KE EMu and the Future for

Natural History Collections

María Consuelo Sendino

Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell
Road, London, SW7 5BD UK. Email: c.sendino-lara@nhm.ac.uk

Abstract This paper describes the current status and the future outlook for KE
EMu, a system for museum collection documentation and manage-
ment that is capable of monitoring collections and exporting data to
websites. Although KE EMu is a collections management system for
all museums and collections, it has great potential for natural history
collections, especially geological collections that have been relatively
neglected. KE EMu Software has been active in supporting efforts to
standardize documentation, encompassing all kinds of information
(e.g., images, bibliography, exhibition history) that are associated with
the item and its management.

Information is the future, and the Internet is the main means of communicating
this information. Museums are repositories of a wide variety of information about
collections (Bižić-Omčikus, et al., 2005; Gavrilović, 2007). A museum object is a
source of scientific and/or cultural data, forming a basis for research. Therefore, it
is important to find ways to facilitate access to this data, as well as to organize the
data systematically.
In the early days of museums, the object and its associated bibliographical in-
formation were paramount, and processes such as treatment techniques, type cata-
loguing and heritage conservation were of secondary importance. The use of objects
for teaching purposes (pedagogy) developed subsequently in museums. Increas-
ingly, the stakeholder is choosing the information they require from the museum.
Museums disseminate information about the objects in their collections, in-
cluding catalogues, bibliographical and documentary data, that is useful to the re-
searcher. Standardizing software used in museums and related institutions helps
both curators and the users of the information, ranging from members of the public
to specialist researchers. Any citizen can benefit from the availability of information
in today’s society of knowledge. In an environment allowing the user remote access
to large amounts of information, the consolidation of information management
systems has two advantages: (1) it facilitates the future construction of collective
Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals,Volume 5, Number 2,
Spring 2009, pp. 149–158. Copyright © 2009 AltaMira Press. All rights reserved. 149
150 KE EMU AND THE FUTURE FOR NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS =

storage of digital information with the aim of allowing the user to access the larg-
est possible quantity of information from a uniform interface; and (2) it generates
digital information for distribution over the Internet.

Museum Documentation

In pre-digital times, documentation was important for monitoring collections, even

when museums functioned only as places for storing and exhibiting objects. Docu-
mentation is a particularly important function of modern museums which gather,
manage and diffuse information of cultural and scientific value. Documentary in-
formation can have the same or even greater value than the actual objects in the
collection. Museum documentation has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it is the
set of diverse documents that are kept in the institution. On the other hand, it is the
process of creating and managing these
documents.
Objects must be considered as
the primary documents in a museum.
Archival material is also crucial, such
as researcher’s letters (Figure 1), sound
recordings, and photographs. Archival
material gives contextual value to aid
interpretation of museum objects. Also
important is bibliographical data related
to an object, and administrative infor-
mation reflecting museum management
of the object, both in the past and at the
present (record books, loans, exhibi-
tions, research, etc.). The aim must be to
preserve, order, classify, locate, recover
and disseminate as much of this infor-
mation as possible and appropriate. In
summary, museological, documentary,
bibliographical and administrative ar-
Figure 1. Archival letter from the Natural
chives should be inventoried, classified, History Museum, London in which John
photographed, preserved appropriately, Cameron (Faculty of Medicine, Dept of
and made available to potential users. Anatomy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova
Accessioning new collections, Scotia) asks for Woodward’s reconstruction
conservation, curation, internal move- of the famous Piltdown skull to Dr. Arthur
Smith Woodward (Keeper of Palaeontology
ments, including deploying items for at NHM from 1901-1924) in a letter dated
exhibition, and loans are all important 9 January 1919 (DF PAL/100/92/5 NHM
processes. Documentation has an or- archives).
= MARÍA CONSUELO SENDINO 151

ganized, mostly hierarchical structure which is important for efficient knowledge

transfer. It is necessary to plan the documentation system before computerization
in order to access information in a logical way.

