You are hereTrust, audience and community: museums, libraries and identity
Trust, audience and community: museums, libraries and identity
Catherine Stiles blogged some concepts from her paper given at the Australian Historical Society in Canberra –– How Web 2.0 will change history - Possible futures for websites of the National Archives of Australia PDF on-line –– about implications of web 2.0 for museums, and ponders the requirement for radical trust of users. She's contrasted museum and library attitudes (citing lending as an example), and prompted responses from Jim Spadaccini and Bryan Kennedy among others. This brought me back to questions about institutional origins (that often influence attitudes) something i've been pondering in the context of "convergence" between libraries, archives and museums.
Museums have collections at their core –– assembly and preservation of groups of unique objects à la cabinet of curiosities. Rarity and preciousness was key to the attraction of objects. It gave them their aura (see Susan Hazan's piece about this) Public Lending Libraries are grounded in access, in public literacy. Their goal was to make materials available. But their collections were distinctly different: books, printed in many copies often inexpensively. (i can think of exceptions to this as i write -- the early 'chained libraries' in Europe for example, rare book collections ... but i'll go on anyways). Catherine's an archivist, but her attitude to original objects seems squarely in the museum tradition.
Philosophies and policies about public access in libraries and museums reflect these distinctions. One visited the rare works in the museums; borrowed the replacable ones in the library. A curator interpreted complex originals in an exhibition or gallery context; the librarian might have referred a user to a source, but its use was personal and individual.
Museums (and archives) remain involved in the informational content of their collections in a way that public lending libraries have not. Museums (and archives) research works in their collections, track scholars who study these same works, and share discoveries among curatorial peers. Compare the tradition of leaving annotations on mats in the print room [early tagging or annotation] with libraries' vociferous protection of the anonymity of their borrowers.
Neither tradition adequately positions museums or libraries as facilitators of community interactions where participation and equality are key. Trust is built on identity; identity requires identification. Anonymity isn't really an option for rich community interaction. We need to know who our users are.
Trust is also build upon assumptions that behaviour will be appropriate. Assessments of trust require a history of an individual's actions -- linking their trace with a distinct identity. Individuals build trust by behaving appropriately, over time. Despite the rhetoric, libraries do keep some personal data (about whether or not a person returns books) to assess whether individuals can be trusted with future loans from the collection. Online communities have used this model for some time to assign levels to users.
Personalization could be a great way for libraries, archives and museums to build connections between collections and individuals, and between people and collecting institutions. Persistent identity, and ongoing trust are a key part of a personalization infrastructure. Once again, though, we need to realise that we're creating an on-line space that doesn't share all the characteristics of our past space, on-line or on-site.