Imperial War Museum

Project Status: Current
Launch Date: Summer 2004

The Imperial War Museum (IWM) was founded by Act of Parliament in 1920 following the Great War to act as a National War Museum to collect and display material relating to that War. Due to the general interest displayed by the Dominion Governments this led to the title “Imperial War Museum”.

As of 2003, the IWM consists of 4 other major public tourist attractions:

• HMS Belfast moored in the Pool of London;
• IWM Duxford located off Junction 10 of the M11; 
• Cabinet War Rooms located in King Charles Street off Horseguards, and;
• IWM North, Trafford, Manchester.

The IWM has continued with an extensive programme of Gallery renovation and renewal resulting in the completion of Stage 3 of its Redevelopment programme in 2000, with the opening of new galleries to include the National Gallery on the Holocaust.

Future plans include additional buildings at IWM Duxford, and the opening of the Churchill Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms, scheduled for January 2005.

Each site provides a comprehensive range of permanent and temporary exhibitions consisting of exhibits from the permanent collections integrated with Audio/Visual interactive displays.

The IWM is a non–departmental public body (NDPB) overseen by a Board of Trustees and its Chairman. Its sponsor department is the Department of Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS).

Business Issues

The provision of a Content Management System is viewed as an essential part of the supporting architecture to allow information to be shared via the intranet, website and any other electronic medium as applicable. To maintain the Museum's position and to realise the value of the internet and intranet as business assets, it was important that it:

• manages content in an effective manner;
• re-uses content where possible, and;
• reduces the burden on technical staff

To resolve this situation, the Content Management System needed to address the core stages of website production:

• authoring;
• workflow, and;
• publishing

The system  also needed to address data storage and version control issues.

A Content Management System will enforce a more structured approach to working methods and file management and allow more people to become content providers. The system must ensure that it is as straightforward as possible for anyone to use with the minimum of training.

The CMS needed to allow for:

• publication sharing and management of content for the intranet, internet and future channels as appropriate;
• content and site structures to be easily created, published and managed by non-technical staff;
• accurate and consistent content to be updated and published in short time scales, and;
• integration with third party products which can be used to produce web content

The benefits to the IWM needed to include:

• reduced time for content creation and publication;
• elimination of repetition;
• reduction in errors;
• audit and compliance measure met without additional workload;
• scheduled, timely, controlled release of information;
• fast site changes and information release;
• skilled resources able to focus on developments, and;
• consistency of branding and better control of web standards

The IWM has had a website since 1997 and it contains information on permanent displays, the archives, special exhibitions, forthcoming events, education programmes, corporate hospitality and shopping facilities. The look/feel of the IWM website was last updated in 2000.

The IWM has had an intranet since 2000 and is the main point of call for staff to locate information and documents relating to their work and also the activities of the IWM. Again, the IWM would like each department to apply advanced techniques in the maintenance and management of their intranet presence.

Amaxus was selected by the Museum after a tender process. It willl drive all the Museum's websites together with its Intranet. The websites are due to go live in Summer 2004.