Itineraries, at MACBA.CAT

In January 2012 MACBA's website was relaunched with the aim of opening the site to participation and user involvement. One of the key participatory features in that sense are our Itineraries. Using the Itineraries feature - http://www.macba.cat/en/itineraries- both the user and the Museum can design, save and share, a specific route through which to navigate www.macba.cat. This allows for a more personalised experience of the Museum’s rich and diverse digital heritage.

Devised as a tool to be used by our community, Itineraries serve to gather together specific content at www.macba.cat. Each Itinerary enables the user to collect whatever content ( podcasts, videos, documents, entries on artists, works, texts, publications, exhibitions, links… ) he or she wishes to relate to an initial concept or idea.

Any registered user can produce an Itinerary or their own collection and it is the user him or herself who defines its purpose and visibility. One can create an Itinerary to do something as simple as gather one’s favourite works from the Collection or publish a personal selection of MACBA’s books. But Itineraries can also be of great help as a teaching aid, or when putting together discursive work, for example as a vivid argument in favour of an academic thesis or to further develop concepts only superficially mentioned in an exhibition.

Itineraries are a fun tool for anyone with an interest in MACBA’s heritage, but they’re also of great use for specialized users: teachers who wish to prepare a visit with their students, curators who want to provide a rich digital companion for an exhibition, or artists that wish to relate their work to that of others. Whether produced by anonymous users or museum collaborators, the resulting itineraries will allow all of us to revisit the museum’s digital heritage with a new perspective.