museumsandtheweb.com - social media

Learning to Let Go: Changing Patterns of Participation and Learning through the Digital Collections of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS)

michela clari — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 03:32:50 +0000

MW2012

Michela Clari, University of Edinburgh, UK

Philip Graham, RCAHMS, UK

http://www.rcahms.gov.uk

Program Item Reference:

Learning to Let Go: Changing Patterns of Participation and Learning through the Digital Collections of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS)

ArtClix Mobile App at the High Museum of Art

NicoleCromartie — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 03:29:34 +0000

MW2012

Nicole Cromartie, High Museum of Art, USA

Abstract

Program Item Reference:

ArtClix Mobile App at the High Museum of Art

Digital Media In Everyday Life: A Snapshot of Devices, Behaviors, and Attitudes Part 1: Mobile Device Ownership

sbeasley — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 03:03:57 +0000

MW2012

Steven Beasley and Annie Conway, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, USA

http://msichicago.org/digitallife

Abstract

Program Item Reference:

A Study of Digital Media, Tools, and Technology Use

Shifting the Limits - How to go beyond one-way guiding in Museums with Fluxguide & "visitor-generated content“ on-the-spot

wrzsef — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:05:32 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

Digital Guide

Keywords:

audio guide

Keywords:

adaptive museum guides

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

participation

Keywords:

technology-based guiding

Abstract:

Technology-based guiding in museums still lags behind its potential. This is not because there are no efforts towards new mobile technology. In contrary, plenty of "iPod touches" and similar devices populate exhibition spaces around the world. But no matter how fancy the used technology may be, one core element is still missing at most visitor-guides: the visitor. According to our view, existing guiding-solutions ultimately still rely on a one-way information flow from exhibitor to visitor. With the Fluxguide-solution we suggest to extend and to multiply that flow of meaning, by taking advantage of recent mobile computer technology and concepts of the Social Web.

Thus, the basic idea behind of the Fluxguide-solution is to introduce Web 2.0 - ideas to the real space of the exhibition, where visitors are able to create & share interpretations. We claim that this could turn the visitor from a passive consumer to a creative designer of meaning in order to actively focus on artworks and exhibits.

We want to discuss three main features of the fluxguide-solution, covered by use-cases from European museums and exhibtion-spaces:

(1) Information

Fluxguides are fully capable art exhibition guides providing visitors with structured multi-medial information about the exhibition, individual artworks, and artists - in complementary formats like audio, text, and video.

(2) Participation & Communication

Fluxguides are also used to text-comment and to rate exhibits during the tour. This motivates visitors to actively focus on artworks, as well as to generate their own thoughts and interpretations. Additional interaction between visitors is stimulated by the possibility to read and reply comments of others. Attending the exhibition then becomes an active, interpretative, and communicative event where visitors do not only receive information, but also create meaning by themselves and share it with others. Fluxguide, for the first time, allows to realize Web 2.0 features „on the spot“ within the real exhibition environment.

(3) Personalization

Fluxguide-users may also add interesting exhibits to their individual digital catalog, which automatically is sent to the visitors via e-mail (or as printed brochure via mail-order). This gives people a totally new way in keeping a permanent & personalized memory of the visit, as well as to share their experiences with others.

(4) Exhibitor feature: Analysis

Fluxguide is fully based on web-technology and equipped with an analysis tool which gives unprecedented insights in visitor behavior, e.g. to track popularity & ratings of exhibits.

To summarize: a fluxguide-environment unveils a flow of meaning not only from exhibitor to visitor (information), but also between visitors (participation), as well as beyond the visit itself (personalization).

The discussion will also adress some general and critical questions: is there a new paradigm of technology-based-guiding arising? What are the implications of letting visitors generate and share content on-the-spot? Which new roles & responsibilites emerge, when the museum looses its monopoly on in-house information creation & communication?

The discussion will end with an overview of future projects and extended possiblities of visitor-participation.

