museumsandtheweb.com - collaboration

10 Museums, 12 Months, 1 DAMS: Adventures in centralized systems at Balboa Park

hrgold — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:36:40 +0000

MW2012

Howard Goldstein, HR Goldstein Consulting, USA; Perian Sully, Balboa Park Online Collaborative, USA

Abstract

Digital asset management (DAM) can be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming for a cultural institution to implement, yet DAM has become a central process to everyday workflows within cultural organizations. For ten small and mid-sized museums in San Diego’s Balboa Park, the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) undertook a project to rapidly deploy a Digital Asset Management System within the space of twelve months. This paper will provide a blueprint by outlining the process and steps BPOC took to analyze user needs, choose an application vendor, and implement the system, with special focus on the opportunities and challenges of providing centralized solutions to institutions with localized or parallel interests. This model can be of use to large organizations with disparate departments, colleges and universities, and collaborating organizations.

Program Item Reference:

10 Museums, 12 Months, 1 DAM system: Adventures in centralized systems at Balboa Park

21 Websites in 26 Months

bwyman — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 03:51:22 +0000

MW2012

Christina DePaolo, Balboa Park Online Collaborative, Devon Foster, The San Diego Museum of Art, and Kristine Page, The Museum of Photographic Arts. USA

http://www.bpoc.org

Abstract

Program Item Reference:

21 websites in 26 months

Open Innovation and Open Source: A Guide for Content Developers

bobk — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 03:07:20 +0000

MW2012

Robert Ketner, The Tech Museum, USA

http://thetechopensource.thetech.org

Abstract

There are clear advantages to working in collaboration with outside partners when developing exhibits and museum content. The actual structure of these collaborations can take many forms. This report outlines approaches to engaging with outside talent on three levels of commitment (Casual Contribution, Mentored Development, and Expert Networks) as may be required for different projects. Categories of methods for open innovation can be applied to create a manageable structure for the contributions (Orchestra, Creative Bazaar, Jam Session, and Mod Station models). A range of stages of completion, from ideas to completed content, can be expected from such collaboration efforts. Last, some findings from The Tech Virtual project are described.

Program Item Reference:

Open Innovation and Open Source: A Guide for Content Developers

Agile Games for Productive Teams

NancyProctor — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:08:59 +0000

MW2012

Dana Mitroff Silvers, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA and David Hendee, Carbon Five, USA

http://www.sfmoma.org

Program Item Reference:

Agile Games for Productive Teams

Perils and Opportunity: Going Virtual, Mobile, and Toying with Reality.

hannerl — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 03:53:11 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

mobile

Keywords:

technology

Keywords:

Augmented Reality (AR)

Keywords:

organizational change

Keywords:

collaboration

Abstract:

Creating strategies and opportunities for storytelling and sharing in an increasingly networked, mobile, and interactive social and built environment, is a complex challenge facing museums of all sizes. At the same time, finding new tools and collaborative modes of creating and sharing content has become a central challenge for many. In particular, museums face myriad technological, organizational, and collaborative challenges, for adopting and developing the connections, knowledge, and resources to find the best fit and form for their changing needs and audiences. This forum will consider the centrality of both organizational as well as technological practices and strategies for navigating this important shift in an increasingly web-made and mobile world.

Brief case study reflections from the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) and the Royal BC Museum (RBCM) will share insights from mobile-enhanced Virtual Museum of Canada projects, "The Visible City" (MOV), and "Invasive Species" (RBCM). Additional examples from the MOV's Bhangra.me storymap, and RBCM's wayfinding navigational applications, will be provided.

Key areas for discussion will be:
-Common areas of misconception about mobile/web applications/tools, and how do we overcome them?
-is collaborative content development and decision-making a necessary evil, or just another characteristic of the new networked reality of interactive web?
-Is "forgetting" exhibition best practices from the offline realm, when designing for the online/mobile realm, something we should encourage or counteract?
-Are small budgets and big projects like Augmented Reality apps really such strange bedfellows?

