In the last edition of Alert we flagged the imminent closure of CAN, the Collections Australia Network website. Since then several good things have happened.
RECOLLECTIONS
reCollections, the well-loved and widely-used conservation resource has found a new home on the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM) website. The good folk there have pledged to provide free and open access to the resource for as long as it is relied upon by the industry.
You can find reCollections under the Collection Care tab on their website.
AICCM is the go-to place for conservation questions, resources and professional development. They also host the Find a Conservator database which lists professional conservators in private practice.
SIGNIFICANCE 2.0
Another important resource which resided on the CAN website is Significance 2.0. This is currently hosted in a number of other locations, so never fear!
You can find it here on the Ministry of Arts website.
Significance 2.0 has also been archived in the Pandora Web archive by the National Library of Australia.
NATIONAL STANDARDS
At the Museums Australia Conference in Launceston, the National Standards Taskforce agreed that the National Standards for Australian Museums and Galleries (currently version 1.3) would be hosted on the websites of the member organisations of the National Standards Taskforce, rather than on a single site.
So far three States have the Standards document online, with others to follow shortly.
OTHER CAN CONTENT
We also mentioned that M&G took copies of most of the NSW project content developed between small museums and CAN and plan to review it with the intention of getting some of the stories back online. We have just taken on a new Digital Intern and will be working through this project with them. Stay tuned.
