Museums Project

The goal of the Museums project is to develop a Distributed Multimedia Museum Archiving System. The project is being done in cooperation with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), centred in Ottawa.

Status of the Project

As mentioned in the previous Newsletter, ACT has a cooperative development agreement with CHIN. ACT has subsequently signed a similar agreement with the UBC Museum of Anthropology. The museum is working with ACT to produce a pilot version of the Cinemage system. A PC located at the museum will act as a client machine in the pilot project and will be connected to the server at ACT via a fibre optic network.

At the present time development is proceeding on the software portions of the project. ACT has established a connection to BCnet, and will shortly be connecting to Rnet, the ATM-based high-speed testbed network. About three hundred images from ACT and the Museum of Anthropology have been scanned to Photo CD`s. The current plan calls for a working prototype of the system in October.

Software Development

The primary activity on the project is the development of the software. The product makes use of client-server technology. There are four main modules or pieces to the system.

  1. The client module is a program that runs on a personal computer, initially under Windows on an IBM PC. The program allows clients to easily search the CHIN database and then display available multimedia information.
  2. The server module will initially run on a SUN Workstation to which a Photo CD jukebox is attached. This program is responsible for handling the interactions between the client machine and the CHIN database as well as transferring selected images to the client machine.
  3. The CHIN gateway module provides an interface to the existing CHIN database program, passing information between the database and the server and client modules.
  4. The authorization and billing module is responsible for authentication, authorization, accounting, and billing. This means checking that a person is allowed to access the system (through accounts and passwords) and accounting for the accessing of images. The billing portion will provide a mechanism for charging for copies of images and returning the funds collected to the appropriate institutions.

Content Production

The Museum of Anthropology is providing a selection of images of artifacts from its collection. These images have been scanned onto Photo CD`s and will be placed in a Kodak Photo CD Jukebox attached to the server located at ACT.

 

Industry Support

Several companies are supporting the CHIN project by providing equipment, software, or services. Newbridge Networks Corporation is providing an ATM network interface card for installation on the PC at the Museum of Anthropology. This will allow the museum to connect to the high-speed network. Kodak Canada has loaned ACT a Photo CD Jukebox for use in developing the server software. In addition they have donated their Create-It and Arrange-It software for editing and arranging images in their interactive Portfolio format. This CD format includes audio as well as images, selectively accessed through menu frames.

A number of images from the Museum of Anthropology, as well as a variety of images from ACT have been scanned and processed onto Photo CD`s. The work was done by Western Pro Imaging Labs and the cost of the work is being shared by Western, ACT, and Kodak Canada.

Connecting the Pieces

The pieces of the initial pilot project consist of a SUN workstation at ACT, acting as the museum server; a PC workstation at the Museum of Anthropology, on which the client software will run; and the CHIN central catalog, located on a computer in Ottawa.

The connection between the ACT server and the museum workstation will be via Rnet, BC`s ATM based research testbed network. Both UBC and ACT are members of Rnet. This link is a high speed (100 Megabit) link, suitable for sending multimedia data such as photographs and sound clips.

The connection between ACT and the CHIN catalog will be through BCnet and CA*net. ACT has a low speed (9600bps) connection to BCnet and the CHIN catalog server is connected by a similar link to Onet, an Ontario network. BCnet and Onet are in turn connected together via CA*net. Since the information being sent back and forth on this link is text-based the slow speed is suitable.