KE Software is a formerly Australian-owned

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company based in

Manchester, United Kingdom Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

, which specialises in collection management programs for museums, galleries and archives
The Axiell Group
purchased the firm in 2014.

History

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 the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, the then

National Museum of Victoria National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ...

and the

Australian Museum The Australian Museum, originally known as the Colonial Museum or Sydney Museum. is a heritage-listed museum at 1 William Street, Sydney, William Street, Sydney central business district, Sydney CBD, New South Wales. It is the oldest natural ...

, 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 of Martin Hallett of the

Museum of Victoria Museums Victoria is an organisation that includes a number of museums and related bodies in Melbourne. These include Melbourne Museum, Immigration Museum, Scienceworks, IMAX Melbourne, a research institute, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Roya ...

which evolved into Textpress, and by 2000, the KE EMu database program. KE Software was bought b
Axiell
in 2014 and the team merged with the Axiell staff. Axiell continues to sell and suppor
EMu

Products

The firm has two main products: th
Ke EMu Electronic Museum management system
a collections management system for museums; an
Vitalware Vital Records Management System
The first version of Ke EMu was launched in 1997 and uses the Texpress database engine with client/server architecture on a

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

server. Ke Emu is consistent with the

Dublin Core 140px, Logo of DCMI, maintenance agency for Dublin Core Terms The Dublin Core vocabulary, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Terms (DCMT), is a general purpose metadata vocabulary for describing resources of any type. It was first developed ...

Darwin Core Darwin Core (often abbreviated to DwC) is an extension of Dublin Core for biodiversity informatics. It is meant to provide a stable standard reference for sharing information on biological diversity (biodiversity). The terms described in this stand ...

standards for archive and museum catalogue

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

. "The company’s clients include the three largest museums in the world.:

KE EMu

KE EMu is considered one of the more effective and purpose-designed museum cataloguing programs. particularly in the creation of public interfaces to museum catalogue data. 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. 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'".Tim Hart and Martin Hallett, 2011, 'Australian museums and the technology revolution', in ''Understanding Museums: Australian Museums and Museology'', Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien (eds), National Museum of Australia
KE EMu is used by a large number of museums and galleries around the world, including the Smithsonian Anthropological Collection,

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

Vancouver Art Gallery The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Fr ...

New York Botanical Garden The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...

, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Research Archives, the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

Museum in Philadelphia, the

National Museum of Australia The National Museum of Australia (NMA), in the national capital Canberra, preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation. It was formally established by the ''Nation ...

, the

, University of Melbourne Archives, and the

Alexander Turnbull Library The National Library of New Zealand () is charged with the obligation to "enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations" (National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Mātauranga) Act 2003). Under the ...

, National Library of New Zealand. 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"

KE Vitalware

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, the Government of Anguilla, Ministry for Infrastructure, Communications, Utility and Housing, and the Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services.

Further development

A specialist tracking component for KE EMu has been developed by Forbes Hawkins of

Museum Victoria Museums Victoria is an organisation that includes a number of museums and related bodies in Melbourne. These include Melbourne Museum, Immigration Museum, Scienceworks (Melbourne), Scienceworks, IMAX Melbourne, a research institute, the UNESCO W ...

. 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. The company has been working with Australian government agencies to digitize birth deaths and marriage registers in order to cross match identity data. 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".Shivas, R. G., Beasley, D. R., Pascoe, I. G., Cunnington, J. H., Pitkethley, R. N., Priest, M. J. Specimen-based databases of Australian plant pathogens: past, present and future, ''Australasian Plant Pathology'' March 2006, Volume 35, Issue 2, pp 195-198

References

External links

Collection Trust UK management software comparison chart. {{DEFAULTSORT:KE Software Information technology management Content management systems Software companies of the United Kingdom Museum informatics Databases Museum companies Archival technology