To see COPE in action, Palmer pointed the audience towards the new V&A digital map, described by the V&A’s Digital Content Delivery Manager Andrew Lewis as “tablet-optimised, mobile-responsive, (and) data-driven”. In a detailed blog post, Andrew Lewis looks at the how the map fits within the strategic development of the museum website, the user-centred evidence that was built into the design process, and the iterative development process that was used.
The map sources data from the Museum’s authoritative internal collections and events databases, and, following the COPE methodology, the data is served via various APIs. As Andrew Lewis explains, this means that “updates happen once within the core business systems and then these definitive changes spread out into the map (and other web features) avoiding duplication of effort.” The updating of information happens within “business-as-usual work by staff using core V&A systems in their normal daily processes”, for example event records created by Visitor Services, marketing copy originating from the marketing department, and the updating of collection records in the main object-cataloguing database. Digital assets used in the map can also therefore be utilised in other web-delivered services, and are not tied to the map itself.
As Joy Palmer put it, “It’s a shiny object, but it’s beautiful underneath as well’.