Web-based Intranet for Qatar Museums (2012-2014)

Problem

The Qatar Museums Authority (via archive.org) had responsibility for a dozen or so new museums that were emerging to make Qatar a cultural hub for the Gulf.  A single EMu database instance was set up with core data documentation standards, but access to EMu was limited to those who had registered user accounts on and access to the EMu client.   Other museums staff, such as those in education, needed convenient access to essential information.

Solution

Inspired by the WordPress architecture, particularly its use of redirects, I conceived, architected and developed an intranet for the Qatar Museums Authority.  This enabled Web access with custom views for each staff in museum, with session management integrated with MS Exchange. The user interface was responsive and implemented i18n, with instant toggle between English (left-to-right) and Arabic (right-to-left) — supported by a translation project to map all the necessary cataloguing fields.  The resulting system was deployed to all the Museums and also the office of the Chair of QMA.

2009-2012, 2014-2020

Role: Systems developer (as a staff member of the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford)

Brief: Develop and maintain the main Website for the Museum (but not the social media channels) and integrate the collections management system (KE EMu).

Solution: I oversaw the redevelopment of the WordPress site in 2010, mostly into one multisite instance, including previously disparate elements such as the collections search, and then its gradual refinement through to 2012. I overhauled the server provision, standardising on Debian Linux, in University data centres.

Security was enhanced at various levels, through content caches, script hardening, Apache mod Security with a fine-tuned ruleset, and integration with the University’s single sign-on system, first with Stanford Webauth and then with Shibboleth (to better support federation), registering and configuring a Service Provider (Apache module) and then configuring a WordPress plugin to invoke Shibboleth for authentication.

Subsequent work on the site focused on the design and instantiation of content, such as special exhibition sites (see example below). From 2017 onwards, it mainly concerned the digital preservation of legacy online exhibits during the migration to a centrally managed service, to which I also contributed substantially.

URLs
https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/ (main site until 2018), home page now redirecting to:
https://hsm.ox.ac.uk/ (main site from 2019 onwards).
https://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/
Slides: integration of the collections database using the KE EMu PHP5 API.

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MHS Special Exhibition: Back from the Dead – Demystifying Antibiotics

2016

Brief: To provide a website to accompany the Special Exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science (since renamed, History of Science Museum). Content needed to be easy to maintain by staff in various teams.

Solution: Using the existing WP multisite infrastructure I was able to create a number of special exhibition sites relatively easily, using responsive off-the-shelf themes. The basic structure was up and running very quickly and could be refined on an ongoing basis. Care was taken to ensure that educational aspects, especially, were made accessible.

URL: https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/backfromthedead/

Gems of Earth and Air

February 2015 – May 2015 

Brief: Oxford University Museum of Natural History Collections had amassed numerous separate PostgreSQL databases with limited online access. They were in the process of migrating all into a single instance of the EMu collections management system and needed a new unified web interface. Initial attempts had proved unsatisfactory in design and functionality. This beta site, aka Gems of Earth and Air, was to prove the viability through a subset of collections, according to readiness of collections data.

Roles: Consultant, systems architect and developer.

Solution: This was a bespoke solution using a full-stack development process. Working with the Heads of IT, Library and Archives, and digital collections at the Museum, I delivered a new, unified online system that brought together three collections (Life, Earth, and Archives), with narrative-driven browsing and fine-grained search. Following requirements elicitation in Balsamiq, I conceived a model-view-controller (MVC) architecture using the IMu API and Twig templates with Bootstrap for a responsive web site. Each stage was documented.

URL: http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/collections/ (via archive.org)

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Jones’ Icones

Date: Sep 2014 – Oct 2014

Brief: Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History Archives & Library had received a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to make more widely available a rare collection of Lepidoptera paintings. This comprised an informational website and a crowdsourcing system to help identify hundreds of moths and butterflies from scanned images of 18th century paintings.

After initial attempts to develop a solution in-house had failed, I was approached as a consultant with the project on a tight timescale of about a month and a half.

Solution: For the website I first implemented a static site based on a responsive house style, with variations in colour and some differences in sections and content type. Most of the effort was on the second part: a customisation of DIYHistory, a system developed by the University of Iowa to crowdsource transcriptions, based on the Omeka CMS + Scribe theme + Scripto plugin + MediaWiki. I supplied documentation describing the development process, mainly in HTML, CSS and PHP, together with various issues for consideration such as watermarks and improving performance for hosting accounts.

The project was successfully completed on time and budget. Significant crowd-sourced contributions were subsequently made.

URL: www.jonesicones.com (via archive.org)