Documentation: A High Priority in Natural History Collections

Nowadays there is an imperative to digitize collections in all museums around the

world, and natural history collections are leading the way. A high priority is to pub-
lish collection data over the Internet as the best way of making this data available to
researchers. Some countries have developed their own software for museum docu-
mentation. Others are using standardized software with potential interoperability
with other software, as with GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and KE
EMu (Electronic Museum).
Among natural history collections, zoological and botanical specimens are
the first that are being digitized, and the most important initiatives are GBIF and KE
EMu. These are supported by a large computer base. KE EMu is the main software
used to digitalize geological collections (mineralogical, petrological and palaeonto-
logical) because it can manage complex stratigraphical information efficiently.
KE EMu (Electronic Museum) software is used nowadays in many of the larg-
est natural history collections. These include the Natural History Museum, London;
Manchester Museum, Manchester; National Museum of Natural History, Smith-
sonian Institution, Washington; American Museum of Natural History, New York;
The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; Department of Botany, University
of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu; New York Botanical Garden; Peabody Museum of
Natural History, New Haven; United States Polar Rock Repository (USPRR), Co-
lumbus, Ohio; Australian Museum, Sydney; Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney; and
Museum Victoria, Melbourne.

The Rationale of KE EMu

KE EMu was born of the necessity to monitor museum collections. Its goals are
to allow different systems to interoperate, to standardise, integrate and exchange
information between institutions, and to publish this information on the Web. The
software manages all museological, documentary, bibliographical and adminis-
trative processes. These processes include: inventory; cataloguing; applying stan-
dardized terminology; bibliography; accessioning and deaccessioning; condition
checking and conservation; incoming and outgoing loans; external movements;
events such as exhibitions; location tracking and internal movements; valuations;
and insurance and indemnity. Consequently, this software can work in any kind of
museum or institution (arts, natural history, archaeology, etc.). From a computer
152 KE EMu and the future for natural history collections  O   

terminal it is potentially possible to access any information about any object that is
kept in a museum. In the case of a fossil, this comprises taxonomic, stratigraphic,
geographic, bibliographic, multimedia, conservation, valuation and insurance in-
formation, and also internal management documents and whether the fossil has
been loaned, exhibited or researched, and when. The software relates documentary
information with all related archives, allowing recovery of the history of the ob-
ject. It incorporates a museum process and documentation standard called MDA
SPECTRUM II, which is a publication of the UK MDA (United Kingdom Museum
Documentation Association).

The Operation of KE EMu

KE EMu software is designed to enter, store and manage the data

from any object in any museum, with the possibility for publishing
this information on a Website. It has Internet and Intranet capa-
bilities out-of-the-box, and offers easy customization.
The software can manage collections of all sizes, from the
world’s largest electronic museum databases with many millions
of records, to small, highly specialized collections with only a few
thousand records. Furthermore, it can be used for cultural, art and
natural history collections. It works with data relating to acquisi-
tion, registration, inventory, cataloging, multimedia (such as im-
ages, videos and audio files), bibliography, storage, conservation,
loans, movements, events, valuation, etc. There is a module for
each process and all modules are related to each other.
KE EMu support for natural history collections includes tax-
onomic definitions, specimen identification, type status, field trips
and a gazetteer. It supports multi-discipline queries with automatic
adjustment of display based on the type of objects.
The Catalogue module of KE EMu can be extended, with
new disciplines added and the structure of existing disciplines
modified. This ensures that KE EMu precisely matches the collec-
tion requirements of the museum. On the other hand, KE EMu has
an interface that could be tailored to the particular requirements
of any discipline. As a result, natural history collections can have a
different interface than cultural collections. For instance, in Zoolo-
gy, Botany and Paleontology, taxonomic information is important Figure 2. KE
and has to be visible in the interface. Each interface is configurable EMu command
to the requirements of the institution. centre at the
Natural His-
Most modules (Figure 2) are standard and are not usually tory Museum,
configured according to the discipline. They are designed to con- London.
154 KE EMu and the future for natural history collections  O   

