Organization Management

On MorphoSource, organization records are created to document the group, department, facility, or institution that either directly manages physical objects, including biological specimens, or imaging devices. For physical objects belonging to a museum, an organization often corresponds to a single collection or division, though for smaller museums a single organization may represent the museum as a whole. For imaging devices, an organization often corresponds to an imaging facility. Organizations on MorphoSource can be directly managed by staff members responsible for that organization. For example, by museum collections managers or imaging facility staff. Directly managing a collection or facility organization on MorphoSource has many benefits and unlocks features that are otherwise inaccessible.

An organization record is created whenever media are contributed to MorphoSource that either represent an object managed by the organization or have been imaged by devices managed by the organization. This happens even when media are contributed by “third-party” researchers or other individuals who are not affiliated with that organization. These organizations are created to accurately document contributed media, and our data curation team attempts to supply the most accurate details possible about the organization based on public information available via the web, communication with the media contributor, and at times via direct inquiry to organization staff. If you notice we have associated incorrect information with an organization, please let us know.

When organization staff directly manage an organization on MorphoSource, this enables many impactful new features and functionality. Those features are listed below and will apply to users who are members of the organization on MorphoSource. If you are interested in managing your organization on MorphoSource, see Getting Started: Organization ManagementPreview.

Organization Management Features:

1. View access to all media either representing organization objects for collection-managing organizations or to all media imaged by organization devices for facility organizations. This is true even if media are private and contributed by users not affiliated with the organization.

2. Organization can directly manage media. Media managed by an organization list the organization as the data manager for that dataset instead of any individual user. Organization managers have the same control over these media as they would over individually managed media, including the ability to decide download requests.

3. Access to usage and impact tracking for media associated with organization objects or imaging devices, including downloading user demographic and download intent statistics.

4. For collection-managing organizations, access to the Media Ownership TransferPreview system that transfers control of newly contributed media to organization management, either on media upload or publication. Although this system is not retroactive, we can assist organization members to obtain consent from users who uploaded pre-existing media to transfer management of those media to the organization.

5. For collection-managing organizations, access to the Permission DefaultsPreview system that defines default ownership, licensing, download control, and re-use settings for newly contributed media representing physical objects associated with the organization. This also includes the ability to specify a custom download request deciding user for media.

6. For collection-managing organizations, edit access to all physical object records associated with the organization.

7. For device-managing organizations, ability to create and edit device records associated with the organization.

8. For device-managing organizations, ability to see how many distinct imaging events have been linked to each device associated with organization.

9. Higher priority on support from MorphoSource team members for curation tasks related to organization content.