We’ve walked you through the exciting features of our new Google Arts & Culture platform, now learn how the website came to be thanks to the hard work of Museum Registrar Meghan Hansen! Below, read Meghan’s account of working with Google on this groundbreaking project.

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There is an adorable dog at the end of this post. Please stay with me – you will be rewarded! Museum work is not always glamorous or hands-on. As Registrar of the museum, I am in charge of the records management, which in the 21^st century encompasses much more than paper records and card catalogs. In the digital age, we have the privilege of making our collections available through the internet to the whole world! This requires Digital Asset Management, an entirely new field in many organizations, and it makes sense that the Registrar maintains the digital assets related to the collection objects in most Museums, unless they are large enough to have a dedicated DAM specialist.

Scanned slides from the Michel Arnaud Fashion Photography Archive.

When Google Arts & Culture contacted the FIDM Museum, I had just launched the Museum’s online collection database, through PastPerfect Online. This was 5 years in the making, including researching platforms, planning metadata fields, and standardizing terminology. After all that planning, it is exciting to have nearly 2,000 records live on our website! I worked with the Museum’s Creative Director to learn more about Google Arts & Culture and evaluate whether it was worth the time involved in setting it up.

Framework setup for the Google Arts & Culture platform.

As we signed the contract, I had no idea what was in store for me. It was like learning a new language! Unsurprisingly, the database started with a Google Sheets spreadsheet, which was set up by the programmers in a very specific way to work within the platform. As a result, it was tricky to make the fine arts metadata fields reflect the FIDM Museum’s metadata standards, as previously established for the online collection database. Moreover, the Google platform was not customizable, meaning that the fields were presented in a proscribed order and placement – even the font size was pre-determined.

After accepting these realities, the FIDM Museum team moved forward with meeting the goal of 150 Items and 2 Exhibits for the launch of We Wear Culture. Then I hit the jackpot! Google Arts & Culture generously purchased a high-resolution 35mm slide scanner for the Museum to use to digitize the Michel Arnaud Fashion Photography Archive. Once this was set up, we trained volunteers to carefully clean and scan each slide in the 189,000 slide collection. Each slide takes 3 minutes to scan at 4,000 dpi – a vast improvement on 5-10 minutes on our previous scanner.

As luck would have it, a talented MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Sciences) student expressed interest in working on a project at the Museum in order to complete her capstone project (more on that project to come). Thanks to Yvonne’s diligent research, cataloging, and writing, I was able to increase the Google Arts & Culture content for the June 8 launch.

Google Street View camera visits our gallery!

Finally, we jumped at the opportunity to immortalize our temporary exhibitions through Google’s Gallery View service. The 10^th Art of Television Costume Design and ManMode exhibitions were captured by a 360-degree camera by the Google Street View team. Then Google created a virtual gallery using the Museum’s floorplan. The resulting virtual tour can be experience from any device through the Google Arts and Culture website or virtually through VR goggles, like Google’s affordable Cardboard model. I encourage all our readers to check out the galleries in 3D – and we’ll keep you posted when the 25^th Art of Motion Picture Costume Design and Exotica exhibitions go live.

Video of the Street View camera in action.

And now, for your reward in sticking with me through Digital Asset Management, databases, spreadsheets, and more: Check out Very good dog crashes every street view of this South Korean island.