Challenges
The Nettie J. McKinnon collection is owned by School District 102, which has entered an agreement with the SaltCreek American Art Foundation to help manage and promote the collection. The foundation manages the collection website, which they call a "virtual museum." This museum includes images of works along with the artist's name and, in some cases, additional information about the artist and/or the work. The website is incomplete, with some pages still under construction. The School District 102 website does not include a link to this virtual museum, but does note that "[a] web site will be developed which describes the foundation that will oversee the collection and includes descriptions and photos of many of the pieces." It isn't clear whether the virtual museum is this web site, or it plans are underway to create a separate online collection.
The owners and managers of the Nettie J. McKinnon collection face challenges that are common for collections of this size (small) and type (held by a small institution):
The owners and managers of the Nettie J. McKinnon collection face challenges that are common for collections of this size (small) and type (held by a small institution):
- Due to budget and staffing constraints, most institutions of this type don't have librarians trained in best practices for handling and cataloging art objects (Brewer, 2011)
- Like many institutions, they're working with systems and policies designed in-house specifically for their institution. This makes data sharing, participation in union catalogs and the creation of visual galleries more complicated than it would be if institutions used standardized methods for art collection management (Brewer, 2011)
- They made a mistake that Murphy (2003) warned against: jumping to an online interface without being sure to provide adequate and consistent access