Cornucopia

Cornucopia is a database of collections held in cultural heritage institutions, forming part of MLA's Collection Description Service. It aims to provide access via the Internet to information about the richness and diversity of the collections in our sector.

The database was initially developed in response to the 1996 Department of National Heritage report Treasures in Trust. It was piloted in 1999 using information from the 50 Designated museum collections. The pilot was evaluated, and then developed into a fully searchable online database.

Further information about the development of Cornucopia can be found in Cornucopia: an open collection description service, an article by Chris Turner in the July 2004 issue of Ariadne.

Content

The information held in Cornucopia is derived from several sources, including the Digest of Museum Statistics (DOMUS) maintained by the former Museums & Galleries Commission, the MLA Accreditation database, and information from mapping projects conducted in collaboration with the MLA Regional Agencies. The database now holds detailed information about some 6000 collections in almost 2000 institutions.

As a first step towards including descriptions of archives and libraries in Cornucopia, MLA is gathering together information about special collections in libraries.

Standards

MLA is strongly committed to the development of a standard for collections-level descriptions derived from the design established by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP).

The structure of the original Cornucopia was defined before the RSLP standard had become established. The current system is based on the architecture created by the MLA-funded Crossroads West Midlands project., based on the RSLP standard.The use of the Crossroads system ensures that the information in the Cornucopia database is standards-compliant and capable of interoperating with related systems. The Crossroads project made significant progress in drawing together descriptions from museums, archives and libraries. Cornucopia is building on this progress, but structurally and in the development of descriptive and terminological standards in this area.

Technology

The technology behind  Cornucopia is based on open-source standards. The database has been constructed in MySQL using the RSLP structure with a minimal number of alterations. The interface and website have been created using the PHP scripting language. There are several reasons for supporting these new technologies, one of which is that they are freely available to anyone in the sector who wishes to use them. This means that Cornucopia will be able to provide a possible technical solution for other projects looking at collections-level descriptions in the sector.

Cooperation and interoperability

MLA is working with other public-sector agencies in a collaborative cross-sectoral partnership in the Strategic e-Content Alliance (SEA). In the initial phase of the work, known as the Common Information Environment, a demonstrator interface was created which provides access to information from a number of different sources. Because of  the enhanced functionality of the new system, Cornucopia was able to participate in this demonstrator by providing structured information based on the Open Archives Initiative protocol.

A further development towards interoperability has been taken by employing web services technology in the new Cornucopia. This means that on the one hand the advanced search facility offers the option to search across Cornucopia, Cecilia (an on-line guide to music collections in archives, libraries and museums in the UK and Ireland), and Google in one query, and on the other hand it means that external applications can use the Cornucopia Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file to seamlessly interrogate the database.

Development strategy

There is still much work to be done in ensuring that Cornucopia delivers a sustainable service that meets the requirements of our users. Part of the strategy for sustaining the project in the long term will include the establishment of strategic partnerships with other services within (and outside) the sector through which Cornucopia data may be delivered through a whole variety of channels. We will also need to consider the ways in which the information is entered and updated, either directly to Cornucopia, or indirectly through mecahnisms such as the 24 Hour Museum Direct Data Entry (DDE) system, to which many museums have already signed up.

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