Title: Making molehills out of mountains
1Rapid Data Entry Supporting high-throughput
digitisation workflows in EMu
Laurence Livermore1 Alex Fell2, Muhammad Nadat2,
Andrew Brown2 and Ben Sullivan2 1 The Natural
History Museum, London 2 KE Software, an Axiell
Group Company
2The Digitisation Challenge
- Increased government and public expectation
- Aim to digitise 20 million specimens in 5 years
- Current CMS little provision for rapid data entry
- Need new tools to support digitisation
3Solving the problem Rapid Data Entry (RDE)
- Browser-based interface for KE EMu
- Customisable apps
- Support rapid data entry
- Bulk record creation
- Field validation
- Normalise and atomise data
- Project-based approach
4Project-based Digitisation
- Managed by one or more leads
- People may be members of more than one project
- Project information stored in the collections
database - Most projects will have multiple project-specific
apps
5Project Dashboard
- Permission dependent
- Three app categories
- Forms
- Editors
- Statistics
- Multiple apps support various stages/components
of digitisation
6Forms
- Creates new records, including label
transcription - Record sets can be filtered
- Filtered records are offered to
editors/transcribers randomly - Bulk editing and customised operations through
scripts
7Editors
- Global updater
- Resolve attachments
- Apply consistency
- More targeted than EMu global editor
- Also created by project lead
8Statistics
- Simple reporting mechanism
- Based on record status
- Visualisation tool
- Bar chart
- Pie chart
9Project Creation Administration
- Browser-based configuration
- Can reference any backend field
- Permissions can be set per users on both projects
and apps
10Example Project Workflow Botanical Sheets
Form 1 - Stub record creation from barcoded sheets
Form 2 - Transcription of localities and
collectors
11Future RDE Development
- UX/UI improvements (desktop/tablets)
- Record navigation and management
- Ongoing improvements for NHMs digital
collections programme - Support for non-digitisation activities
- Statistics and reporting
12Advantages Disadvantages
- Apps are very flexible
- No clientside installation required
- Display and customisation does not
(necessarily) require core client modifications - Steamlined field selection allows for rapid
data entry - Digitisation occurs directly into collections
database means all data are in one place from
creation through to - Normalisation tools within collections database
Support for mobile/tablet devices allows
novel/unanticipated workflows /- Apps and record
sets need to be configured by a Data
Manager/super user /- Complex normalisation (of
complex data) requires desktop client - Requires
WiFi in collections areas - Mobile/tablets less
suitable for typing - Another system and
interface to support and maintain
13New Workflows
- Applications outside of rapid digitisation
- Specimen relocation loans
- Condition checking collections audit
- Data capture from visiting scientists
- Crowdsourcing
Original photograph taken by John Cummings
http//bit.ly/1vTrzvk
14Acknowledgements
- Management and testing
- Darrell Siebert, Annette Ure and testing staff
(curators and data managers) - Software development
- Alex Fell, Muhammad Nadat, Andrew Brown and Ben
Sullivan (KE Software)