Brian McMurray - Interactive (and) Web Developer

The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, Illinois has an expansive archive of television shows, commercials, radio shows and advertisements, and imagery. They have undertaken a huge effort to digitize their archives and wanted a better way to present their archives online and to also limit the archives to registered viewers. The Museum chose a proprietary media delivery and management system called Pictron which did not have a registration system to prevent the public from viewing the content. The Iona Group was asked to secure the Pictron-powered archives behind the same user authentication system developed for the Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television system, also developed by Iona.

As the lead developer on both projects, Brian integrated the user authentication system for the Encyclopedia of Television and also designed a way to attempt to lock the otherwise wide-open Pictron system behind the user authentication walled garden. While not perfect, the system was successful. In less than 6 months, the Archives attracted more than 13,000 unique visitor registrations, so much so, in fact, that the Museum has been forced to cease the availability of the digital assets due to funding and bandwidth constraints.