BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL

BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL
Using IMu for M Shed
Bristol City Council manages a rich and diverse range of collections across five
museums, with three of the collections “Designated” by the UK Government as
of national importance. The museum and art gallery collections are estimated
as having over 1.75 million objects and include collections in Applied and Fine
Arts, British and Foreign Archaeology, Social, Industrial and Maritime History,
Natural Sciences and Ethnography.
The Council adopted EMu to be the central repository and management
mechanism for all collections related information for the museum service.
Another attraction of the EMu system for Bristol was the ease with which
content can be published to the web and through gallery-based ICT and
wireless technologies.
M Shed opened in June 2011. It is a new museum about the history of the city
from prehistoric times to the present day, and challenges the perceptions of
what it has meant to live in Bristol over the centuries through the recollections
of the people who shaped the city. Part of the visitor experience at M Shed is
driven by a set of kiosks running interactive displays explaining the objects
and themes behind all exhibits in the museum.
Using IMu, KE Software's toolset for distributing data held within EMu via the
Internet, the software running on these kiosks draws on data and multimedia
kept within EMu, organised within a set of themes, sub-themes, stories and
other interpretive material.
M Shed Gallery Kiosk – Object
Bristol uses the Narratives module to store the interactive kiosk content. Each
narratives record stores the title and text for a single object or story.
Narratives records and associated multimedia can be amended, inserted or
deleted and this is reflected live on the kiosks the next day. The kiosks gather
the data from EMu every night as opposed to having a constant link. This
ensures that if there is a server failure, the interactive displays in the gallery
aren’t affected.
The M Shed’s website draws on a similar subset of data from EMu, organised
within a very similar structure of themes, sub-themes etc.
KEY FACTS: EMu user since 2008 | Museums: Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery, Blaise Castle House
Museum, The Georgian House, The Red Lodge, M Shed | Collections include: Applied Art, Archaeology,
Biology, Community History, Eastern Art and Culture, Ethnography and Foreign Archaeology, Fine Art,
Geology, Industrial and Maritime History, Social History | Number of Users: 20 | Over 1000 narratives
records published to web / kiosks
M Shed website: http://mshed.org/explore-contribute/