Type:

Exhibitor Briefing - discuss your product. Confirmed Exhibitors only

Shifting the Limits - How to go beyond one-way guiding in Museums with Fluxguide & „visitor-generated content“ on-the-spot

Site:

http://www.fluxguide.com

Authors:

Kasra Seirafi

Andre Seirafi

Your Photo Here: An Online Contest Solution

MDougherty — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:25:28 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

contests

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

user-generated content

Keywords:

audience participation

Keywords:

Digital participation

Abstract:

For several years, the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) has experimented with using contests to interact with visitors, encourage creativity, and expand awareness about special exhibitions and collections.These contests were typically done with private judging because there were not any easy, inexpensive means of launching online contests with public voting.

Recognizing the potential for reaching even larger audiences through contests with public voting, MOPA joined with the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) to develop an open source online contest solution with funding from the IMLS Sparks! competition. Developed as a Drupal module and as a packaged product for non-Drupal sites, the software enables user submission of photos, videos, and/or narratives; procedures for approving and publishing content; and voting restriction tools.

During the demonstration session, BPOC staff will review the technical aspects of setting up and managing an online contest using the new software. MOPA staff will discuss ways the museum has incorporated online contests into broader education and marketing initiatives to increase visitors (both online and at the museum), integrate non-expert viewpoints into exhibitions, and improve its understanding of visitor interests.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

MW2012 Demonstrations III

Site:

http://www.mopa.org

Authors:

Maren Dougherty

Bill Bostick

Vivian Kung Haga

Joaquin Ortiz

ArtClix Mobile App at the High Museum of Art

NicoleCromartie — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:26:24 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

ArtClix Mobile App at the High Museum of Art

Keywords:

Mobile App

Keywords:

High Museum of Art

Keywords:

Second Story

Keywords:

ArtClix

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

Visual Recognition

Abstract:

Julia Forbes (Head of Museum Interpretation) and Nicole Cromartie (Coordinator of Interpretation) will present ArtClix, the High Museum of Art's mobile app. Developed in collaboration with Second Story from Portland, OR for the Picasso to Warhol exhibition, ArtClix incorporates social media, community conversation, and visual recognition.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

MW2012 Demonstrations II

Site:

http://www.high.org/moma.aspx#/Picasso-to-Warhol/artclix

Authors:

Nicole Cromartie

Julia Forbes

What do we really know about social media in museums?

danaallengreil — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:32:10 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

twitter

Keywords:

Facebook

Keywords:

metrics

Keywords:

best practices

Keywords:

evaluation

Abstract:

With years of collective experience in social media engagement, many museums are stopping to ask themselves: what have we really learned about the audiences we are connecting with? Have we formed more meaningful relationships with our community and in the process, are we better serving the missions of our institutions? Could the future of our digital outreach be primarily based on social engagement and if so, are our organizations adapting rapidly enough to be prepared for this social future? Are our current social media practices engaging online communities to their greatest potential, or are we missing out on crowdsourcing, collaboratively learning, or other as-yet undiscovered social experiences? How can we better evaluate the success of our efforts and take our social media engagement to the next level?

This extended professional forum will use a range of social media platforms to engage museum professionals attending Museums and the Web and beyond in this discussion. This social media event component will begin before the meeting in San Diego 11-14 April using a wiki and other social media platforms, and the conversation about what we really know about social media, museum content, and cultural institution audiences will surely continue long afterwards as well. The aim is to engage fellow practitioners in defining the myths and assumptions we most want to “bust,” and to gather data in order to formulate testable hypotheses for this provocative discussion, culminating in a special professional forum at the MW2012 conference.

Type:

Professional Forum - discuss an issue

Professional Forum on "What do we really know about social media in museums?"

