The Egyptian Museum registration project: the challenge and the implementation

Abstract

This article describes an important project in the history of preservation of Egypt's culture heritage. Initiated by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and executed by the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), the project involves the Cairo Egyptian museum that contains the world largest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities (160,000 objects). A major problem in the museum is the lack of a standardised approach for registration, resulting in a variety of unrelated registration schemes and the non‐existence of efficient tools for information dissemination. This project aims to resolve these problems. A team of Egyptologists, museum curators and system analysts, designers and developers defined the basis for work and specified project challenges which included the indexing of all museum objects ensuring cross‐referencing between already used registration schemes. The result has involved the use of multimedia computer technology to establish a complete database of museum objects (text, image and sound) and various cultural products, in addition to the establishment of required procedures and standards to organise the internal museum workflow and the provision of training programmes for staff. The outcome of the project is expected to be profound in enabling researchers and curators to have instant access to any object in the museum and providing the museum's visitors and public with a wealth of information about ancient Egypt.