Gestion Informatique Documentaire

Description of the communal inventory database project made up of databases for the Museums throughout Marseille.

Stephanie Guinet and Dominique Samani, Project Managers at the Direction of the Museums of Marseille, describe their current project; they are creating a database that concerns, exclusively, the collections from the town’s various museums:

“We are a team of three people who have been delegated to lead the project, to co-ordinate the different museums and to communicate with the head of the I.T council.

The project is lead by The Direction of the Museums of Marseille, who manage all fifteen of the town’s museums. The Cabinet of Medals and the Communal Fund for Contemporary Art are equally involved. All types of collection are concerned, from fine art to ethnology, from history to the decorative arts.

The town of Marseille wishes to put a cultural network into place, meaning the diffusion, via the internet, of computerised sets of data from various cultural institutions (libraries, archives, galleries and museums).
The creation of a database that regroups sets of computerised inventories from the various museums of Marseille is the first stage.

The project began with an update of hardware and of Micromusée software, as well as an assessment of the current inventory in each museum. The implementation process lasted five months, during which time tailored training was given by Mobydoc staff to museum teams. This training complemented the numerous meetings which had been organised internally in order to achieve an outline of the code of practice for the input system. At the same time, Mobydoc was starting to merge the eleven museum databases.

The project team was composed of three people in the museums, and fifteen others that were called upon to assist in various capacities.