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

MW2012 Demonstrations III

Authors:

Hanna Cho

Eric Espig

Creating a mobile app ecosystem - the Genera project for iOS

thesherrin — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:26:06 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

Creating a Mobile App Ecosystem—The Genera Project for iOS

Keywords:

iOS

Keywords:

mobile

Keywords:

app

Keywords:

development

Keywords:

open source

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

apps

Keywords:

Field Guide

Keywords:

natural science

Keywords:

code

Abstract:

At the start of 2011, Australia’s Museum Victoria (MV), published a Field Guide for Victorian Animals for iOS devices: iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The app currently contains information for approximately 650 Victorian animal species, including birds, mammals, snakes, lizards and frogs, as well as butterflies, snails, spiders and other invertebrates. Released for free, the app was downloaded over 20,000 times in its first 7 months.
In August 2011, Museum Victoria (MV) released the source code for the app under an open source license. Organisations and individuals have used the code to produce field guides for something specific as the frogs within a river catchment area, to the fauna of Papua New Guinea.
The field guide data structure and code is built for displaying information about fauna, however the presentation structure of the app is suitable for displaying information about a wide range of fields. This lead to the development of the Genera project for iOS, which, rather than requiring the data about an object to be supplied in a specific structure to fit the database, adjusts the the database based on the structure of the data supplied. This project can be used to create guides for flora, fauna, minerals or any type of object. The subject of the guide does not have to be a homogenous class of objects, but through the use of templates and identifiers can accommodate heterogenous classes (e.g. fauna and flora).
This paper discusses how the work done by other organisations and the experience of developing the field guide has lead to the development of the Genera project for iOS. Key to the project is the separation of the data, platform and presentation layers. A description of how other organisations can use the Genera platform for their own apps, and suggestions on issues to consider when developing natives app for reuse by other institutions are presented.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Mobile strategy

Authors:

Simon Sherrin

Elycia Wallis

21 websites in 26 months

christinad — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 01:31:26 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

21 Websites in 26 Months

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

team building

Keywords:

website project management

Abstract:

For museums of any size, it’s challenging to get a website project launched and produced on time. During these tough financial times many website redesigns or enhancement projects have been put on-hold or prolonged due to lack of resources. One way to deal with these set backs is to collaborate with other museums to implement similar web platforms to share knowledge and cut costs.

The Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) launched 21 websites since the collaborative was formed fewer than three years ago. Working with a handful of developers, the collaborative has migrated many of the Balboa Park museum websites over to Drupal, the open-source CMS web platform. The web development work is part of BPOC’s mission to have the Balboa Park museums work with common technology platforms so they can have access to features and tools they normally could not afford. Once a museum is using Drupal for its site, BPOC has the ability to add new modules and capabilities and expand on shared knowledge. Expanded capabilities installed include shopping carts, collection publishing tools, and calendaring systems.

In this forum, we will discuss how the collaborative model can allow the production of website features quickly working with nimble teams consisting of software developers, museum professionals, and experienced project managers. We will also discuss how this model can help tackle the sometimes daunting issues museums often face when taking on a new website project.

Type:

Professional Forum - discuss an issue

Professional Forum on 21 websites in 26 months

Site:

http://www.bpoc.org

Authors:

Christina DePaolo

Kristine Page

Devon Foster

Open Innovation and Open Source: A Guide for Content Developers

bobk — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:27:36 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

Open Innovation and Open Source: A Guide for Content Developers

Keywords:

participation

Keywords:

co-creation

Keywords:

design

Keywords:

prototyping

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

open source

Abstract:

The Tech Open Source museum project launched in late 2007 (as "The
Tech Virtual") with the goal to apply the latest in open source
collaboration methods and tools to the creation of museum content. It
is composed of an online platform (a website with user-generated
content) and modeling resources hosted in a 3D virtual world. Offered
as a resource for the museum community as a whole, the project was
funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and is hosted by The
Tech Museum in San Jose, CA.

The ambitions of the program include development of museum exhibits
and content through open contribution by a diverse community of
curators, experts, hobbyists, scientists, and thinkers. This is
accomplished by connecting with individuals, institutions, and online
communities internationally. Thus far the project has involved the
participation of over 20 institutions and 1300 site members, who have
generated more than 400 exhibit designs and video projects.

As part of the grant products we will present a report of these
methods for the museum industry in the form of a project white paper
at Museums and the Web 2012.

The paper includes descriptions of the methods in use and results
obtained by the project. These are summarized in a practical structure
which covers open source approaches for Casual Contribution, Mentored
Development, or Expert Network level contributors. It also explains
how to apply a range of open innovation categories to structure open
source projects.

