Auckland Museum's Natural History collection has grown throughout its 150 year history to include around 1.5 million specimens and a wealth of resources. The public, staff and researchers can now access many of these resources through MUSE, a simple web-based interface and search engine. Records can be viewed online or at the Museum's Natural History Information Centre, where a wide range of interactive material is also available.
Atlantech developed MUSE to import datasets from the Museum's database platforms in order to provide public access to the Museum's records. Over 3,000 Natural History records are now available online, including records from the Botany, Entomology, Marine Biology, and Land Vertebrates collections.
Visitors to the Museum's Natural History Information Centre are encouraged to discover a wealth of information about New Zealand's geology, flora and fauna by drawing on a wealth of electronic resources. Two information kiosks offer a thematic overview of the Natural History galleries, while three public workstations provide access to Natural History-related information and Museum records.
The Information Centre is a truly multimedia learning environment, with headsets at every workstation enabling visitors to listen to sound clips and watch videos. Visitors can access website resources, multimedia CD-ROMs, a searchable Museum collection database, and relevant areas of the Museum's website. A wide range of interactive resources combine learning with entertainment, making the workstations particularly popular with younger visitors.
The workstations compliment the other resources on offer at the Information Centre. Visitors often have questions relating to MUSE's electronic resources, and Museum staff are on hand to answer questions and refer visitors to books and exhibits. The electronic resources also allow visitors to continue learning after their Museum visit, with many visitors enquiring about how to access the electronic resources from home. This encourages visitors to log on the Museum's website and access the resources and information available online.
Visitors to the Information Centre find the workstations easy to use, thanks to a simple graphical interface. Customised design templates allow MUSE datasets to be displayed differently in each gallery, so the workstations in the Information Centre employ a nature-themed design rather than the generic Museum interface. This themed learning environment encourages visitors to identify connections between the resources on MUSE and the exhibits in the Natural History galleries. For example, the interactive CD-ROM abut geckos is a popular resource because it relates to the live geckos on display in the gallery.
The electronic resources are arranged by categories that relate to the themes explored in the Natural History galleries. Each category gives visitors access to website resources, multimedia CD-ROMs, the Museum's searchable datasets, and the Museum website. Navigating the various categories and resources is easy, thanks to a simple menu which always remains on-screen. The workstations are so user-friendly that the Museum plans to use the Natural History interface as the design benchmark for their other collections.
Museum records from any curatorial field can be organised and displayed in different categories, which allowed for the creation of special Cicadas and Lepidoptera databases using records from the Entomology collection. This flexibility will become increasingly important as the Natural History team continues to prepare records from the Botany, Entomology and Marine Biology collections for future release.
Using MUSE's powerful search engine is simple. Searches are divided into different curatorial areas – Botany, Entomology, Marine Biology and Land Vertebrates. Each search page provides information on what is currently searchable, and lists search terms that will produce the best results. Basic and advanced searches are available, and search results can be ordered and filtered, enabling users to find the records they require with ease.
The Natural History database is geared towards researchers, Museum staff and academics. Records are searchable by their scientific names rather than common names. Curatorial fields can also be searched, including accession number, type status and collection date. The academic focus of the Natural History database makes MUSE a powerful research tool.
MUSE has made the Natural History Information Centre a truly multimedia learning environment for the general public and an invaluable research tool for academics and Museum staff. As new records are added to MUSE, Atlantech's continuing support is helping to make the Natural History database a world-leading online resource.