Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/01/28
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Mike Durling wrote, in part:
> The term that museum curators use that really drives me nuts, and I work for
> a museum, is "object". It's what they call anything they collect.
>
I came across an interesting story during my undergraduate studies in
interactive systems design (eh, actually "computer programs", but we don't
call them that ;) The task given to a consultancy company was to design a
database to store information about the "objects" that a museum collected,
and to provide access mechanisms ("ways to browse and search the data") that
were closly tailored to the work done at the museum.
It drove the system developers nuts: There seemed to be no consistency at
all between objects (they could be anything -- single items or composed of
multiple parts) and almost no consistency in how they wanted to view the
information. Aparently, depending on the task, the way you want to
structure the information is massively different.
Don't know if the system they delivered fitted the work, but it was an
interesting peek at a different world. (I'm currently working on displays
for air traffic -- not only a different world, but a whole new language!)
M.
- --
Martin Howard | "Very funny Scotty. Now beam down
Interactive Systems Designer | my clothes."
email: mvhoward@mac.com |
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/ +---------------------------------------