Keine Toaster und Haartrockner – Registrar Trek in GB

Es ist schon eine Weile her, aber jetzt schnappe ich mir wieder meine Reiseschuhe und ziehe los, um Kolleg*innen, Kund*innen und Freund*innen zu sehen. Nicht unbedingt in dieser Reihenfolge.

Dieses Mal sind es zwei Wochen in London und nochmal anderthalb Wochen weiter im Norden, in Walsall, Sheffield und Leeds. Also widme ich meinen Oktober England. Wenn Sie in der Nähe sind und Lust haben, sich über einem Tässchen Kaffee oder einem Pint zusammenzusetzen, lassen Sie es mich wissen.

Ich schwöre auch feierlich, dass ich dem Drang, meinen Toaster in die Steckdose im Zug einzustöpseln nicht nachgeben werde. Meine Haare trockne ich auch vorher. Aber mal ernsthaft, wie oft muss sowas passiert sein, damit man das auf einem Schild erwähnen muss? Doch sicherlich mehr als zwei Mal….

Angela

#Leads #London #MuseumDocumentation #Sheffield

No Toasters Or Hairdryers – Registrar Trek Goes UK

It has been a while, but now I’ll grab my traveling boots again and go to see colleagues, clients, friends. Not necessarily in that order.

This time it will be two weeks in London, another one and a half week further North in Walsall, Sheffield, and Leeds. So, my October is dedicated to England. If you are in that area and like to catch up over a cup of coffee or a pint, just drop me a line.

I also solemnly swear that I will suppress my urge to bring my toaster and plug it into the power outlet of a train. I will also dry my hair before I come on board. Seriously, though, how often does it have to happen to warrant a sign? I would reckon more than twice…

Angela

#Leeds #London #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #Sheffield

What does a jet have to do with managing previously unmanaged collections?

Simple answer:

Nothing.

More complex answer:

I am in the process of translating the book into German and sometimes there are hiccups. In chapter 4, I talk about the difficulties of enforcing access policies for your storage area. A process which, as we all know, comes with all sorts of difficulties, the problem of taking the key from someone being a humiliating gesture in our Western culture being not the least of it.

In the English original, there is the sentence:

“Enforce the access policy with the three ps: persistence, patience, and politeness.”

Needless to say, such sentences don’t translate well. Usually you just rephrase them and let go of the idea that you can find three words starting with the same letter in the other language. However, I think I did find a way this morning:

“Halten Sie mit „Drei G“ an Ihren Zugangsbeschränkungen fest: mit Geradlinigkeit, Geduld und Gutem Benehmen.”

Finding three words starting with the letter G with the same meaning like the original (although the third one is cheating a bit, using two words) was already a big win. But the even bigger win was that this way I now have the double meaning of 3 G in it, alluding to the g-forces in physics.

I could of course take that analogy and run with it, saying that when we change longstanding processes and habits like we inevitably do when we start improving things in our collections, it means that we accelerate things and take people out of where they are used to go and expecting to go. And as we know from physics, if we accelerate things, a force is applied to the one being accelerated, which can have unpleasant side effects.

But I don’t want to overburden that little sentence. Instead, just imagine me giggling slightly when you come across it reading the book. 🙂

Angela

#AccessControl #collectionsManagement #documentation #museum #MuseumDocumentation #registrar

*Reads statement that museums are the last segment of woke*

*raises mug to U.S. museums*

Mug design by the great @HeliaXyana

#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #resistance #museums

A #backup is only good if you can restore it. D'oh!
Part three of our series on #datasecurity shows you how to restore your #TMS database.
Should be a routine but also necessary knowledge if you have to bring your database to a safe space where nobody can force you to delete some information that might not fit the worldview of your current government but will be valuable in the future.

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-restoring-a-tms-database/
#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement

Let’s talk about data security: Restoring a TMS database

So, yesterday we took a backup of our TMS database. Today, we learn how to restore it. This is also a check you should be doing after having taken your first backup and also regularly after you have taken backups because like I have mentioned here otherwise you can’t be sure you have backed up anything. Or, like a friend of mine who deals with a lot of IT messes put it:

“I bought a book!”
“Are there words inside it?”
“Huh? Of course. I didn’t check, but there are always words inside a book, right?”

