Information services for the Museum of Scotland Project

The paper discusses information services which are being developed within the National Museums of Scotland (NMS), to support the Museum of Scotland Project. NMS has started to build a new museum in the centre of Edinburgh, to display its rich collections of Scottish material. It is due to open in 1998. The information needs of project teams are examined. A strategy for responding to the rapidly changing needs of project teams is described. The approach concentrates on developing a variety of information resources, which together meet the needs of users, and making some of them accessible throughout the organization as services on a data communications network. Internal services include collections databases, a collections management system for the Museum of Scotland Project, and the library catalogue online. External services include the development of a Scottish national database of museum objects, and access to the Joint Academic Network. The data communications network is described, and the management of the system is discussed.