The paper is meant as a guide for institutions considering open
innovation programs or open design projects.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Optimizing engagement

Site:

http://thetechopensource.thetech.org/

Authors:

Bob Ketner

Advancing Collaboration in Museums

Annet Dekker — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:31:16 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

documentation

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

information resource

Abstract:

Are the various informational resources we keep in our institutions aligned to achieve what we wish to deliver to our visitors online? Asking this question in reverse, are our digital outreach and engagement efforts remembered in the records we keep? Under ideal circumstances, the technological alignment we seek will mirror the real needs of the diverse and expert individuals working in museums today. This workshop will explore the expanding spheres of staff involved in digital programming and how understanding the overlapping needs of inter-related departments will not only benefit our aspirations for digital programming but also serve the many other over-arching goals of the museum.

This workshop is practical and solution oriented. It will begin with a brief overview of some of the challenges of information and knowledge management in museums today. SFMOMA invited the San Francisco-based experience design company, Hot Studio, to explore these challenges and to describe a refreshed conceptual framework for museum information and knowledge; one that could be broadly adopted and easy to use. This workshop is designed to test the underlying assumptions of this conceptual framework by inviting participants to join in an exercise, an artwork-centered case-study. Through this exercise, participants will also be encouraged to explore their individual roles within a complex organizational structure and the shared and collaborative potential each person brings to the larger enterprise of a museum’s service to the public.

Type:

Workshop - full or half day

Advancing Collaboration in Museum

Authors:

Annet Dekker

Jill Sterrett

Layna White

What’s On TAP? – Strategies for keeping pace with rapid changes in mobile technology

rjstein — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:33:50 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

What’s On TAP? – Strategies for keeping pace with rapid changes in mobile technology

Keywords:

TAP

Keywords:

tourml

Keywords:

mobile tours

Keywords:

open source

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

mobile strategy

Abstract:

In 2011, the New York Times published an article that reinforces what many museums are feeling as they scramble to keep pace with changes in technology. Entitled, “Software Progress Beats Moore’s Law”, the article cites a White House advisory report detailing the changes in hardware and software innovation in the past 15 years. The report notes that while the rate of change in hardware innovation is staggering, changes in software have vastly outpace even those impressive numbers.

Perhaps most challenging for museums today are the changes occurring in the mobile industry. This leads to questions about how best to take advantage of mobile tools to promote access, interpretive content, and engaging experiences for the public – and at the same time, find solutions that are scalable and able to be maintained over a long period of time.

As described in (Stein 2011), the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) proposed a platform called TAP that envisioned a modular software framework in addition to a formal description of mobile tour content called TourML. The IMA released an initial version of the TAP and TourML framework in 2009, which has subsequently been adopted by a number of museums. While the initial TAP software proved stable and capable of serving a variety of needs in museums, it fell short of the ability to support the vision and needs of the community as expressed in several working meetings about the specification.

In 2011, the Institute for Museum and Library Services awarded a National Leadership Grant to a collaboration of museums, led by the IMA, to create and extend upon the TAP & TourML open-source platform to create a suite of interchangeable tools that can support the creation of reusable mobile experiences. This paper will discuss the goals of the project, the current state of the TourML specification (including its relationship to other open-source mobile projects), and will outline the software development roadmap for the project. Authors will describe the various components of the TAP system and how modules from the toolkit can be used individually or in combination to build a variety of museum mobile experiences.

Rather than being a stand-alone product, the paper will document the ways that TAP and TourML seek to integrate with existing museum authoring tools and commercial mobile systems creating a method for interchange and migration of mobile content between these systems. This same interchange method can help museums preserve and reuse the content developed for mobile tours and can potentially lead to the ability for museums to share and trade content elements between distinct mobile experiences.

Lohr, Steve. "Software Progress Beats Moore's Law - NYTimes.com." Technology - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com. New York Times, 7 Mar. 2011. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/software-progress-beats-moores-law/

Stein, R., and N. Proctor, TourML: An Emerging Specification for Museum Mobile Experiences. In J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Museums and the Web 2011: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Published March 31, 2011. Consulted September 26, 2011. http://conference.archimuse.com/mw2011/papers/tourml_an_emerging_specification_for_museum_mobile

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Mobile strategy

Site:

http://code.google.com/p/tap-tours

Authors:

Charles Moad

Robert Stein

Design of an Appreciation Support System for Public Art Using Mobile Phones

k.fushimi — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:48:22 +0000

MW2011

Kiyoka Fushimi, Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University, Japan; Hirokazu Yoshimura, Hosei University, Japan; Hiromi Sekiguchi, Oita Prefectural College of Arts and College, Japan; Takahiro Anasako, Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University, Japan; Hiroyuki Une, Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin University, Japan; and Karin Barac, Griffith University, Australia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is the development of a navigation system that will help enhance appreciation for urban art by connecting viewers with other people's thoughts and opinions of art pieces. Hiroshima, located in western Japan, has many works of public art that have assumed a theme of peace. However, in Japan, it seems that the appreciation of art is restricted to the elite, and the majority of people do not seem interested enough to visit art museums. We have designed a system that allows users to share an appreciation of public art in urban spaces by using their mobile phones.

