This fall, the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is launching an online collections and learning resource tool, the UMMA Exchange. The UMMA Exchange will let students and faculty create and collaborate using Museum objects, along with text, video, and images online.
“In addition to being a collection database, The Exchange is an ever-growing public repository of all kinds of learning activity that go on around UMMA’s collection,” says Dave Choberka, Andrew W. Mellon manager of academic outreach and teaching.
Created in partnership with Whirl-i-gig, creators of CollectiveAccess, The Exchange was developed after consulting with stakeholders about their use cases and needs.
“This tool enables visitors to go beyond merely viewing object information, allowing for contextualization and personalization to create new meaning,” says John Turner, senior manager of museum technology. “Simultaneously, we want to encourage other resource-constrained, small- to mid-size museums to do the same by releasing The Exchange as an open source application in the near future.”
The UMMA Exchange is live at exchange.umma.umich.edu.
