Dear Vajra Brothers and Sisters,

The Museo di Arte e Cultura Orientale of Arcidosso (MACO) has begun an exciting collaboration with the British Museum’s cutting edge department of digital cultural heritage, ResearchSpace, which will help us share the Namkhai Collection with our Community members around the world and beyond, but only with your help.

You can read a short description of the project on the MACO’s home page: https://www.macomuseo.org/en-home and a bit more on our Support page: https://www.macomuseo.org/supportus

During the next two weeks, the British Museum team, led by Dominic Oldman, will begin installing our software.

During the lockdown in Italy, over the last 6 months we have been photographing objects in the Namkhai Collection, and digitising the exhibitions we have staged in the past. We will now begin to input images, video, audio and 3D models into the ResearchSpace software that we have helped design.

Our ResearchSpace installation (working title “Discovery Space”) will provide:

  • a collaborative virtual environment for curators to build exhibitions
  • a virtual environment to visit our exhibits both onsite and online
  • a digital asset management system to store and access multimedia
  • a digital preservation platform for the Namkhai Collection

The system is designed to do many, wonderful things, but we need the help of everyone to make it a reality.

We are looking help immediately in a few slots.

We are looking for someone to help us with light system administration. They should have:

  • Linux server administration skills (we are going to use Ubuntu LTS), and know the usual stuff like firewall, dns, security updates, backups etc.
  • they should knowledge of sh/bash
  • and some knowledge of docker/docker-compose system administration

This person will help us maintain our Cloud instance. They should also have some experience with the Maco OS and of course be Community members as we are entrusted with the Namkhai Collection.

If you have this skill set and are interested in digital cultural heritage and linked open data and have a few hours a week to dedicate to our Community project please contact us.

We are also looking for people interested in cataloguing and data input, with language skills which reflect our international Community.

And we are always looking for new exhibition ideas from inspired and valid curators – in any field that can enrich our public offering.

Please send all inquiries and offers of help to this email address: [email protected]

This project has been evolving for quite a long time and we need everyone’s help now, to get it up and running. If you can’t offer your time – send your support and best wishes!

Much love to everyone and many thanks – it’s been a blessing to be able to spend time around these precious objects – Please come for a visit!!

Yours,
Alex Siedlecki

director