museumsandtheweb.com - flickr

Archiving Flickr and Other Websites of Interest to Museums

ryand — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:32:39 +0000

MW2012

Ryan Donahue, George Eastman House and Aaron Straup Cope, General layabout / SBHS

Abstract

Program Item Reference:

Preserving Flickr and Other Sites of Interest to Museums

Mopa Tour and New Media Briefing

Rich Cherry — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 04:58:12 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

tour

Keywords:

photography

Keywords:

flickr

Keywords:

commons

Abstract:

MOPA

Founded in 1983, the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) is a center for visual learning, passionately dedicated to sharing and exploring the universal language of photography. MOPA was one of the first museum facilities in the United States exclusively designed to collect and present the finest examples of photographic art, spanning the history of photography from the 19th century to the present day.

During the tour, you will have an opportunity to:

Tour MOPA’s Dubois Library, which holds more than 20,000 items, ranging from monographs to magazines, encyclopedias to exhibition catalogs. Make sure to check out the special collections room.
Explore areas of the Museum closed to the public with a special behind-the-scenes look at MOPA’s art storage and handling areas.
Learn about MOPA’s initiatives to integrate new technology into the gallery experience, including the digitization of the permanent collection and interactive features to engage and excite visitors of all ages.

Type:

Other Interaction - describe in notes

Tour 1: Balboa Park Museums

Site:

http://www.mopa.org

Authors:

Vivian Kung Haga

Preserving Flickr and Other Sites of Interest to Museums

ryand — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:10:00 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

Archiving Flickr and Other Websites of Interest to Museums

Keywords:

flickr

Keywords:

digital preservation

Keywords:

preservation

Keywords:

museums

Keywords:

internet

Keywords:

website

Abstract:

The digital turn, whether it be in photography, motion pictures, literature or other persuits, has forever changed the ways and means by which museums collect, interpret and dessiminate objects. Historically, museums have dealt primarily with objects that, in some way, are intuitiviely graspable from observation. Arrowheads are pointy, photographs are plainly seen, and writing read (with varying degrees of difficulty).
Digital information, on the other hand, is many times more difficult to intuitively grasp, and in many cases impossible to intuitively grasp. This has lead to a shifting approach in collection management: collect materials before they are scattered to the hard drives and floppy discs of history. With such a shift in approach, museums must become adept at preserving digital objects and ephemera in their original context, in many cases, a website. We examine one site of particular interest and complexity: Flickr.
Preserving Flickr has long been a popular subject of conversation among Flickr staff, alumni, and the museum community. Various tools and first steps have been taken, but no one to date has addressed the seemingly impossible task of preservation.
The authors of this paper are very familiar with its subject. Aaron Straup Cope is a Flickr alumni, and Ryan Donahue is the Manager of Information Systems at George Eastman House, an early partner institution of the Flickr Commons. Through our own knowledge and consultation with museum professionals, we shall address:

* The expectations of the community, that is to say, our assertions about the quality and characteristics of the information that is needed for preservation, which data is nice to have, and what is unlikely to be particularly important in the future, or even confusing.
* The state of Flickr today: What preservation mechanisms exist, the availability of programatic access to data via the Flickr API, and any ancillary issues pertaining to Flickr as it is today.
* Technical specifications of preserving Flickr: storage size, medium, formats, etc. and the rough costs of archiving when leveraging advances in archival storage, such as in-line block-level de-duplication, embedded metadata and non-relational data stores.
* Formulate a strategy for preservation that may be applied to other such sites of interest, integrating the foundational work of the OAIS model.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Megadata

Authors:

Ryan Donahue

Aaron Cope

Reprogramming The Museum

luke.dearnley — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:32:16 +0000

MW2011

Luke Dearnley, Powerhouse Museum, Australia

Abstract

This paper looks at how the Powerhouse Museum's collection data API launched in 2010 quantitatively and qualitatively improves upon the access provided by the download dataset previously offered, as well as how the tracking methods were built into the API to ensure that the project is best able to adapt to the user needs of API developers. It provides details on the lessons learned and suggests best practices for API development in the cultural sector.

Keywords: Web 2.0, API, collection access, Flickr, semantic web, Creative Commons

Program Item Reference:

Reprogamming the Museum

Rethinking Evaluation Metrics in Light of Flickr Commons

jdalton — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:15:07 +0000

MW2011

Paula Bray, and Sebastian Chan, Powerhouse Museum, Australi; Joseph Dalton, New York Public Library, USA; Dianne Dietrich, Cornell University Library, USA; Effie Kapsalis, Smithsonian Institution Archives, USA; Michelle Springer and Helena Zinkham, Library of Congress, USA

Abstract

In the past several years, cultural heritage institutions, including archives, libraries, and museums, have been placing their collections in Web spaces designed for collaboration and communication. Flickr Commons is one example of a highly visible space where cultural heritage institutions have partnered with a popular social networking site to provide greater discovery to, access of, and opportunities to interact with image collections on a large scale. It is important to understand how to measure the impact of these kinds of projects. Traditional metrics, including visit counts, tell only part of the story: much more nuanced information is often found in comments, notes, tags, and other information contributed by the user community. This paper will examine how several institutions on Flickr Commons - the Library of Congress, the Powerhouse Museum, the Smithsonian, New York Public Library, and Cornell University Library - are navigating the concept of evaluation in an emerging arena where compelling statistics are often qualitative, difficult to gather, and ever-changing.

Keywords: Flickr, metrics, evaluation, crowdsourcing, statistics, images

Program Item Reference:

Rethinking Evaluation Metrics in Light of Flickr Commons

Professional Forum on Rethinking Evaluation Metrics

dbear — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:32:40 +0000

Type:

Session

Programs:

Rethinking Evaluation Metrics in Light of Flickr Commons

Date & Time:

April 8, 2011 - 11:00am - 12:00pm

Location:

Congress

metrics

measurement

use

flickr

evaluation

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

What are we measuring when we measure traffic on our Web site and how does it relate to our visibility on the Web? When we seek broad exposure on a range of social sites, and achieve it, how does it effect our data about use? Why are we measuring anyway, and what ought we be trying to learn?

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

Rethinking Evaluation Metrics in Light of Flickr Commons

dd388 — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:16:59 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Rethinking Evaluation Metrics in Light of Flickr Commons

Keywords:

flickr

Keywords:

digital images

Keywords:

statistics

Keywords:

evaluation

Keywords:

outreach

Keywords:

online image collections

Abstract:

Flickr Commons launched in 2008 as a platform for enhancing the discoverability of cultural heritage collections and for allowing users to tag, annotate, and repurpose these materials. The Commons now boasts 46 members and tens of thousands of public domain images. The impact of the project has been monumental. Many of the institutions involved can boast hit counts on their Flickr images that far exceed other digital collections. While many of the numbers are certainly impressive, it can be argued that they are one of the least compelling statistics.

What, then, are the most meaningful statistics for a project that puts library collections in a highly visible space outside the library's traditional confines? Some of our standard and more established metrics, such as hit counts, only illuminate a small part of the story – the bigger picture includes the myriad ways users have interacted with our images, by adding notes and comments, by including them in their own curated galleries, by tweeting them, and referencing them on their blogs. There are limitless possibilities for users to interact with digital materials and we should be developing metrics that reflect this landscape. This forum will examine multiple approaches to assessing the impact of a digital library collection that exists beyond an institution's borders.

Type:

Professional Forum - discuss an issue

Professional Forum on Rethinking Evaluation Metrics

Authors:

Dianne Dietrich

Joseph Dalton

Effie Kapsalis

Sebastian Chan

Michelle Springer

Helena Zinkham

Paula Bray