MCN 2024

What is Digital Content? How do we create policy and strategy for digital without common definitions and a shared framework for managing digital content? How do we prioritize and resource digital content to support our institution’s mission and strategic goals?

To help answer those questions, cross-departmental teams at the Smithsonian set out to research and inventory digital content types, connected systems, and workflows. The project differentiates between digital content and digital assets, emphasizing that not all digital content holds long-term institutional value. Digital assets are specifically identified for their ongoing usefulness and significance to the SI. The project involved extensive stakeholder engagement, including interviews and surveys with 102 staff members across 32 units, covering diverse roles such as collections, conservation, research, content production, and data analysis.

The gap analysis section addresses the challenges in harmonizing collections data, managing born-digital collections, and ensuring effective digital stewardship. Recommendations include developing systems for aggregate collections data, providing sustained funding for essential digital systems, and creating tools and training for content transfer and management.

This session will highlight how we went about researching and communicating findings, as well as prompt attendees to consider the types of content they engage with in their day-to-day work, ensuring that valuable digital assets are effectively preserved, accessed, and utilized across one’s organization.

30min: presentation
Background on the project, process, and findings.
Links of resources, final report, and supplemental materials will be made available to attendees.
15min: group exercise and Q+A
We will invite users to contribute questions and add their own digital content types via QR code form to display real-time submissions.
We may also invite guests into our Systems Diagram Miro board.

With the approaching end-of-life of Drupal 7, our ongoing challenges of managing separate websites for museum visitors and online collections, the construction of a new physical museum, and an impending rebranding, it was clear that we needed to reevaluate the overall architecture of Gilcrease's online ecosystem. In this session, we will present a case study and share the lessons we've learned from the decoupled migration of the Gilcrease Museums Online Collections.

You might be wondering, what exactly is a decoupled website? What benefits, drawbacks, and compromises did we encounter during the transition to a new website architecture? What are our plans post-launch? We will address these questions and many more.

We'll share relatable experiences and obstacles that small to medium-sized museums often face, demonstrating the strategies we used to “lift and shift” the website migration while balancing innovation with budget constraints and timelines. Throughout this process, we aimed to minimize technical debt and adhere to a reasonable timeline, despite the temptation to add new features. Sometimes, we resisted; other times, we had to compromise.

We will also share key technical highlights such as:
- A brief high-level overview of the Gilcrease collections systems architecture including TMS, Library, and ArchivesSpace custom integration with DAMS and collections website.
- Overview of the Piction to Drupal integration and delta sync.
- Building, serving, and presenting IIIF manifests with Drupal and Clover IIIF.
- Enhancing performance and SEO with decoupled architecture.