Keywords: user-centered design, public art, collaboration, mobile phones, art appreciation

Program Item Reference:

Design of an Appreciation Support System for Public Art Using Mobile Phones

Why Reinvent The Wheel Over And Over Again? How an Offline Platform Stimulates Online Innovation

lottebelice — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:59:14 +0000

MW2011

Bart Grob, Museum Boerhaave; Lotte Belice Baltussen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision; Lieke Heijmans, Knowledgeland; Ralph Kits, DEN Foundation; Pepijn Lemmens, Netherlands Architecture Institute; Edith Schreurs, Van Gogh Museum; Nikki Timmermans, Knowledgeland; and Erik van Tuijn, Gemeentemuseum, The Netherlands

http://www.meetup.com/Innovators-Netwerk-Erfgoedsector

Abstract

In this paper, the case of an innovative Dutch think tank for the cultural sector is described. The Heritage Innovators Network (INE in Dutch) is unique in the Netherlands. INE is an offline platform created by and for cultural heritage professionals from institutions like the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Science Museum Boerhaave, Van Gogh Museum, National Archive and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Every month creative thinkers from these cultural heritage institutions come together and discuss current topics on online innovation in their sector, such as crowdsourcing, interaction with the public, rights issues related to providing on-line access to collections and Creative Commons. The discussions and results of these sessions have successfully influenced and spread innovative ideas and solutions for cultural institutions. The INE is an offline platform created for and by cultural heritage professionals. The project network is initiated by Knowledgeland and has been made possible by and has been carried out within the scope of Images for the Future, one of the largest digitization efforts in Europe to date. This paper will focus on how a bottom-up approach leads to a think tank for innovative solutions for cultural heritage institutions.

Keywords: innovation, organizational change, collaboration, multi-institutional, sharing knowledge

Program Item Reference:

Why reinvent the wheel over and over again? How an offline platform stimulates online innovation

The Trade in Digital: Partnerships and Collaboration in the Content Economy

Timothy Hart — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:35:08 +0000

MW2011

Timothy Hart, Director Information, Multimedia and Technology, Museum Victoria, Australia

Abstract

In our massively connected world content is indeed king and museums if they take a close look, will find themselves, well placed to deliver highly sought after content to an ever expanding audience. Collaboration is emerging as the critical enabler in taking full advantage of the opportunities now available for the delivery of museum online content. Collaboration needs to be both internal and external. The number and quality of national data services now operating is making museum content available for researchers and the public in numbers and types unimaginable only a few years ago. The ground work is laid in most large museums to allow them to participate in providing access to the full range and wonder possible in museum generated content.

Keywords: collaboration, collections, content, data, partnerships, opportunity, economy, research, Australia

Program Item Reference:

The Trade in Digital: partnerships in the content economy

Collaboration, Dark Fiber and the Challenges of Deploying Mobile Infrastructure

Rich Cherry — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:09:26 +0000

MW2011

Rich Cherry, Balboa Park Online Collaborative, USA

http://www.bpoc.org

Abstract

The Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) was created to lead technology-focused cooperation between 21 Balboa Park institutions. One of the challenges BPOC quickly uncovered when it began was a serious limitation to supporting collaboration caused by the lack of IT infrastructure necessary to network the institutions together. As a result, BPOC has installed the infrastructure necessary for a high speed (1GB/second) connection to network the organizations, to provide a 100mb Internet connection, and also to provide a connection to CalREN, the California Research and Education Network to which the vast majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected. The connection to CalREN also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations such as Internet2, high-speed networks in Mexico and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities Networks.

This mini workshop will explore the technology options as they relate to Wide Area Networks (WANs) and the technical, civil engineering and political challenges that the different options create; provide a planning checklist for dealing with the challenges; and describe the reasons that multiple institutions might desire to collaborate on a private WAN. All of this information will then be reviewed in the context of the Balboa Park Network Project deployment as well as other museum WAN deployments, with failures and successes highlighted.

Keywords: technology-focused collaboration, networking, collaboration, mobile

Program Item Reference:

Collaboration and Dark Fiber

KuratorTool

biblio — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:34:46 +0000

Overgaard, M., & Svensson P. (2010). KuratorTool. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2010. Proceedings.

