First UK museum now on Culture Grid

Egypt Centre 

Press Release:

Online first for the Egypt Centre’s Ancient Egyptian Artefacts

Swansea University’s Egypt Centre is the first museum in Britain to have its whole collection go online on the Culture Grid - a searchable database for museum collections, using Modes Complete.

The Egypt Centre is the first UK institution to use the latest Modes Complete Collections Management software to connect to the Collections Trust’s Culture Grid and joins hundreds of other UK organisations who are sharing their collections through the Grid, amounting to approximately 2 million records.

Since the Egypt Centre opened in 1998 it has always intended to make its catalogue as widely available as possible, but its smaller collection was not well known and often ignored by scholars of Egyptian antiquity.  Its aim was to be part of a larger network, but as a small museum with limited resources getting the collection online and integrating it with a larger database seemed impossible. However with the development of Modes for Windows and now Modes Complete and Culture Grid all that has been made possible.

Curator of the Egypt Centre Carolyn Graves-Brown says: “In March we purchased the Modes Complete package with the help of a grant from CyMAL: Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales, and with the help of Modes and the Collections Trust we have put all of our collection onto the Culture Grid for wider access”.

Technical Services Manager at the Modes Users Association Richard Langley confirms it is easy to publish collections data to the Culture Grid. He says: “Users just need to select the items they want to include, and then a one-step process makes the data ready to upload to the Grid. It is especially easy to integrate with a website using the Modes web hosting service, but it can work with any web hosting platform. ”

Dr Graves-Brown concludes: “As a curator with little knowledge of computers, I was genuinely amazed at how easy it has been to upload our collection onto the Culture Grid. I am hoping the rest of the museum world puts their collections online as I am convinced that this is the way forward. To sum up my feelings - at last!”.

Welcoming this latest development, Collection Trust’s CEO Nick Poole states:  “This link-up between Modes and the Culture Grid leads the way for increased integration of UK collections online and a greater online profile for the collections sector as a whole”.