In 2022, Raman Ganguly and Hanna Schneck organized specialist training for librarians covering preventive data backup. This led them into several interesting discussions about the difficulties of delivering high quality standards of data management outside a university infrastructure. As a museum librarian, and within her own curatorial work, Hanna supports humanities professionals and cultural scientists in dealing with challenges of digitization and research data management. She works to raise awareness of the FAIR-principles of data management, and its importance to the everyday work of both museum researchers and collection managers. In her day-to-day work, Hanna is currently working on the challenges of implementing an in-house repository and establishing workflows for numerous digitization projects.
This episode of Epistemicast explores the challenges of digitizing information in museums and science institutions. We learn from Hanna’s pragmatic approach and her choice to use an open source repository as a solution to the problem of data being locked away and inaccessible to others. She explains how the repository now, not only serves as a tool for in-house collections, but also as a much broader solution for the entire museum. The episode aims to provide listeners with new insights and perspective on how they store their data and make it reusable.
About Hanna Schneck:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/hanna-schneck-745768163/
ORCID-ID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8058-8403
Studying Library and Information Science at HU Berlin, Hanna’s master thesis focused on the challenges of digital infrastructures for museum libraries. From 2012 to 2021 she went on to work as a librarian at both the museum Albertina and Photoinstitut Bonartes, in Vienna. Since then, Hanna has been serving as Library Director at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, with a special interest in modern library technologies and curation. Her current research focus on history of photography and book science lead to cross-disciplinary collaborations, such as catalogue publications and co-curation of the exhibitions “Foto.Buch.Kunst” (Albertina, 2019), Blitzlicht in der Unterwelt (Photoinstitut Bonartes and Stift Göttweig, 2020/2021) and Farbe in Schwarz-Weiß (KHM, 2022).
About Raman Ganguly:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/raman-ganguly-71497a37/
ORCID-ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9837-0047
Raman Ganguly studied Media Engineering at the St. Pölten University of Applied Science, and is a Level C – IPMA project manager. During this time, he also worked as a commercial software developer and headed the web-development departments at two media agencies.
In 2008, Raman joined the team of the University of Vienna Computer Centre. And, since 2011 his principal focus has been the management and archival of research and educational data. In this capacity, he is responsible for designing the technical infrastructure of the University’s data management ecosystem, as well as ensuring the sustainable operation of technical infrastructure for long-term data preservation. He is the technical director of the PHAIDRA digital asset management system for long-term preservation, currently used by the University of Vienna and 21 institutions throughout Europe.
This podcast is also available on the EpistemiCast Spotify channel:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0949ZuNWcwYeXWYRdga2ke?si=8ec970a814ec4719
Listen to ‘Challenges of digitizing information in museums and science institutions’
This podcast is also available on the EpistemiCast Spotify channel:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0949ZuNWcwYeXWYRdga2ke?si=8ec970a814ec4719
Cover photo by Grant Ritchie on Unsplash