June 2011 Update

PMA Meetings
We kicked off the month with a trip to Ottawa to meet with other provincial museums association staff and federal agencies.  Being a glutton for punishment, I rashly promised to blog daily updates and somehow managed to actually do so.  In case you missed them, here are the links for you to read about day 1, day 2, day 3, and/or day 4.

Database Renewal Project

This month we doubled the number of CollectiveAccess users, from 17 to 34.  This has put us slightly ahead of schedule, which will come in handy as my summer travels will take over data cleaning time.  Our projected timeline has us finishing the first week of August.  Right now our theme song is "this is the project that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend. Some people started doing it not knowing what it was, and now they keep on doing it forever just because this is the project that never ends..."
Please bear with us as we continue this massive undertaking.  We are increasingly convinced this was the best decision for Nova Scotia's museum community, and aside from a few minor growing pains, everything is working well.  People are actively adding and editing information, and summer students are picking it all up remarkably fast.
If you are still working in the old database, I promise that your turn is coming soon.

Anna Swan - After the Fire

QR Code Usage Stats
We haven't yet seen the big jump in numbers that I've been hoping for, but people are still using the codes at a steady rate.  We had another 140 hits over June, which puts us at a total of 1161.  The Army Museum continues to be the most popular, and even surpassed the Museum of Natural History, which has held the top spot for monthly views ever since we began the project.  The Army Museum has a bit of catching up to do, but if they continue at this rate I wouldn't be surprised if they overtake MNH in total views before the end of the summer.  The Lewis Gun also kept its top spot of most popular qr code.  Apparently our museum visitors have a violent side.  Who knew?!

Site Visits

Scheduling has proven tricky this year, as I'm not visiting sites until they have been migrated to the new database system.  And since we aren't migrating in any sort of geographical order, this means I have to wait until I've got a few museums that are near enough to allow for some coordination.  As I said, tricky.  But I'm slowly making the rounds, clocking many hours in rental cars with audio books.  Thank goodness for the Halifax Public Library.  I'm trying to blog more casually about my travels, so you can read about my visits in Digby County and Halifax & Annapolis County and stay tuned for more travelogs.
I encourage everyone to bring in volunteers, board members, and students for my visit as I'll be training you on the new database system.  To keep things simple we'll just be covering the basics, and will address more advanced features once we get over the initial learning curve.  Oh the things this new toy can do!!