In most institutions collecting new media art, the absence of a proper tool, made it necessary to define a new comprehensive model of documentation and create an adequate software, which would allow one to describe complex time-based media objects.
If smartly developed, a Collection Manager’s interface may represent a media artwork life cycle and can provide a structured way to contextualise descriptions, and allow one to establish criteria for cataloguing, taking into account all the individual characteristics of the object and to generate useful and contextualised conservation documentation for better protection of the authenticity and integrity of art objects. The presentation will share experience from these two worlds: film archive’s and new media collections in art museums, on how we may use these computer programs to build a single coherent workflow.