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museum-digital

Software musdb
BannerPublic domain / US gov't work. USDA NRCS Montana / Snow Survey65.tif / Man working on computer, analyzing data, 1977.

musdb

musdb is museum-digital's tool for indexing and creating inventories. Originally developed for recording objects to be published only, it has since developed into a full-featured inventory and museum management solution.

Central to the development of musdb are:


Screenshots

Dashboard/Default startpage of musdb.
The default start page is a customizable dashboard. Other start pages can be selected by the user.
Batch editing in musdb.
musdb features batch editing functionalities for batch publishing or tagging.
XML export
Users can export their data in our own md:xml (a simple notation featuring all available fields) and LIDO.
Background research tool.
Using the "backgrounds" section, users can browse the controlled vocabularies directly from musdb.
Find an expert: Connecting users.
Using the "Find an Export" button, users can find other users who have done much work on a given topic. Still, every user can decide if they want to let others find them through this tool or not.
Multilingual usage of musdb.
musdb is multilingual and it can handle multilingual inputs.
Navigation of musdb.
The navigation gives a rough overview over different sections of musdb: Museums, Collections, Objects, Object Groups, Exhibitions, etc.
Object overview page.
An object overview page in image mode. The sidebar on the right offers search and filter-based exporting and batch editing functionalities. A simple list view is also available.
Object page
The main section of an object page. At the top, most basic information on the object can be entered. At the bottom, the tabbed menu for managing detailed information on the object can be seen.
Record history of an object.
Edits to an object are logged. If the user who previously edited the object set up their user profile, new users who see the logs can get to know others from the museum through the logs.
Provenance research tab
Using the provenance research tab, detailed reports on a predefined set of critical issues can be recorded.
Restoration tab on a musdb object page
The restoration tab of an object page offers options for color-coded and easily accessible notes towards the top of the section, detailed ones on the bottom.
User management and user rights section
Museum directors and regional administrators set detailed permissions for what users can edit or view.

Technical Information

Design Principles

Musdb should be easy and intuitive to use. It should be fun to use. On the one hand, this means that the design should give a clear focus to the main subject of a given page. To reach this aim, options exist to toggle many features on or off. Optional features (like generating QR codes for object pages or a table of contents to directly jump to the wanted section of a page) are available in a toolbox on the left border of the window.

But easy and intuitive also means that power users can work efficiently in whatever way suits them best. Musdb offers a variety of aids for this. A selection of these are:

Development

Musdb is based on PHP8 and MySQL. A number of PHP and JavaScript libraries are used, a list of which can be found in the handbook.


Features and basic concepts

Centralized Controlled Vocabularies

All museums working with musdb use one set of controlled vocabularies for linked actors, places, times, and tags. The work for enriching such concepts with translations, links to the common norm data repositories etc. thus only needs to be done once - and everybody immediately profits from having accessible those entries that have already been entered for another museum beforehand.

Exports

All object data can be exported using a simple XML notation based on our own data structure ('md:xml') for full exports or in common exchange formats such as LIDO. An export to Excel files and autogenerated catalogues are available as well.

Edit whichever way is most suitable to you

musdb supports a multitude of ways to update object data. Users can toggle the object editing page to a fully customizable form, in which given fields or subsections of object data can be moved in place using drag and drop. For editing many objects at once, there are batch editing capabilities and a table-based editing mode available. And if you're still not satisfied, you can even write your own interface using the API.

Flexible search

Searching objects is done using a custom query language built on top of the Manticore search database and our taxonomies. If you want to search not only objects, but a given term in all of your museum's data, you can use musdb's universal search feature.

Automatic quality control

musdb aims to make it easy to enter high quality data. To this end, we have included many features for, among other things, enabling you to simply make tags more specific using our controlled vocabularies and a simple right click; PuQI, a tool for quantifying the quality of publishable object information entered; automatic improvement suggestions, that enable you to semi-automatically run obvious corrections and completions of your data using a Tinder-like interface.


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languages

musdb is build for multi-lingual use and has been translated to a number of languages. Of course, we are always looking forward to help in translating the musdb (just like all other tools at museum-digital) to new languages. A description of how our dedicated translation tool can be used for doing so is available on the blog (German).


FAQ

How much does musdb cost?

musdb is free of charge and will stay so. Users with the required permissions can add as many additional users as necessary.

What are the system requirements for musdb?

musdb is fully web-based. Thus only an up-to-date browser is required to use musdb.

Is it possible to use musdb only for collection management without publishing?

Yes.

Can I import my existing collection data to musdb?

In principle, yes. Given that the data has been compiled in a structured way, we have thus far always found a way to import the data. Import scripts for common exchange formats such as LIDO and exports from other popular collection management systems exist out of the box (a list can be found in the handbook) and can be used in cooperation with our technical team or on one's own using musdb's WebDAV interface for import data.

Does musdb support two-factor authentication?

Yes. Users can enable two-factor authentication based on hardware tokens (e.g. Yubikeys or Nitrokeys), TOTP (which is e.g. used by Google Authenticator) or by mail.

Is there any limit to the number of images that can be uploaded per object?

No. You may upload as many images (or other media types such as video, audio, PDFs, or 3D representations) as necessary.

Can musdb be used for managing our museum library?

Yes.


Resources

Documentation (German) Videos on YouTube (German) API documentation
News About the Development of musdb
Automatically enforcing consistent naming of places Quality Assessments Like in musdb: Now For Everybody EODEM Version 1.0 released Improved Workflow for Working with Loan Objects using EODEM Categorizing an object’s tags