Lopez Museum Digitization Efforts

Museums hold many important artifacts and wide variety of collections and the Lopez museum is not an exception to that thought. But how are they managing the museum as a whole?


I would like to base my assessment of Lopez museum on 2 different aspects:


1. Physical floorplan


Upon my arrival at the Lopez Museum, I went straight to the library as per instruction. My first impression of their library was that it was very spacious but then I realized that there is an office occupying the other half of the library area and I have observed some problem areas:

• Their office space is very exposed to the public. Personal things mingle with their work materials and it presents a cluttered work space.
• Their vault containing their collection of rare books can easily be seen and is very exposed to the public eye.
• They do not have a separate room or a kind of a lab room dedicated to a work space for scanning and microfilming efforts
• They do not have a server room
• Their personal desks also serve as reference desk

2. Digitization Project

• They had their scanning, indexing and tagging done by a third party
• When asked if they are satisfied with the work of the third party - surprisingly they said no and yet they still continue to avail of the services 
• No one is doing the Quality Control for all the materials they scan and index

Despite flaws in floor design, I commend the Lopez Museum for their digitization effort. Not all institutions are willing to put their money on library systems or even hiring a third-party who would do scanning and indexing for them. They also have a strong collection of books, paintings and photographs that I enjoyed looking at and just absorbed history right before my eyes.