Museums in Uzbekistan to introduce online cataloging

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- These days, the office of the Foundation for the Development of Culture and Art under the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Uzbekistan hosts a three-day training session from Lena Papailiou, a specialist at Zetcom, in which participants study the work of the MuseumPlus platform, one of the world’s best cataloging platforms in museums.

The Foundation is working to introduce online cataloging in the museums of Uzbekistan. The test period for the operation of the online platform will be held in four museums: the State Museum of Art of Uzbekistan, the State Museum of Applied Arts of Uzbekistan, Aybek House Museum and the State Museum of Art named after Savitsky.

Since the beginning of the week, representatives of museums, as well as employees of the Foundation, have been participating in the training, which is conducted by Lena Papailiou, a specialist from Zetcom invited from Switzerland. At the training, she introduces the MuseumPlus platform, reveals all the subtleties of the program’s functioning, and then, between the training participants, a discussion is held on the points of activating the program in our museums.

To date, employees of the above museums in Uzbekistan have done some work to create a database of museums, namely: special tables have been developed that describe each museum exhibit in detail, an inventory has been taken, and staff have been preliminarily prepared for the transition to a new cataloging system. This will be followed by the step of loading these tables into MuseumPlus software.

Among the famous museums of the world that use the MuseumPlus platform are: the Louvre Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Northwest Museum of Culture and Art and many others. The comprehensive and flexible application of this platform provides real-time management of internal museum reports and fully documents the various types of collections and related work processes. This platform has a clear interface, works on the basis of the browser and allows you to receive information by connecting to the Internet from any location. The program automatically maintains lists and counts and issues daily reports on the work of the museum.

Lena Papailiou, Project Manager, Zetcom:

- From the first day of my stay in Tashkent, I began to analyze the database, which was collected by employees of museums in Uzbekistan. My main task: to help solve all issues regarding the installation of our software and its use, because the main users of MuseumPlus will be museum workers. In addition, it is important for me to understand the needs of each museum individually, as the collections and volume of reports are different for everyone. An individual approach is very important in this process, and I am glad that the Foundation organized a training for us, which allows us to work productively with representatives of four museums, to understand the tasks that the MuseumPlus program can help solve. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I am sincerely glad that Uzbekistan is entering the international level in the development of museum activities and, I hope, our cooperation will help in the near future to optimize many of the daily processes of museums in Uzbekistan.