Visually Digging into Museum Data

justine.richardson — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:21:34 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

IT Research

Keywords:

Content-Based Image Retrieval

Keywords:

quilts

Keywords:

international

Abstract:

How can a museum community with an active online user base collaborate in fundamental computer science research to the benefit of both researchers and museum audiences? How can the museum’s digital assets inform fundamental computer science research questions? How can the computer science research and algorithm development be translated into user tools for the museum community?

This demonstration will present the work of Michigan State University’s MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Sciences Online and Michigan State University Museum on the Quilt Index through the collaborative research project: Digging into Image Data to Answer Authorship Related Questions. Three project teams of computer scientists, museum professionals, and humanities scholars from Michigan State University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Sheffield (UK) have been exploring authorship studies of visual arts through computational image analyses. The three project teams are utilizing three datasets of visual works—15th-century manuscripts, 17th and 18th century maps, and 19th to 21st-century quilts—to investigate what might be revealed about the authors and their artistic lineages, and to test how algorithms can be applied across diverse data sets of images.

The computer science approach to this problem aims to discover what salient characteristics that differentiate artists can be applied to enable statistical learning about individual and collective authorship, given a set of 2D images of historical artifacts with known authors. The objective of this effort is to develop automated analyses to process specific salient characteristics on local data sets, hone those processes to provide the results at a much higher level of confidence than previously has been feasible, and test those processes across 1) diverse and 2) large sets of images.

This paper and demonstration will analyze the effort’s collaborative methods for project development, the research challenges, and the potential for museum collaboration, including lessons learned about collaborating on computer science research and ways to apply such research to develop public user applications for museum website visitors.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations II

Site:

http://www.quiltindex.org

Authors:

Justine Richardson

Dean Rehberger

Marsha MacDowell

Moving the Museum to the Medium: YouTube Play and the Guggenheim

nsemel — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:50:47 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

youtube

Keywords:

video

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

metrics

Keywords:

art

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

presentation

Keywords:

global

Abstract:

In June 2010, the Guggenheim Museum and YouTube, in collaboration with HP and Intel, launched YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video, a project conceived to discover and showcase the most exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of online video. Drawing on the Guggenheim’s ongoing commitment to new media, the goal of the project was not to discover what’s ‘now,’ but what’s next in creative
video.

Over 23,000 video submissions were received from creators in 91 countries around the world, which were considered by the Guggenheim curatorial team for the shortlist. A jury of experts comprising celebrated figures from the worlds of art, design, film, and entertainment reviewed the submissions for inclusion in the first biennial of creative video organized by a major museum of contemporary art. The 25 videos were on view in the Guggenheim Museum for four days and a live event celebrating the work was lived streamed to the world on youtube.com/play.

In conjunction with the project, the Guggenheim curatorial team launched The Take Blog (guggenheim.org/thetake), a space on the Guggenheim’s Web site for commentary and discussion by the museum’s invited guests, staff, and Web site visitors featuring writings by scholars, artists, and other experts. The blog provided a
space for the expert community to elevate the conversation surrounding the project and provided a discussion platform for topics including online video, digital content, the history of video art, and the effects of the Internet on art and culture.

Social media was the primary tool used to engage online audiences with The Take Blog over the four-month life of the YouTube Play project and beyond, along with e-mail marketing and on-site computer kiosks at the museum. Strategic social media collaboration with YouTube and HP served to drive growth and attract new audiences on the Guggenheim’s social media channels and Web site. From July 1-Nov 1, 2010, both Facebook and Twitter amassed over 76,000 new followers, a 94% and 67% increase respectively, while the blog attracted over 67,000 visitors--more than
major exhibition microsites such as Kandinsky and Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward.

In addition, the YouTube Play Web site garnered more than 10 million online viewers the day of the live event—a greater number of views than the Guggenheim Web site received the entire year.
To date, the project has attracted over 23 million viewers to the YouTube Play Web site, providing a platform to highlight some of the most innovative work being produced online today. These unfathomable statistics were achieved through tapping into YouTube, HP and Intel’s deep technological resources, the Guggenheim’s expertise in new media, and the collective communications outreach in the global social space.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstration V

Site:

http://www.youtube.com/play

Authors:

Nora Semel

Francesca Merlino

Mini-Workshop on Collaboration and Dark Fiber

dbear — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:38:56 +0000

Type:

Session

Programs:

Collaboration and Dark Fiber

Date & Time:

April 8, 2011 - 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Location:

Commonwealth A/B

Networking

collaboration

network

WAN

Required fields are marked with a red asterisk (*).

