| Industry | computer software |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1970s |
| Successor | The Axiell Group(2014) |
| Headquarters | Manchester, United Kingdom |
| Products |
|
53°28′26.6″N2°14′39.8″W / 53.474056°N 2.244389°W /53.474056; -2.244389KE Software is a formerly Australian-ownedcomputer software company based inManchester, United Kingdom, which specialises incollection management programs for museums, galleries and archives.[1] The Axiell Group acquired the firm in 2014.[2]
KE Software had its origins in investigations into electronic systems for managing natural science collections conducted in the late 1970s under a joint program of theUniversity of Melbourne, the thenNational Museum of Victoria and theAustralian Museum, which led to the development of the Titan Database in 1984. Much of the credit for the development of the project was due to the work ofMartin Hallett of theMuseum of Victoria which evolved into Textpress, and by 2000, the KE EMu database program.[3] KE Software was bought byAxiell in 2014 and the team merged with the Axiell staff. Axiell continues to sell and supportEMu.
The firm has two main products: theKe EMu Electronic Museum management system,[4] a collections management system for museums; andVitalware Vital Records Management System.[5] The first version of Ke EMu was launched in 1997 and uses the Texpress database engine with client/server architecture on aWindows orUnix/Linux server.[6] Ke Emu is consistent with theDublin Core /Darwin Core standards for archive and museum cataloguemetadata.[7] "The company’s clients include the three largest museums in the world.:[8]
KE EMu is considered one of the more effective and purpose-designed museum cataloguing programs.[9] particularly in the creation of public interfaces to museum catalogue data.[10][11]
KE EMu was further developed in 1997 as a multilingual platform, which has been utilised in bilingual institutions such as the Canadian Museum of Civilisation.[12] Subsequently this evolved into Texpress and KE EMu (standing for Electronic MUseum) in 2000, which is "now used across the world in natural science museums with huge collections'".[3]
KE EMu is used by a large number of museums and galleries around the world, including theSmithsonian Anthropological Collection,[13]American Museum of Natural History[14]Vancouver Art Gallery,[15]New York Botanical Garden,[16] theUniversity of Chicago Research Archives,[17] theUniversity of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia,[18] theNational Museum of Australia, theAustralian Museum,[19]Museum of Victoria,[20]University of Melbourne Archives,[21] and theAlexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand.[22]
There are over 300 clients, and more than 5000 users of the EMu software worldwide. The program has been described as providing "...comprehensive museum management (collection management plus other administrative needs for a museum), workflow and project management, flexible metadata, various stats and metrics, and comprehensive web interface with support for mobile devices and kiosks"[23]
The firm's vitalware software is used by a number of governments and commercial organisations for managing and accessing large data sets, such as the birth records of the Trinidad and Tobago Registrar General,[24][25] the Government of Anguilla, Ministry for Infrastructure, Communications, Utility and Housing,[26] and the Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services.[27][28]
A specialist tracking component for KE EMu has been developed by Forbes Hawkins ofMuseum Victoria. This enables locations to be barcoded, and data to be updated as items are moved around the stores, or between venues, display, laboratories and other locations. This system has been considered by Museums around the world.[29] The company has been working with Australian government agencies to digitize birth deaths and marriage registers in order to cross match identity data.[30] The program has also been used for managing the Australian Plant Disease Database and the Australian Plant Pest Database as the program "...has several features that have proven to be invaluable for a plant disease database".[31]