CollectionSpace Tech Team Formed at LYRASIS

October 7, 2014

The CollectionSpace technical team has gained two new members who will support and extend the museum collections management software through LYRASIS, the project’s new organizational home. Richard Millet, formerly of UC Berkeley’s Research IT, has joined LYRASIS as the CollectionSpace Technical Lead. Richard brings over two decades of IT experience to this position, together with his background as former software architect, engineer, and team lead for UC Berkeley’s CollectionSpace team. Raja Sritharan has joined LYRASIS as the CollectionSpace QA Manager and Configuration Developer. Raja has 15 years of IT experience in quality assurance, build and release management, testing, and software development.

CollectionSpace is an open source, web-based museums collections management and information system. It was developed over the last five years in part by Research IT, in collaboration with an international consortium. CollectionSpace systems are used by four UC Berkeley campus museums to manage their collections, as well as by museums and collecting institutions elsewhere in the US and in several other countries. The software facilitates management of cataloging, loans, and other facets of museum activity.

LYRASIS, a non-profit organization that provides a wide range of support to libraries and cultural heritage organizations, received a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in January 2014 to provide CollectionSpace with an organizational home: committed to increasing its visibility, encouraging broader adoption, and growing its community and support ecosystem. The CollectionSpace team at LYRASIS includes Angela Spinazzè, Program Director; and Megan Forbes, Community Outreach and Support Manager; in addition to Richard and Raja.

The LYRASIS CollectionSpace team will support current users and build domain-centric communities to encourage adoption by museums that can leverage configurations developed by and for their peers. Over the next 24 months, goals include:

  • Releasing successive new CollectionSpace versions, starting with version 4.1 in November 2014.
  • Developing community-of-practice profiles to provide customized configurations of CollectionSpace, to meet the basic needs of museums in various domains.
  • Building CollectionSpace enhancements and hosting models that will allow anyone - commercial vendors, nonprofit organizations (such as LYRASIS itself) and consortiums, among others - to provide cloud-based hosting of CollectionSpace systems.
  • Developing services for enhanced CollectionSpace adoption and implementation, including hosting, support, training, data migration, and metadata management.