Lucidea’s ArchivEra Collections Management System Selected by Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lucidea, leader in innovative collections management software solutions for archives and museums, and provider of ArchivEra and Argus, announces that the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge (CMOR), in Oak Ridge, Tennessee has selected ArchivEra to manage their collections.

Dr. Alvin Weinberg, an Oak Ridge physicist, helped design the world’s first nuclear reactors. He served as the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1955 until 1973, and then founded the Institute for Energy Analysis at Oak Ridge Associated University. That same year Selma Shapiro became the first director for the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge. Ms. Shapiro saw the museum through two buildings, hundreds of exhibits, and 30 years of teaching the city’s history. She became close friends with Dr. Weinberg, who shared her values and at one point donated $10,000 to the museum.

CMOR’s mission is to “provide fun and diverse educational programs and exhibits emphasizing play and hands-on learning for all ages in arts, science, history, culture, and healthy living, while collecting and preserving objects in a historic Manhattan Project community.” The museum is currently located in a 54,000 ft² historic building that was originally an elementary school during the Manhattan Project. The museum includes indoor and outdoor exhibits, as well as offers classes, camps, and events for all ages.

Rhonda Bogard, the daughter of Selma Shapiro, and a current member of the Museum’s advisory board said “He was always interested in peaceful applications of nuclear energy, but he wasn't blind to the fact that we, first of all, have perception issues. The public is afraid of radiation. And so, Dr. Weinberg was a big proponent of being able to talk to people about science in a way that people can understand it.”

When Dr. Weinberg left ORAU, he bequeathed a large portion of his papers (over 250,000 pages) to the Children’s Museum for safekeeping. Ms. Shapiro promised him she would protect his papers and keep them accessible to the community. And now Ms. Bogard is carrying her mother’s promise forward, with Dr. Weinberg’s files a key part of the Museum’s digitization project.

The collection is now digitized and will be made publicly available on the Internet. Coupled with its flexibility and ease of use, ArchivEra from Lucidea, with its longstanding reputation for client service, integrity, technical support, predictable pricing, lowest total cost of ownership, and fastest return on investment emerged as the perfect choice for the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge.

Lucidea’s purpose-built, Web-based solutions deliver unrivaled collections management for progressive archives of all sizes and budgets. Their applications are off-the-shelf yet highly adaptable, and offer:

• Mobile access for visitors and staff
• Fully integrated web-based Portal
• Full multimedia support
• Search Engine integration
• Metrics and reporting

The partnership between the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge and Lucidea’s ArchivEra Collections Management System will provide access to this important collection of documents left by Alvin Weinberg, one of Oak Ridge’s most beloved scientists, for the world to use and enjoy.

For further information about their collections management solutions, visit https://lucidea.com/archivera or phone [phone], or email [e-mail].