year.

Details about forthcoming meetings, and presentations and photos from previous meetings, are available on the KE EMu website.

The EMu Community Grows

KE Software is pleased to welcome the following institutions to the community of EMu Users:

The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

The Mint Museum is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Museum, which is housed in what was the first branch of the United States Mint, formally opened to the public in 1936, making it North Carolina's first art museum.

Today it is a rich and diverse resource with noted collections of American art, pre-Columbian art, American and European ceramics, American decorative arts, historic costumes and accessories, African art, Asian art, historic maps, contemporary art and photography.

Blackpool City Council - Blackpool Illuminations, Blackpool, UK

The Blackpool City Council has chosen EMu to manage its illuminations collections.

The Blackpool Illuminations consist of almost every kind of light display imaginable: lasers, neon, light bulbs, fibre optics, searchlights and floodlighting. In 2005 there were more than 500 scenic designs and features. There are set pieces made out of wood studded with light bulbs: the characters and objects portrayed seem to “move” by way of winking lights. Three-dimensional illuminated scenes are also popular. There are over 500 road features attached to lamp posts linked together with festoon lighting. Strings of lights along the structure of buildings pick out landmarks in luminous detail.

EMuUsers.org Update

380+ 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.

Details about EMu User Group Meetings, previously maintained by EMuUsers.org, are now available on the EMu website.

EMu 3.2.05

EMu 3.2.05 will be available soon and will include:

1. Range Indexing:
   Tools have been introduced to allow Administrators to tune EMu's range indexing. Support for automatic optimisation of range indexes has also been added. Using these tools EMu can now provide optimal range indexes with significantly faster range based searches.
2. Drag/Drop multimedia resources onto a Multimedia tab to create Multimedia records automatically:
   It is now possible to drag multimedia resources (images, videos, audio, documents) from the Windows Desktop (etc.) onto any Multimedia tab in any module, automatically creating a Multimedia repository record.
3. Record Recall:
   A complete history of changes to a record is maintained by EMu. It is now possible to update a record with data from an earlier version of the record. Note that this does not Undo changes (the complete history is always maintained), but it does allow you to amend a record with data from an earlier version of the record.
   
4. Record Templates:
   Combining the functionality of the Ditto and Default Values facilities, it is now possible to create multiple copies of an existing record.
5. Enhancements to the Groups module.
6. XML Import pre-processing.
7. Addition of a Statistics module, designed to hold statistical data.
8. Enhancements to EMu Web Maps (aka the Mapper).
9. Font selection, allowing users to select the font used within EMu.
10. System Identification, adding the user's name and service to the module Status bar.
11. It is possible to copy field information directly from the Field Help dialogue box.

More details can be found in Bernard Marshall's presentation: EMu New Developments - Part 1.  Full details will be made available from the EMu website soon (and included in the latest version of the EMu Help, which can also be downloaded from the EMu website).

Support

Hours of operation for KE Software support are:

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.

Client Profiles

Hull Museums website

Hull Museums Service includes nine museums which together attract nearly half a million visitors each year. The museums have a rich and diverse range of collections, including anti-slavery, archaeology, craft and design, fine art, maritime history, social history and transport. A large proportion of the collections are designated as significant collections of international importance, and attract a number of publications and researchers annually.

After selecting EMu at the end of 2006, the Hull Museums Service went through a rigorous back capture process for all collection items. This basic data was prepared and loaded into EMu in 2007 ready for the new documentation team to begin enriching existing collection data. The sixteen documentation staff then began to clean the data whilst adding images and narrative material for a web audience. The website is now live and has a collections and theme focus spanning the nine different museum sites. The general public can browse the Narrative themes, whilst an advanced collections search caters to the needs of researchers and specialists.

The collections and themes within EMu are now widely available via Google and other search engines. For example, a Google search for weird + hull returns a link to the Weird and Wonderful section on the Hull Museum Services site (listed second only to Chicago's weird Hull House). While the first link listed for a search on  Egypt + Hull is for Hull's Egyptian collections. Given that the museum website is nestled amongst the Council's other operations, including 'permits & licences' and 'waste & recycling', search engine discovery is vital.

The Hull Museums website is driven entirely from the EMu Narratives module and this includes all the quizzes, the stories, image galleries, downloads, plus more. There are currently 115,082 records in EMu, of which 103,581 are available online (90%). At the recent EMu User Group Meeting in London, Simon Wilson (Hull's project manager) commented that the website has shown a marked increase in enquiries about the collections and that it represents a significant culture change for the Service.

Ben Sullivan, Head of European Operations, KE Software

Did You Know...

Tips and Tricks

It is very easy to produce useful reports in Microsoft Excel using a simple cut and paste of data directly out of a module in List View. Simply:

1. Search for the records on which you wish to report.
2. Create a List View with the fields on which you wish to report (or select a List View that already includes the required fields).
3. Copy the records in List View and paste them into Microsoft Excel.

With the data now in Excel it's simply a matter of manipulating it with Excel's numerous tools to produce a report.

Using this method it is only possible to report on fields that are in the current module - that is, you can include data in an attachment field, but not data from any other field in an attached module.

Another method that will allow you to include data from any field in an attached module is to create an Export CSV Format Report. In this method:

1. Create a new report with an Export CSV Format report Type.
2. Add the necessary fields to the Fields tab of the Report Properties box.

When the report is run, a dialogue box displays giving you the option to save the generated .csv file to your PC.

If you double-click the .csv file, it is possible that a message will display stating that the file format is not recognised. If you display the file anyway, the data will display as comma separated values, rather than with data displaying in columns. To display the data as columns:

1. Close the file.
2. Select File>Open and navigate to the .csv file.
   The warning message will display again.
3. Select OK.
   The Text Import Wizard displays.
4. Select the Delimited radio button at Step 1.
5. At Step 2 of the wizard, select the Comma checkbox.

Now when the report displays, your data will be presented in columns, and you can begin manipulating the data in Excel to produce a report.

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