museumsandtheweb.com - online

Building an Online Commons for Balboa Park

christinad — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 01:09:15 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

Building an Online Commons for the Park

Keywords:

collections

Keywords:

online

Keywords:

cultural

Keywords:

heritage

Keywords:

open APIs

Abstract:

The Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) is currently building the Balboa Park Commons, a site that will bring together digitized collections content from 26 museums and cultural institutions into a rich online resource at balboapark.org. Balboa Park is a 1,200-acre park in the heart of the city of San Diego and its 85 cultural and recreational organizations attract more than 10 million visitors per year. The park museums participating in the Commons project include The San Diego Museum of Art, The San Diego Air and Space Museum, The San Diego Natural History Museum, the Museum of Photographic Arts, and the San Diego History Center, to name just a few.

The key goals of the Commons project are to 1.) increase the visibility of the museums’ content by providing the public with unprecedented access to rare and unique collections from the Balboa Park museums 2.) design a tool-set that meets the needs of San Diego educators and students, and 3.) attract new, more diverse audiences by including social software tools that allow visitors to create their own stories and discover interesting and fun connections across the collections.

In this mini-workshop, we will highlight the technical and non-technical aspects of developing an online digital commons that engages audiences in the creative use of cultural heritage materials. The workshop will review the process of designing a user-centered website based on community workshops and an extensive wireframe process; development of tool sets based on a PHP platform, using a digital asset management system and APIs; and the approach and issues related to creating a new model for getting large data-sets and aggregated collection content online. With each aspect of the project, we’ll discuss how we’re using funding and available museum resources in cost-efficient ways.

This mini-workshop is designed for museum professionals interested in large-scale online collection projects, new models for collaboration and new models for collection access and engagement.

Type:

Mini-Workshop - teaches something or explores approaches

Mini-Workshop on Building an Online Commons for Balboa Park

Site:

http://www.balboapark.org

Authors:

Christina DePaolo

Erick Kendrick

Christopher Borkowski

Abe Serrano

The Transition to Online Scholarly Catalogues

nhoneysett — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:34:37 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

The Transition to Online Scholarly Catalogues

Keywords:

online

Keywords:

research

Keywords:

publication

Keywords:

digital

Keywords:

Catalogue

Keywords:

Abstract:

The scholarly catalogue has long been a critical part of a museum's mission, providing authoritative information about collection objects for scholars, students, and the general public. Often based on years of painstaking research and richly illustrated, print catalogues form one of the building blocks of art history. The catalogue's print form, however, is arguably the very component that prevents it from realizing even greater potential. High cost and relatively small print runs limit its accessibility, and printed books cannot easily change to reflect new acquisitions or new scholarly knowledge. While the online environment holds much promise for making collection catalogues more current, interactive, and widely available, museums still face significant financial and organizational challenges in making the transition online.

Funded by the Getty Foundation, this five-year initiative aims to explore the potential for scholarly collection catalogues in an online environment, determine the institutional resources needed, and support the creation of replicable models. Specifically, whether the online delivery of scholarly catalogues can:

Offer a more dynamic relationship between a catalogue's research, publication, and re-publication phases;
Directly link a wide array of primary and secondary resources to the record of a work of art, resources ranging from archival and conservation documentation to audio and video interviews;
Make greater use of comparative images, including the ability to zoom in on details or present three-dimensional views of sculptural objects.

Eight museums have received support: SFMOMA, AIC, Seattle Art Museum, the Tate, the Walker, LACMA, the Smithsonian, and the National Gallery and are now entering the implementation phase. A selection of institutions will present their findings and approaches to these challenging questions.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

e-Books and Museum Publishing

Site:

http://www.getty.edu/foundation/funding/access/current/online_cataloging.html

Authors:

Nik Honeysett

It's So Hard When Contemplated In Advance And So Easy When You Do It

biblio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:50 +0000

Feld, B. (2010). It's So Hard When Contemplated In Advance And So Easy When You Do It. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web.