Guidelines for Updating Your Institution Records

Description

Your Institution Entry Form allows you to enter detailed information about your institution. This includes your business hours, admission fees, publications, products and collections.

The entry form has been reorganized and expanded to allow for a more accurate and detailed description of your institution. As you enter or review your record, we encourage you to describe your institution as accurately as possible.

Please note that certain fields in the entry form are required in order for the record to be accepted. These fields are indicated by the term "Required" in brackets.

Tips

• To access Your Institution Entry Form, select Add or Update from Your Institution.
• Once you have entered your information, choose Update, Hold, or Cancel at the bottom of the entry form.
• Update saves the changes you have made to your entry. These changes will be reflected in the VMC’s Museums in Canada section.
• Hold saves your entry as a draft but does not update your information in the VMC's Museums in Canada section. With this option, you can return at a later date and change the information you have already entered or add more information prior to submitting it for display in the VMC.
• Cancel clears the entry form of all the information you have entered.

Description

A "URL" (e.g., www.virtualmuseum.ca/index.html) is an address for a website or Web page.

Tips

• If your organization has its own website, you should enter its URL in the "Website URL" field, at the beginning of the entry form. VMC visitors will be able to link directly to your organization’s website.
• Under "Web-Based Services" in the "Services" section of the entry form, you can enter additional URLs for Web pages containing information on your institution's children's resources, collections, educational services, gift shop, etc. These URLs should only be listed if they provide additional information that is not already part of the Your Institution entry.

Description

The "Photo Album" feature allows VMC visitors to browse through a selection of your collection images.

Tips

• You can include several images of your institution and/or collections in your institution entry.
• One image should be selected to act as the main image for your institution, and be sent to CHIN for processing.
• For more information, please contact CHIN or see Including Images with Your Records.

Description

Turn a virtual visit into a “real” visit to your institution. Offer your VMC visitors relevant tourism websites in your geographic area.

Tips

• In the fields provided, enter the URLs of relevant websites, such as tourism services, attractions, hotels, restaurants, shopping centres, etc.
• Place a semi-colon between entries when adding more than one URL to a category.

Description

Your Institution Entry Form includes some CMA-only fields (i.e., Governing Structure, Operating Budget, Number of Employees, Staff Names and Positions and Year of Opening).

Tips

• These fields are for CMA use only and will not be publicly displayed in the VMC's Museums in Canada section.
• However, you may use the fields provided to add/update information used in the CMA Directory.

Description

You can present your information to VMC visitors in a unilingual or bilingual format.

Tips

• Your language option is chosen when your organization becomes a CHIN member.
• To change your language option, please contact CHIN.
• The unilingual format presents textual information to VMC visitors in the language the information was entered. For example, all textual information entered in English will be presented in English in both language versions of the VMC. The French version will have the mention "Disponible en anglais seulement".
• Information entered using the checkboxes is automatically translated and can be searched through and viewed in either language.
• The bilingual format provides your organization with the option of entering and presenting all information in both languages, using the same entry form.