A confirmation of your registration will be sent to your email address. Please print it out and bring it to the conference.

You will not receive registration confirmation by regular mail.

If you do not receive your confirmation today, please contact us.

Archives & Museum Informatics EIN: 77-0708617; GST / BN 887978914

Description

This mini workshop will explore the technology options as they relate to Wide Area Networks (WAN’s), the technical, civil engineering and political challenges that the different options create, a planning checklist for dealing with the challenges as well the reasons that multiple institutions might desire collaborate on a WAN.

Accelerating in Flight: Access to a Collection via Flickr

Rich Cherry — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:16:44 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

flickr

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

BPOC

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

mashup

Abstract:

In an effort to get more of the Balboa Park Museum’s collections online and accessible to the public, the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) has been leading an effort to efficiently and quickly digitize the wealth of media in the Park museums collection. This demonstration will highlight the success of the San Diego Air and Space Museum (SDASM) to increase visitor visibility and interest in their museum by getting photographs from their archives up on Flickr. After working for ten years to digitize their photography collection one by one, the SDASM archival team of Alan Renga and Katrina Pescador were able to step up those efforts with a new highly specialized rapid capture station, purchased by BPOC as part of its mission to implement new technology to provide increased visitor access and participation. More than 25,000 images have been digitized from the photography collection of the SDASM’s archive using the rapid capture station since January of 2010. In May, the first batch of photographs were uploaded to Flickr and since then more than 100,000 images from the collection have been posted. As a result, this collection has drawn more than three quarters of a million visits, four times the normal traffic to the museum’s site.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations IV

Site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives

Authors:

Alan Renga

The Trade in Digital: partnerships in the content economy

Timothy Hart — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:01:00 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

The Trade in Digital: Partnerships and Collaboration in the Content Economy

Keywords:

collections

Keywords:

digitisation

Keywords:

partnership

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

mobile

Keywords:

change

Abstract:

Come and discuss a paper that will examine the notion of the content economy where digital assets are the new currency for museums. Our collections have always been central to our existence and mission, the content economy is only increasing the importance of collections. The availability of digital assets both collection and non collection is critical to our success online as part of the visitor experience onsite-online & offsite.

Digitisation has been a central issue for large institutions with legacy collections and the ante is well and truly up; from Museum Victoria's perspective content development partnerships have provided a somewhat unexpected means to an end. l will use a number of examples of effective partnerships that have achieved significant project outcomes to the partners whilst also achieving our digitisation aims.

Australia has developed a number of effective national partnerships, the Collections Australia Network (CAN-AMOL), the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and the National Libraries TROVE project will be used to demonstrate the positives of collaboration and its benefits, challenges and outcomes.

I will also use examples from Museum Victoria and its partnership with the Victorian State Education Department - specifically the Biodiversity Snapshots Project.

We are all increasingly relying on partnerships and "cartels" to build our reputations and maintain our share of online audiences. The notion of digital currency and the content economy is affecting museums dramatically. The changes wrought by the rise of ubiquitous computing are washing over our institutions - mobile as the dominant interaction point with our online content is yet another major shift - we are in my opinion making the most of the opportunities afforded by this latest technology shift.

The real issue comes back to change, how are Museums delivering content in the changed environment - content economy means we must align our museums to produce content in a more nimble and cost effective way. My message will be a positive one, I believe we are responding and growing in maturity and exerting more control over our operating environments.

Type:

Professional Forum - discuss an issue

Professional Forum on the Content Economy - Should we be in or out?

Authors:

Timothy Hart

Why reinvent the wheel over and over again? How an offline platform stimulates online innovation

LiekeHeijmans — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:50:44 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Why Reinvent The Wheel Over And Over Again? How an Offline Platform Stimulates Online Innovation

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

innovation

Keywords:

knowledge sharing

Keywords:

unconference

Keywords:

platform

Abstract:

In this paper, the case of an innovative Dutch think-tank for the cultural sector is described. The Heritage Innovators Network (INE in Dutch) is unique in the Netherlands. For the first time, creative thinkers from cultural heritage institutions come together every month and discuss current topics in their sector, such as crowdsourcing, interaction with the public, and open content. The discussions and results of these sessions have successfully influenced and spread innovative ideas and solutions for cultural institutions. The INE is an offline platform created for and by cultural heritage professionals. The project has been carried out within the scope of Images for the Future, one of the largest digitisation efforts in Europe to date. This paper will focus on how a bottom-up approach leads to a think-tank for innovative solutions for cultural heritage institutions.

