Short Abstract

Drawing examples from web projects at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I will identify free and open source technologies that have enabled us to deliver value to colleagues and visitors alike. Furthermore, we will see how these technologies - when combined with open standards - can provide a powerful toolkit for working with legacy and proprietary systems. This allows "just-in-time" features to be added to existing systems outside costly or time-consuming upgrade cycles. Overall, I will share some approaches that could be useful for other institutions wishing to engage technical staff and save on licensing software.

Abstract

The procurement cycle for museum systems, such as CRM, ticketing or e-commerce, can be a long and expensive one. User expectations, be they colleague or visitor, often outpace this process, especially where web technologies are involved.

I will demonstrate how the expertise from in-house museum teams can be harnessed to accelerate development. At the V&A we have used several open source tools to plug gaps in existing proprietary systems. These methods allow us to loosen the bonds of vendor lock-in whilst delivering a better user experience to the people that matter, inside and outside the museum. Calling on open source technology saves cash and boosts skills throughout a development team because passionate and thriving communities are involved. Some new features can be delivered in timescales dictated by the talents of your colleagues, rather than a closed and unclear upgrade path from the vendor. Another interesting approach is investing in supported open source, where the vendor offers paid development and maintenance services for a free and open source product.

Whilst understanding that each institution has a unique array of systems, all of which have potential shortcomings, I hope to highlight opportunities for enterprising dev teams to intervene. I will draw examples from the redevelopment of our collections search, memberships, donations and ticketing apps. As a web developer, my main output is the Internet but there are other points in "the stack" where museum information can be reclaimed from systems and repurposed. To this end, I will be recommending specific technologies including XML and database libraries for the Python programming language, the Django framework, the Sphinx search engine and some supporting Linux goodies.

Speaker

Richard Barrett-Small

Web Developer

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK

Speaker Bio

I started programming with Perl in order to streamline the SGML workflow in an electronic publishing house. In this role, I rapidly switched to Python, MySQL and XML data processing. Later, I moved into web development, working for an agency with Object-Oriented PHP and MySQL on Linux servers. I learned the Django development framework around the same time.

Over the past 2 years, my role at the Victoria and Albert Museum has given me the opportunity to return to professional Python programming, whilst still working with PHP and other open source technologies. We use this infrastructure to improve the V&A's web presence and stability, delivering a new Search the Collections last year. We are currently employing such technologies to underpin the redevelopment and redesign of the whole V&A site.

Session Info

• Type: Individual Paper
• Keywords: web, open source, development, programming
• Relevance: I would hope to engage and inspire in-house museum web developers and those involved in managing museum systems. The material in the paper should highlight areas where programmers and database administrators can use their knowledge to enhance the systems they maintain. Managers may see chances to reduce spending on third parties, making opportunistic enhancements with the resources at hand.