OpenCollection seems like a move in the right direction for museums. I like how it puts the museum catalog close to the public web user interface--should lend itself to incorporating catalog records into web exhibits and whatnot in some imaginative ways. I also like the image manipulation facilities it seems to have, and the use of authorities.
On the other hand, museums are a bit slow, you might say, in adopting some of this technology. Better late than never, but the paper still reflects some of this naivete. They say "All access to OpenCollection is via a web browser-based user interface. No other software is required." This is very well and good, but what software is used for the database itself ??? No clue.
The My Evidence paper does a good job of taking you through the design team's process. It seems like an interesting project, and I think they did a good job on it, though I think they could benefit from incorporating some non-scientific beliefs and values into it as well. If nothing else this would help its appeal to a larger and longer audience.
My main problem with the paper is that it reads like a boring mystery. They could give us some intriguing end results up front so we readers would have more interest in the process they went through, or they could provide more foreshadowing, or do something to alter the slow chronology of one thing after another, starting at the beginning, etc.
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Hey Mack, great comments. I also puzzled over the database backend for OpenCollection; The website says MySQL5 is required and they want to support Postgresql --- both good open source database programs. In fact, I'd say postgresql is challenging the big boys for most used database package these days.
Regarding the other paper... I agree the writing is really colloquial and a bit annoying. Some of the "looseness" of the narrative actually appealed to me --- a nice break from the overterse style that is seemingly required for the ecology/evolution literature.
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