G O I N G D I G I TA L
Limited physical collections access has required the museum to expand digital access. Photograph taken in 2013.
By Chris Adams Information Systems Analyst
MAKING THE CATALOGUE
FAIR How Museum Staff Are Creating Improved Online Access to Collections
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haring knowledge, passion and curiosity for the natural and cultural histories of British Columbia is at the heart of the museum. It was difficult for us to close the doors to the collection in 2020 due to the pandemic, even though it was best for the community. Staff have been hard at work since then to ensure that the knowledge housed in the collections can still be part of the public sphere by increasing the digital presence of the collections in the online catalogue.
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Close to 90,000 records and more than 35,000 images have been added to the public catalogue in the last year, and thousands more existing records have been enriched to provide greater details about the material. Almost all of these updates describe objects that had been in the collections for years but had not yet been added to the online catalogue. Adding them provides greater depth to the historical record of British Columbia available to digital audiences. There are thousands of items in the collection, and to fully describe them and share their stories, we have to integrate multiple sources and formats of information. It is a daunting task to consider how to present 200 years worth of records (and millions of years
