Surfacing the National Collections: adapting image cataloguing standards to transform access to National Museums Scotland's online collections

Kist, C. , Economou, M. , St Clair Inglis, C., Babes, P., Kneale, A. and Norfolk, H. (2023) Surfacing the National Collections: adapting image cataloguing standards to transform access to National Museums Scotland's online collections. Project Report. University of Glasgow and National Museums Scotland. (doi: 10.36399/gla.pubs.302242).

Abstract

This report summarises the findings and outputs of a knowledge exchange project between the University of Glasgow and National Museums Scotland (the Museums) which was intended to inform image cataloguing standards through an audience-centred approach. A recent AHRC-Towards-a-National-Collection-funded report identified a discrepancy between metadata standards used by the Museums’ staff and the search terms/object information used by the public, limiting access to the collections. For this project, the team undertook interviews with the Museums’ staff; a content analysis of user search queries collected over 2020-2021 from the institutions’ collections webpage – the Search our Collections (SoC) portal; public surveys; and user interviews. From the resulting data, insights about who users of the SoC portal are and how they search are revealed, and in turn, associated frameworks for applying user-centred metadata to images are suggested. The resulting user insights and frameworks for applying image metadata are intended to increase the collections’ findability and help staff at National Museums Scotland and beyond integrate in their work the motivations and needs of audiences accessing online collections.

• Item Type: Research Reports or Papers (Project Report)
• Additional Information: Funded by the University of Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund.
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Kist, Dr Cassandra and Economou, Professor Maria
• Authors: Kist, C., Economou, M., St Clair Inglis, C., Babes, P., Kneale, A., and Norfolk, H.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Information Studies
• Publisher: University of Glasgow and National Museums Scotland
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Authors
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License