Credits

The Oakland Museum's Online Collection is the result of a year long, museum wide, initiative and collaboration between Registrars, Curators, Collections Staff, Designers, Developers and Technical Staff.  

This project is proudly supported by a Fiscal year 2010 Federal grant award to the Oakland Museum of California secured through the assistance of Representative Barbara Lee.

Project Background:

In August 2010, the head of the conservation department, John Burke, brought together Debra Peterson (Associate Registrar and Digitizing Guru), Bridget Barnhart (Designer and Orchestrator), Tara Peterson (Associate Registrar), Rachel Zink (Associate Registrar), and Winston Chou (IT Specialist). Our charge was to revamp the museum's digital collections from the ground up -- creating the infrastructure to showcase the museum's collections, while developing the capacity to continue our digitization efforts beyond this grant period. 

A collection website's strength is in the quality of its images. A major component of this project has been the construction of a new digital studio housing scanners, professional lighting, backdrops, stands, and work stations which allow for the museum to produce professional, high-resolution, images. Debra Peterson designed and oversaw the creation of this state of the art studio, while establishing a process for digitizing our collections. Debra organized the scanning, processing, and organization of over 10,000 hi-resolution images, with the help of and Tara Peterson who scanned hundreds of historical artifacts, and Rachel Zink who catalogued the AOUON Poster Collection.

Scrubbing data, organizing texts and content, and herding the cats fell to Bridget Barnhart. Her task was to design a site which incorporated the three different galleries into a unified online gallery, while maintaining the brand of the Oakland Museum of California. Collaborating with the education department and curatorial staff, she organized the featured collections as well as created educational content. Bridget had the good fortune of working with Anthony J. Hall, of Funicular Media, who's savvy programming and fluidity with Drupal brought the site to life. 

A big thanks goes out to all of the museum staff who participated in this effort, and to John Burke who continuously kept us on track and gave the project direction. 

Sincerely, 

Team Digital