Electronic Scholarly Catalogue Initiative

Bringing the collections of Los Angeles museums and cultural organizations online

Project Details

A red, square geometric textile

Large tapestry, 1900-1917, Diné (Navajo), Finely woven, weft-faced tapestry weave with lazy lines; aniline-dyed machine-spun cotton string warp, and weft of several types of machine-spun wool yarns. Gift of Mrs. Edward Laurence Doheny. Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection, Autry Museum of the American West

About

Goal

The Getty Foundation's Electronic Cataloging Initiative helped Los Angeles museums and cultural organizations make information about their visual arts collections available online and create replicable models of online access and best practices for the field.

Outcomes

  • The 20 participating grantees catalogued nearly one million objects, almost one-third of the three million objects in their combined collections
  • By 2007, half of grantees had catalogued their entire collections
  • Grantees created more than 250,000 digital images and provided online access to 185,000 objects
  • Almost all grantees implemented new or updated collections management systems
  • The initiative spurred the creation of the Getty Foundation’s Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative in 2009

Project Details