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Balboa Park Online - Planning for Collaboration
During the fall of 2008, two dozen cultural institutions in Balboa Park, San Diego, have been challenged by the promise of funding from a local Foundation to engage in a dialogue about how to collaboratively support improve online access in order to further their individual and collective missions. This discussion engages staff from all levels in those institutions and bears on matters of communications, coordination and policy as well as technical implementation and integration. What is especially intriguing is that the institutions include dozens of museums of all types (science, natural history, art, local history, automobile, railroad, sports) and numerous performing arts organizations (theatres, junior symphony, the World Beat Center) and community programs.
Staff of the Balboa Park institutions have agreed that it is useful for their discussion to take place in a context in which technical experts from other institutions worldwide can comment on and offer suggestions. They ask only that these outside contributions be respectful, professional and point to concrete examples of good practice.
Over the next few weeks some initial thoughts about this collaboration will be presented here, initiating both the internal dialogue and interaction with others beyond San Diego. We're interested in learning from your experiences.
That's great to hear and I'm hoping this forum will lead to other initiatives that help better pool our resources within the park.
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Leo Cayetano
San Diego Hall of Champions
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Leo Cayetano
San Diego Hall of Champions
Just wanted to state that we are glad to be a part of this collaboration with everyone. I felt it would be prudent to state that we are in the process of redesigning the Hall of Champions website (www.sdhoc.com). Google calendar will be utilized for our events.
Thank you Dave for meeting with some of our staff concerning some of the needs for the Hall. I am hoping from those discussions lead to specific needs to help reach some smaller goals such as putting our archived artifacts online.
I was curious if anyone used Google Base as a method to keep track of artifact information. One main feature I think it lacks is an easy export feature, though there are APIs which we could utilize (but I do not have the experience to put together a web app to take advantage of them). Just wondering if this can possibly be used over a program. I'm trying to help us develop a method to easily push some of that content over to our new website.
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Leo Cayetano
San Diego Hall of Champions
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Leo Cayetano
San Diego Hall of Champions
Several other institutions in the Partnership are keenly interested
just now in improving their collections (artifacts) management systems
and getting information from them onto the Web. My guess is that the
San Diego Museum of Art, the Timken and the Museum of Man (among
others) might join you in the next few months in seeking a more
comprehensive artifact control system. In addition, the Museum of Man
is just launching a major digitization effort that will last six years.
Their in-house digitization service could be a real boon to your
digitization of artifacts, and since you have much more video and
archives, you might pave the way for them in those areas.
Let's see if we can advance this when I'm out in November.
David Bearman
David Bearman