An offline platform for online solutions

The Dutch cultural heritage sector is not yet exploring all the possibilities of the digital domain to its fullest. Often the activities of heritage institutions are limited to digitising the collections and filling image databases with this content. At the same time there is a strong drive to innovate and experiment in the Dutch cultural heritage sector. But often the will and enthusiasm is carried by just a few individual frontrunners in the field that do not have the support in their organizations to implement new ideas, strategies or experiments with new media. An often heard excuse is that there is no basis, not enough budget and too little manpower to work out a good strategy.

INE has evolved into an inspiring national platform where individuals with innovative ideas meet, share ideas and come up with possible solutions with their own knowledge and tools. Innovation, inspiration and entrepreneurship through the power within!

How we made it work

Since January 2010 INE has organized meetings on a monthly basis in Dutch museums and archives. The INE network has 50 active members representing heritage organisations nationwide who attend in different combinations these meetings. Members take part in the INE personally, not as representative of their institutions, but with the intent to co-operate and co-create. The meetings are organised and hosted by one of the member’s institutions and co-organised by a small group of initiators. The host institution is responsible for the theme or agenda of a meeting. An online meetup-platform serves as forum, source for inspiration and a share point for knowledge and ideas.

Regular IRL meetings have proven to be a viable solution for bringing together the communal ideas and visions of this group of front runners who often battle a lonely battle in their own organisations. The themed meetings often provide concrete solutions one or more organisations can use in their daily digital routine, thereby strengthening inter-institutional cooperation, and rising above the pitfall of being just a think-tank. The INE prevents members from reinventing the wheel over and over again by joining forces both online and offline.

Challenges for the INE after his first successful year is how to go beyond usable ideas for some institutions towards solutions for the whole sector and expanding the enthusiasm deeply felt by members beyond the monthly meetings and deeper into their organisations.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Organizational Change

Authors:

Bart Grob

Lotte Belice Baltussen

Lieke Heijmans

Ralph Kits

Pepijn Lemmens

Edith Schreurs

Nikki Timmermans

Erik van Tuijn

Design of an Appreciation Support System for Public Art Using Mobile Phones

k.fushimi — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:42:38 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Design of an Appreciation Support System for Public Art Using Mobile Phones

Keywords:

user-centered design

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

mobile phones

Keywords:

public art

Keywords:

art appreciation

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is the development of a navigation system that will help enhance appreciation for urban art by connecting viewers with other people’s thoughts and opinions of art pieces. Hiroshima, located in western Japan, has many works of public art that have assumed a theme of peace. However, in Japan, it seems that the appreciation of art is restricted to the elite, and the majority of people do not seem interested enough to visit art museums. We have designed a system that allows users to share an appreciation of public art in urban spaces by using their mobile phones.

The main characteristics of this study were to build a system that:

induced a positive appreciation among users
enabled the sharing of text and images
heightened user-experience through involvement
was based on User-centered design and had provisions for color blindness.

The system which we have designed has been tested and improved on three occasions to date and is targeted at those who have few opportunities to appreciate art. The repetition of this experiment within the confines of Hiroshima City, found that the experience of public art was enhanced through the use of this mobile phone system. These results would seem to indicate that public art pieces do benefit the average person who rarely visits museums in a positive way.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Mobile Parade

Authors:

Kiyoka Fushimi

Hiroyuki UNE

Takahiro ANASAKO

Hirokazu YOSHIMURA

Hiromi Sekiguchi

Karin Barac

How to Evaluate Online Success – New action research with 24 institutions

sebchan — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:49:32 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

How to Evaluate Online Success? A New Piece of Action Research

Keywords:

metrics

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

best practice

Keywords:

analytics

Keywords:

evaluation

Abstract:

How to measure and define the success of cultural websites and online services is a problem common to all parts of the cultural sector – museums, archives, galleries, arts organisations, libraries, publishers. Worse, funding agencies and government departments lack the expertise to offer guidelines or set standards. The result is a confusing mixture of statistics and reporting that reveals little about genuine user satisfaction.

In mid 2010 a group of 24 organisations and agencies from across the cultural heritage and arts sector in the UK began collaborating on a piece of action research addressing the issues around 'evaluating online success'. Coordinated by Culture24 and working with Seb Chan, the group of institutions have been developing a framework and best practice guide for measuring online projects both on organisational websites and those presented through social media channels.

