KE Software

Coordinates: 53°28′26.6″N 2°14′39.8″W / 53.474056°N 2.244389°W / 53.474056; -2.244389

KE Software is a formerly Australian-owned computer software company based in Manchester, United Kingdom. It has been described as "...the world’s leading provider of Collections Management systems and services."[1] It is fully owned by the Axiell Group since that company purchased the firm in 2014.[2]

Products

KE Software markets two main products: the Ke EMu Electronic Museum management system,[3] a collections management system for museums; and Vitalware Vital Records Management System.[4] The first version of Ke EMu was launched in 1997 and uses the Texpress database engine with client/server architecture on a Windows or Unix/Linux server.[5] KE Software has been described as ...the world’s leading provider of Collections Management systems and services for natural history museums, cultural history museums, art museums, herbaria, botanic gardens, archives and special collections.[6] Ke Emu is consistent with the Dublin Core standards for archive and museum catalogue metadata.[7] The company’s clients include the three largest museums in the world.[8]

KE EMu

The KE EMu program has its origin in investigations into electronic systems for managing natural science collections conducted in the late 1970s under a joint program of the University of Melbourne, the then National Museum of Victoria and the Australian Museum, which led to the development of the Titan Database in 1984. Subsequently this evolved into Texpress and KE EMu (for Electronic MUseum) in 2000, which is now used across the world in natural science museums with huge collections.[9]

KE EMu is considered one of the more effective and purpose-designed museum cataloguing programs.[10] particularly in the creation of public interfaces to museum catalogue data.[11][12]

KE EMu is used by a large number of museums and galleries around the world, including the Smithsonian Anthropological Collection,[13] American Museum of Natural History [14]Vancouver Art Gallery,[15] New York Botanical Garden,[16] the University of Chicago Research Archives,[17] the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia,[18] the Australian Museum,[19] Museum of Victoria,[20] and University of Melbourne Archives.[21]

There are over 300 clients, and more than 5000 users of the EMu software worldwide. The program has been described as providing ...comprehensive museum management (collection management plus other administrative needs for a museum), workflow and project management, flexible metadata, various stats and metrics, and comprehensive web interface with support for mobile devices and kiosks[22]

KE Vitalware

The vitalware software produced by the firm is used by a number of governments and commercial organisations for managing and accessing large data sets, such as the birth records of the Trinidad and Tobago Registrar General,[23][24] the Government of Anguilla, Ministry for Infrastructure, Communications, Utility and Housing,[25] and the Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services.[26][27]

Further development

A specialist tracking component for KE EMu has been developed by Forbes Hawkins of Museum Victoria. this enaples locations to be barcoded, and data to be updated as items are moved around the stores, or between venues, display, laboratories and other locations. the sustem has been considered by Museums around the world.[28] The company has recently been working with Australian government agencies to digitize birth deaths and marriage registers in order to cross match identiy data.[29] KE EMu has also been used for managing the Australian Plant Disease Database and the Australian Plant Pest Database as the program "...has several features that have proven to be invaluable for a plant disease database".[30]

KE Software has exhibited at the Museums and the Web conference[31] and the Museums & Heritage Show.[32] [33]

References

  1. ↑ KE Software relocates to new Manchester offices Office Space News, 31 May 2011
  2. ↑ My News Desk
  3. ↑ Intellectual Property in Australia, Trade Mark Details
  4. ↑ KE Software Corporate Web Page kesoftware.com 'About' accessed 21/09/2015
  5. ↑ About EMu's Database Engine
  6. ↑ Collections Trust UK, reviews of collection management software
  7. ↑ Rebekah Baquiran, 'KE Emu:Getting a Flightless Bird Off the Ground', Field Museum of Natural History
  8. ↑ Car Collections and Digital Technology
  9. ↑ Tim Hart and Martin Hallett, 2011, 'Australian museums and the technology revolution', in Understanding Museums: Australian Museums and Museology, Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien (eds), National Museum of Australia ISBN 978-1-876944-92-6
  10. ↑ Lord, B & Lord, G.D., 1997, The Manual of Museum Management, Rowman, Altamira Press, pp.72-73
  11. ↑ The Museums Journal, Volume 106, Issues 7-12 Museums Association, 2006.
  12. ↑ Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, Volume 5, AltaMira Press, 2009, pp.152-7
  13. ↑ Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Volume 48, Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004
  14. ↑ Hidden Connections, Expeditionary Field Work at the American Museum of Natural History
  15. ↑ Art Museum Libraries and Librarianship, By Joan M. Benedetti, Scarecrow Press, 1 Jan 2007 p.130
  16. ↑ New York Botanical Garden Virtual Herbarium Best Practices Guide
  17. ↑ The Oriental Institute, Research Archives, Univestity of Chicago
  18. ↑ Fowler Williams and David McKnight, 'Through the Eyes of Louis Shotridge: Sharing Alaska’s Native Tlingit History' A Digital Archive Project at Penn
  19. ↑ Annual Report, Australian Museum, The Museum, 2002
  20. ↑ Lookatmedam, Testimonials 'Museum Victoria', Media Equation Pty Ltd.
  21. ↑ FAREWELL TO CHRISTINE ELIAS June 22, 2015 by University of Melbourne Archives in UMA projects
  22. ↑ Chris Fincham, head of U.S. operations, Collection management systems: Museums and the Web 2011 7-Apr-2011
  23. ↑ Corey Connelly, Birth certificate in minutes—minister Trinidad & Tobago Guardian Friday, May 22, 2009
  24. ↑ of Trinidad & Tobago, Hansard, SENATE Tuesday, November 02, 2004
  25. ↑ Government of Anguilla2015 estimates of recurrent revenue, expenditure and capital
  26. ↑ Mississippi Department of Health Bureau of Public Health Statistics State of Mississippi, USA
  27. ↑ Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services, procurement
  28. ↑ Jenny Sinclair, 'Tracking 16 million artefacts', The Sydney Morning Herald May 20 2003
  29. ↑ Chris Griffith, 'Backlogs of birth, death records prone to ID thefts' The Australian, October 04, 2011
  30. ↑ Shivas, R. G., Beasley, D. R., Pascoe, I. G., Cunnington, J. H., Pitkethley, R. N., Priest, M. J. Specimen-based databases of Australian plant pathogens: past, present and future, Australasian Plant Pathology March 2006, Volume 35, Issue 2, pp 195-198
  31. ↑ KE Software, Museums and the Web 2008, Archives & Museum Informatics, 2008.
  32. ↑ KE software Video Presentation, Museums and Heritage Show, UK, 2011
  33. ↑ Exhibitor Profile: KE Software, Museums and Heritage Show, London, UK. 2015
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