Starting from the Museum Benyamin Suaeb: The First Step of #KoleksiKita’s Cataloguing Workshop Across Jakarta’s Museums

Southeast Asia Museum Services (SEAMS), through the Koleksi Kita project, officially began its first cataloguing training at the Benyamin Suaeb Museum on Tuesday, October 7, 2025.

An initial study (September–December 2024) by the #KoleksiKita research team revealed that out of 12 museums under the Jakarta Department of Culture, only 4 currently have collection management systems, each applying different cataloguing practices without a shared standard.

To address these challenges, Koleksi Kita and the Department of Culture launched the Jakarta Digital Collections (JDC) initiative, focusing on two key components: a Collection Management System for Museum Staff and a Public Access System.

The cataloguing program will run from October 7 to 31, 2025, targeting 100 collection objects at the Benyamin Suaeb Museum.

Training materials include the Collection Management System, which offers an efficient and integrated approach to collection management for museum staff in Jakarta - covering identification, media, description, relationships, references, and contextual information, all accessible through a single web-based platform.

Meanwhile, the Public Access System training covers topics such as linked data, search functionality, thematic browsing, standardization, and the categorization of collections by topic and object type.

The cataloguing focus at the Benyamin Suaeb Museum includes textiles, musical instruments, furniture and tools, clothing, footwear, cooking utensils, canting tools, and more.

This activity is supported by the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP), which is committed to safeguarding historic buildings, archaeological and cultural sites, museum objects and collections, as well as traditional forms of expression such as languages and music across participating countries.