This mini-workshop will present the findings of the project to date, along with several case studies from partner institutions, anonymised where necessary, demonstrating the impact of metrics customisations, cross-sector audience segmentation, and benchmarking.

The full list of project partners is:

Powerhouse Museum
British Library
National Gallery
Science Museum
Tate
British Museum
Kew
National Maritime Museum
Imperial War Museum
National Portrait Gallery
Watershed
Royal Shakespeare Company
National Museums Scotland
National Museum Wales
Design Museum
English Heritage
Roundhouse
DCMS
Arts Council of England
Heritage Lottery Fund
Museums, Libraries & Archives Council (MLA)
University of Leicester
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery

Type:

Mini-Workshop - teaches something or explores approaches

Mini-Workshop on How to Evaluate Success

Site:

http://www.culture24.org.uk/sector+info/art80724

Authors:

Sebastian Chan

Jane Finnis

Rachel Clements

TourML: An Emerging Standard for Museum Mobile Experiences

rjstein — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:22:09 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

TourML: An Emerging Specification for Museum Mobile Experiences

Keywords:

standards

Keywords:

metadata

Keywords:

collaboration

Keywords:

preservation

Keywords:

mobile tours

Keywords:

tourml

Abstract:

The recent explosion of options used by museums to produce mobile experiences is undeniable. In the last 18 months, dozens of new mobile platforms have entered the marketplace as museums are planning, producing, and launching new experiences for visitors on their mobile devices. Besides launching a successful tour, how can museum professionals ensure that the content we create will outlive the technology and vendors we select today?

A successful metadata standard for mobile tours would provide a number of advantages for museums. A mobile standard will allow museums to migrate the content and structure of a tour between the variety of tools available today and tools that may be available in the future. Similarly, a mobile standard would allow the same tour to be used on a number of current and future mobile devices. In addition, museums could choose authoring tools which best fit their staff and workflow needs while still deploying to whatever mobile device is best for their content - even if these tools are provided by different vendors. Perhaps most importantly, a successful mobile standard would ensure that museum content will outlive any particular technology we use today.

The TourML (tûrmoil) specification (http://wiki.museummobile.info/museums-to-go/products-services/tourml) offers a working – but preliminary – example of how such a standard might work. In order to develop a community consensus and to encourage support by commercial vendors, two collaborative mobile summits were held in the fall of 2010. The first occurred in London following the Tate Handheld conference in September (http://wiki.museummobile.info/archives/11005), and a second in Austin, TX during the Museum Computer Network conference in October (http://wiki.museummobile.info/archives/19948). In both meetings a diverse set of participants were gathered including museum professionals, vendors, and academics to review and collaborate together on a set of common semantics and structured descriptions used to author a specification for mobile experiences.

In this Mini-Workshop, the facilitators will review the current state of the TourML draft standard and host a discussion regarding outstanding issues for data modeling and implementation including, but not limited to:

Linking to object collections using existing metadata standards
Ways to use the TourML schema to encode and represent a variety of common tour elements
Design discussions regarding the XMLSchema definitions of the TourML specification
Validation methods for ensuring that instances of a tour are compliant to the standard
Possibilities for integrating mobile tours with mobile web CMS’s

Type:

Mini-Workshop - teaches something or explores approaches

Mini-Workshop on TourML

Site:

http://wiki.museummobile.info/standards

Authors:

Robert Stein

Nancy Proctor

Recollection: Building Communities for Distributed Curation and Data Sharing

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:55 +0000

Miller, E., & Wood D. (2010). Recollection: Building Communities for Distributed Curation and Data Sharing. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy: What it is, how we made it, and why it makes a difference

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:55 +0000

Edson, M. (2010). Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy: What it is, how we made it, and why it makes a difference. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.

Open Source Collaboration: New Models for Technology Development in the Museum Community

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:53 +0000

Wilde, E., & Mann L. (2010). Open Source Collaboration: New Models for Technology Development in the Museum Community. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.

New Technology in the Museum: a case study of three museums in the Fluid community working together

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:51 +0000

Treviranus, J., Czajkowski J., & Mitchell J. (2010). New Technology in the Museum: a case study of three museums in the Fluid community working together. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.

Cosmic Collections: creating a big bang

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:45 +0000

Ridge, M. (2010). Cosmic Collections: creating a big bang. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.

Building an online research community: The Reciprocal Research Network

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:41 +0000

Rowley, S., Sparrow L., Schaepe D., Sanborn A., Wallace R., Jakobsen N., et al. (2010). Building an online research community: The Reciprocal Research Network. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.