LYRASIS was awarded funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in December 2013 to develop the organizational home for CollectionSpace, and subsequently helped develop the community and software for wider adoption. Since the first award, CollectionSpace has issued three public releases, launched a successful membership program with twelve inaugural members and has more than doubled the number of software implementers. As organizational home, LYRASIS provides staff, technology and financial support. This new phase of funding will allow LYRASIS and CollectionSpace to work together to increase implementations and membership, improve community participation in governance, strengthen the software's usability and create partnerships with key organizations and members.
CollectionSpace is the result of collaborative efforts from Museum of the Moving Image, the University of California, Berkeley and others to create a collections management tool for museums that is efficient, customizable and affordable. For many, CollectionSpace represents a paradigm shift in collections management technology, allowing users to create a stable, authoritative and flexible core of collections information from which interpretive materials and experiences - from printed catalogs and mobile gallery guides to research platforms - may be created. As an open source project, CollectionSpace not only offers a top of field solution for collections-holding institutions, but also a community of users and developers who are collaborating to make the software work better for everyone.
David Greenbaum, Director of the Research IT group at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the CollectionSpace Leadership Working Group, says of the award, "This is a tremendous endorsement of the great work the CollectionSpace community has been doing, and this award will allow us to continue creating an important tool for museums and other collections-holding institutions, and, most importantly, will allow us to share this platform with many other colleges, universities and museums. We are very grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their continued support of this program. We at Berkeley are excited to embark on the next phase of the program with LYRASIS, our members and users."
Robert Miller, CEO of LYRASIS and also a member of the CollectionSpace Leadership Working Group, says, "LYRASIS believes that open source, community-supported software is an important tool to strengthen all museums, archives and libraries, and CollectionSpace is a thriving example of the power of collaboration. We are proud to serve as the organizational home for open source communities, including CollectionSpace and ArchivesSpace, exposing our wide member base to these solutions and enabling further innovation and collaboration between and among these communities. Thank you to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their continued support of LYRASIS and we look forward to moving the program further along toward wider adoption and sustainability with this award."