The Taxonomy module is capable of maintaining information about taxa all

levels in the taxonomic hierarchy, from variety up to kingdom. This module also re-
cords information about the author and year of publication of the taxon, and other
bibliographical references as well as synonyms, homonyms, common names, con-
servation status and descriptions.
The Collections Events module records information relating to the locality at
which the object was collected, with the attributes of precise locality, geographi-
cal description, latitude and longitude and/or other coordinates, altitude or capture
depth, collector and date and time.
Information in the Events module covers date, venue, statistics, finance, task,
multimedia and security. Attributes are precise venue where the event took place,
the cost of the event, people who were present, those in charge, related multimedia
files and the security of the event.
The Rights/Copyright module holds information regarding the ownership,
other rights or copyright provisions pertaining to one or more objects. Special con-
ditions, the holder, reproduction restrictions and restriction of use are attributes of
this module.
The Bibliography module holds general bibliographical references: books,
journals, articles, papers and theses. This module can be linked to other modules,
such as the Taxonomy, Parties, Collection Events and Catalogue modules.
The Multimedia module stores digital images, videos, audios, word-process-
ing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and any on line or off line resources
that are related to the object. There are multimedia tabs in any module that are re-
lated to the general multimedia module in each record, and there are records in the
multimedia module that are not attached to a record (meetings, planning papers
and so on).
Finally, the Parties module, one of the most important modules related to the
Catalogue module, holds information about people and institutions. These can be
donors, curators, conservators, or any persons or organizations related to the object,
and may include personal or private information and related bibliography.
The other module to highlight is the Narratives module (Figure 5). This mod-
ule is linked to all of the others, e.g. the Parties, Bibliography, Taxonomy, Multime-
dia, Sites and Events modules. There is no field in the Catalogue module that links to
Narratives, but a narrative record makes an attachment to an object in the Catalogue
module via the object tab. The Narratives module has the peculiarity that it can be
developed for different audiences (e.g. schools, researchers and the general public)
and for a range of purposes (e.g., exhibitions and brochures. This information is
automatically accessible over the web and is fully indexed, providing the general
public with access to information published by the institution in an appropriate
context.
More information on KE EMu can be found at its website:
http://www.kesoftware.com/
156 KE EMu and the future for natural history collections  O   

Software update, maintenance, support and correction are advantages of KE

EMu and can be performed virtually as new configurations become accessible on-
line. In addition, KE EMu can be customized and when a museum requests a change
to a standard module the benefits are spread to all users. Automated maintenance
programs are run remotely on a schedule determined by the museum. Remote as-
sistance is also possible. Furthermore, KE EMu places no limitations on what infor-
mation is stored (e.g. metadata) or on the format of data, except that the data must
be textual. Hence, when a new object is inserted, the default metadata description
is generated automatically and may be modified by the cataloguer. This software
works with a multiuser database management system called KE Texpress that im-
poses almost no limitation to the number of fields indexed in a KE EMu catalogue
table (regularly more than 1,000 fields), allowing fast performance.
Corrections and improvements are always necessary and this is the reason for
the existence of a KE EMu user group which has meetings and forums. To date there
have been fourteen meetings, the last one held in Las Vegas (USA) from 21 to 22
October 2008 (4th North American User Group Meeting). Until recently this group
had its own website (http://www.emuusers.org/) that was maintained by Forbes
Hawkins (Museum Victoria). The latest discussions about KE EMu concern media
asset management, especially locations, conditions and reproduction. All informa-
tion from a user group website is now being transferred to the KE EMu Website
(http://www.kesoftware.com/).
The current software iteration is KE EMu version 3.2.05 with the following
general enhancements: support for about ninety image formats; support for auto-
matic optimization of range indexes; geo-referencing fields with common mapping
coordinates; geo-referencing availability in the Sites and Events modules; multilin-
gual support; dynamically modifiable order of data for multilingual users; record
roll-back allowing previous versions of a record to be re-instated (maintaining the
complete history); possibility to drag and drop any media resource, for instance
from a Windows Desktop, directly to the multimedia tab without opening this
module (creating a multimedia repository record), and with the option to do this
with multiple files; and record templates.

KE EMu Tomorrow: Ideas for the Future

KE EMu will continue evolving to adapt to the changing requirements of museums,

incorporating all those functionalities that allow ease and effectiveness in document
system management in museums.
A future development of KE EMu is to read barcodes. Refined barcode read-
ers that facilitate register movements and upload sample data will require system
integration. Museum Victoria has developed an application (MVWISE, Museum
Victoria Wireless Input System for EMU) based on handheld PDA´s and wireless
158 KE EMu and the future for natural history collections  O   

like to thank Rafael Gómez-Martín (ECI, Madrid) for his revision as a computer
expert, and Phil Palmer and Paul Taylor (NHM, London) who reviewed the manu-
script and provided comments.

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