CollectionSpace - Evaluation
About this evaluation
This evaluation was performed on January 26, 2018 with a representative from Lyrasis. It was evaluated by six members of the museum community and reflects their personal opinion. These evaluations were based on a set list of tasks in a limited period of time. It is always recommended that you request a demonstration of any product in which you may be interested based on your specific requirements.
Evaluator ratings
The following table shows the ratings given to this software by members of the museum community. To understand what these ratings mean, please refer to our Scoring System & Evaluation Guide.
Each rating given is scored out of a maximum of five points. The larger the Standard Deviation number, the wider the range of scores for that task.
Task | Average | Standard Deviation |
---|---|---|
Online data entry | 3.5 | 0.8 |
Publish a record to the web | 3.3 | 0.5 |
Set user permissions and groups | 4.0 | 0.6 |
View audit trails or change log | 0.7 | 1.6 |
Import data | 2.5 | 1.0 |
Export data | 2.5 | 1.0 |
Create a local terminology list | 3.8 | 0.8 |
Upload or attach images and files | 3.3 | 0.5 |
Catalogue an object | 4.0 | 0.6 |
Batch modify a set of records | 1.8 | 1.6 |
Multilingual capabilities | 3.2 | 0.8 |
Customize a catalogue entry page | 2.3 | 1.4 |
Create a template record | 3.2 | 0.4 |
Generate and/or build a report | 2.5 | 0.8 |
Perform basic search | 3.2 | 0.4 |
Perform advanced search | 3.3 | 0.5 |
Browse records | 3.2 | 0.8 |
Create an exhibit | 3.8 | 0.8 |
Enter condition report information | 3.7 | 0.5 |
Evaluator comments
The following comments have been provided by our evaluators after they rated the performance of each task. These are selected comments drawn from the "Additional Comments" section of the evaluation form.
- Overall, I was most impressed with the flexibility of this product. The customizable capabilities are fantastic. I was also impressed with the variety of other applications that it is able to communicate with to increase functionality, or allow for a better equipment application to handle certain aspects. It seems that many smaller organizations will need assistance through a service provider to do any customization and get their instance up and running, but that once it is they will have the benefit of not incurring licensing fees and other costs related with a proprietary system.
- One concern that I had was that some implementers may find it cumbersome to have to constantly create new record types and then relate them, but once the system is used it would likely work itself out.
- I would like to have given a higher rating than 4, but as this is the first time that I have seen a tool such as this, it is impossible for me to compare and see if offers the highest capabilities for each task.
- Until this presentation, I never realized how complex cataloguing had become in the digital world. Although the product may seem quite complex at times, I assume that with sufficient training this product would be a very useful tool. My overall impression is that the product seems well designed, and rather good product.
- The software is very user friendly for doing the data entry, but the implementation, maintenance, migration, or upgrading must be done by a savvy person who will need to do a lot of reading on the software website and wiki, without support from the company. It's missing some functionalities within the software. Though the software can support any language, it's up to the institution to translate the software, therefore a lot of work.
- As an open-source system it has a lot of really good features. It's clearly developed with feedback from the user community. But also as open source there is technical knowledge needed or access to a vendor that can provide.
- CollectionSpace is a good system that would work well for art or artifact collections, not as flexible for photos or archives. Some level of technical expertise.
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