Five College Museums

The Five College Consortium brings together six college campuses in Massachusetts, each home to its own museum and unique collections.

The goal of this project is to unite these museum collections within a single, integrated public portal, one that preserves each museum’s distinct identity while presenting them collectively under a shared, unified brand.

The setup of Qi involved migrating collections data from MIMSY into a single shared system used by all the partner institutions. As part of the migration, five separate people authority files were brought together and consolidated into one shared authority, making it much easier to keep records consistent and to search across collections from different organisations.

Another important part of the project was building workflows that could work across all six organisations in the consortium. Each institution had slightly different ways of working, so the workflows in Qi were designed to be flexible enough to support shared standards while still allowing local differences where needed. This meant the consortium could work in one system without losing the individual practices that each organisation relies on.

As part of the online portal, we aimed to showcase the breadth and uniqueness of the collections in new and engaging ways. Among the features introduced is a customizable Shuffle tool, which allows users to discover objects at random based on selected filters such as time period, category, or museum. This feature can be tailored to highlight content from a specific institution or draw from all six collections, encouraging exploration across the consortium.

We also integrated 3D modeling technology to support detailed viewing of selected objects that have been rendered as interactive models. This allows users to examine artifacts from multiple angles and explore fine details that may not be visible in standard images, creating a more immersive experience and fostering a deeper connection with the collections.

We developed a flexible, user-friendly space that allows visitors to organize and curate objects from across the Five College Museums’ collections into meaningful groups and albums. Users can add custom titles and descriptions and inquire about albums or individual objects, creating a deeper connection with the collections.

Designed to support exploration, research, and teaching, this feature transforms browsing into a more active and personalized experience. Visitors can gather works by theme, time period, medium, collection, or personal interest, creating their own pathways through the consortium’s collections.

These curated albums can also be easily shared, making the platform particularly useful for students, educators, and researchers. Instructors can assemble teaching sets, students can collaborate on projects, and scholars can present curated selections, all within a centralized digital environment built to support learning, discovery, and cross-institutional engagement.

The new portal represents a major milestone in the Five College Museums’ digital access strategy. It combines scholarly depth with intuitive, user-friendly design, enabling innovative digital storytelling, enhanced thematic features, and advanced, accessible collection search. This expanded functionality supports a wide range of educational uses.

Built on the Qi platform, the portal provides the consortium with robust, flexible tools to manage content, metadata, and relationships across all collections and media types.