Nodel is a joint venture established between Museums Victoria and Automatic. It was imagined as a replacement for the previous gallery control system at Museums Victoria. After conducting an extensive evaluation of the various products available in the market, Museums Victoria decided to develop a bespoke system. This new control system was designed to meet Museums Victoria’s specific requirements at the time and can easily be modified to adapt its future needs. You may find out more about the Nodel project on the White Paper.
Museums Victoria is Australia’s largest public museum organisation. Museums Victoria’s origins date back to 1854, with the founding of the National Museum of Victoria and the establishment, in 1870, of the Industrial and Technological Museum of Victoria (later known as the Science Museum of Victoria). By proclamation of the Museums Act 1983 (Vic.), these two institutions were amalgamated to form what is known today as Museums Victoria, governed by the Museums Board of Victoria. In 1996, Museums Victoria took over custodianship of the World Heritage listed Royal Exhibition Building.
As the state museum for Victoria, we are responsible for looking after the State collection of nearly 17 million objects, documents, photographs and specimens. Our research, in the fields of science and humanities, uses the museum’s collections and expert staff to further what we know about the social and natural history of Victoria and beyond.
We present long-term and temporary exhibitions at three venues: Melbourne Museum, the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks. These exhibitions are core to our cultural and scientific programs for the people of Victoria and visitors from interstate and overseas.
Testimonials
Science World British Columbia
Nodel is extremely cost effective for an existing museum to incorporate into their facility to achieve widespread and easy automation of galleries, exhibits and other digital experiences. We took to it because of its open source nature, minimal cost impact, and immediate improvement in facility operation. Jordon Randall, Science World
Problem
Science World did not have an exhibit automation strategy in place. We wanted a way to unify our scheduling of exhibits under one management interface that could be used for normal operation of our museum and for rentals and extracurricular uses of our space. Our existing method was an assortment of manual startup and shutdown procedures, digital timers, tv timers and computer shutdown scripts. The efforts were disjointed and required special expertise to startup and shutdown the museum and allowed for human error.
Solution
As soon as we heard about Nodel and its integration to existing computers, existing projectors and other networked devices we knew we wanted to try it out. We first attempted with a small gallery that was already digital and this went without issue. Within a month of starting we had already expanded our implementation of Nodel to every existing computer and projector in the museum. Within 2 months after that we took over all digital timers and started incorporating exhibits that were manually turned on and off with use of iboot integration with Nodel. User buy in was immediate, and usage of the system is straight forward. Our maintenance crew takes care of scheduling changes, which they can do far in advance and with minimal effort. Nodel was the perfect fit.
Testimonial
Nodel is extremely cost effective for an existing museum to incorporate into their facility to achieve widespread and easy automation of galleries, exhibits and other digital experiences. We took to it because of its open source nature, minimal cost impact, and immediate improvement in facility operation. We now have Nodel as a central requirement of all new and upgraded exhibits and galleries within our museum. Our users love it as they can turn a gallery on early for maintenance, or reschedule the building to accommodate an event. Specifically our staff also enjoy being able to hand pick which exhibits should be on for the particularly special events. We have trained our front line staff to use the system as well allowing us to empower our staff to take charge which is great win for efficiency. We will continue to use and invest into Nodel and contribute to the project for others to take advantage of.