Before you haven’t checked, you just assume, you aren’t sure. And if there is one rule every collections professional knows by heart it is this: Never assume, always make sure!

Step 1: Again, log into the server you want the database to restore to and open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

You already know how to do that by now. If not, re-read step 1 in this article.

Step 2: Navigate to the Restore menu

Go to the folder “Databases”, right-click on it and select “Restore Database…”

Step 3: Chose your backup file

Up comes a rather bleak screen:

Go to “Device” and click on the three dots …

You get another rather bleak screen from which you choose “Add…”

You are getting a look at your file system from which you select the backup file you want to restore from. You might remember I cautioned you to store it in a place you can easily find it in Step 6 in in the previous article, right?

When you have found the right file, you click “OK”.

On the next screen you also click “OK”.

Step 4: Restore your database

Now you are on this screen again, but now it is populated with your chosen backup, including the date and time it would restore to:

You can see how my database “Leer” (yours might be called “TMS” or something else) is showing up both as the source and as the destination. If you really want to overwrite your current database this is fine, for example because something went horribly wrong with your current database and you want to restore it to an older version.

But if you just want to test if our backup file is okay, you don’t want to do that! Imagine something went wrong with the backup. We would be overwriting our totally fine current database with a corrupted backup! Big mistake!

So, for testing, instead of the “Leer” as destination I simply typed another name. I chose “TMSTEST”:

Then I clicked “OK”.

The database will now be restored to a new destination. If the backup file is okay and you have enough storage space you will get this screen after a while:

You can now click “OK”.

Step 5: Test your database

You should now see an additional database in your databases folder (mine shows up, of course, as “TMSTEST” because I called it that way):

If that worked fine, your backup file is okay. But just because I am a bit anal about my data, just to check, just to make sure, I run the mother of all TMS queries: “Select * From Objects”.

Only when it runs smoothly and the number of objects I get back matches my expectations, I am satisfied.

Housekeeping

Backup files are rather large. Which is logical, because they contain all your valuable data, right? So, after testing to make sure my backup is okay, I deleted that new database again by right-clicking on TMSTEST and choosing “Delete” so it doesn’t clog my server:

Also, because the backup files are so large, I tend to compress them before I move them to a different server. I use the software 7-Zip for it since it proved to be rather reliable (https://www.7-zip.org/). If you don’t have it on your server, you need to install it, first.

Go to your Windows Explorer and find your backup file. Right-click on it, choose “7-Zip” and select the option “Add to [whatever your backup is called].7z”.

You can now see how the backup is compressed. Wait until it is done (fetch a coffee or a tea, this might take a while, depending on the size of your database).

After it is finished, you will see a second file on your file system:

You will notice how much smaller the compressed file is. This is much easier to move to another server, unpack, and restore there, right?

Because I am paranoid I will move the .7z file to a cloud storage that I trust now and try if I can unpack it there without issues. If that is the case I can go back and delete the .bak file and just retain the smaller .7z file.

Take your backups, take them to a safe location, and take good care!

Angela

#collectionCare #collectionsManagement #dataBase #dataSecurity #database #documentation #MuseumDocumentation

Taking a backup of your #museum #database can be crucial in the current political climate. You don't know when you will be forced to delete what you once knew about the objects in your museum and the people who made them. They might be too queer or don't have the right skin color. Better rescue what you have NOW and store it in a secure place.
Today's blog post is about how to do that if you are using The Museum System (TMS).

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-how-to-back-up-your-tms-database/

#RegistrarLife #MuseumDocumentation

Data security isn't sexy, I'll give you that. But in this climate, knowing how to do a backup of your database and storing it somewhere safe might be crucial to make sure what you know about your collection is preserved for future generations.

Start of a new series on #RegistrarTrek: Let's talk about Data Security

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museums #museum #databases #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #KeepYourDataSafe