Site:

http://si.edu/Connect

Authors:

Elissa Frankle

Georgina Goodlander

Victoria Portway

Jeff Gates

Darren Milligan

Brian Alpert

Erin Marie Blasco

Sarah Banks

David Klevan

Amelia Wong

Museums in perspective: share and discuss daily data about museums and their audiences.

rui — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:28:14 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

evaluation

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

analytics

Keywords:

participation

Keywords:

engagement

Keywords:

community

Keywords:

strategy

Abstract:

It is common practice among museums to publish quarterly or annual reports that include the museum attendance figures, online visits and more recently information about their social network activities. These figures are generally accepted as indicators of the effectiveness of museums activities both online and offline. While this information can give some hints about how organizations have evolved throughout the years, it is often hard to understand what these values mean without contextualizing them with information from other organizations. For example, what does it mean to have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter? Do the changes on annual attendance numbers reflect a global trend or a new local policy? Some of these questions can be better understood once figures from different cultural organizations are analyzed comparatively.

This paper introduces an online tool that collects information about more than 3000 museums and galleries. The published information includes annual attendance numbers, exhibition attendance numbers, online visits, as well as information about popularity and engagement on social networks. The information that is automatically collected or contributed by organizations can be visualized as interactive graphs and displayed comparatively with information from other organizations. The online tool introduced in this paper is accompanied by an online platform where museum professionals can discuss topics related to the published information, such as, issues and limitations of comparative studies and adequate online and offline strategies.

The information that is now being collected on a daily basis has been previously published in a scattered manner for several years. The Art Newspaper yearly publishes the attendance numbers of the most visited museums and exhibitions world wide. More recently Culture24 has published a report that analyses both website visitors and social network in terms of popularity and engagement of several organizations. Sean Redmond has created an automated data collection tool that daily reports the popularity on Facebook and Twitter of thousands of museums and galleries. At the Walker Art Center a tool has been developed that automatically aggregates and shares information from google analytics of several museums. These initiatives were important precedents that led to the development of an online tool where all this information is cohesively presented and contextualized.

Rather than just introducing an online tool, this paper also presents new insights encountered while developing the tool and comparing data. By listening to the communication channels of more than 3000 museums and galleries, it is possible to infer information specific to the sector. For example, it is possible to answer questions such as: what are the current trends in the sector being discussed on twitter? Which content published by a museum has been most shared online? We hope that by answering these and other questions, organizations will be able to understand better their online and offline presence and finally be able to concentrate on their specific goals rather than on numbers.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Case studies in reading web metrics

Site:

http://www.museum-analytics.org/

Authors:

Rui Guerra

Learning to Let Go: Changing Patterns of Participation and Learning through the Digital Collections of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS)

michela clari — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:06:12 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

Learning to Let Go: Changing Patterns of Participation and Learning through the Digital Collections of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS)

Keywords:

RCAHMS

Keywords:

digital archives

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

Canmore

Keywords:

Flickr Commons

Keywords:

Scotland

Abstract:

For over 100 years RCAHMS has been charged with recording, interpreting and sharing information on the built heritage of Scotland. In recent years the institution has been involved in a number of online initiatives, both independently and in partnership with other organizations.

This paper reports on findings from doctoral research conducted between 2008 and 2012 at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Education, in partnership with RCAHMS, which investigated the institution’s approach to digital innovation and online practices. The paper also offers an institutional perspective on how the research has fed into RCAHMS’ digital strategy, and reports on recent online initiatives which embody the institution’s vision.

The collaborative research project involved an ethnographic study of RCAHMS and a virtual ethnography of its digital archive Canmore, re-launched in 2009 with enhanced user functionalities. These include the ability for the public to contribute original material in the form of images, data and comments; public engagement with the archive is further supported through a link with the photo-managing site Flickr, where user-contributed photographs are stored.

The paper examines different types of user contributions to Canmore in the first year since its launch, and reflects on participation patterns, which are also contrasted with experiences on The Commons on Flickr, another important example of collaboration between heritage institutions and the successful social media site. Different models of online engagement with cultural heritage content are then discussed involving, respectively, granting access to public collections on institutional websites versus allowing the release of material onto mature social media sites. Implications of the different approaches are examined in terms of institutional practice, users and content, in relation to RCAHMS and cultural heritage practice more widely.

From RCAHMS’ perspective, the paper reports on how participation in the research project offered the opportunity to focus attention on digital innovation at various levels within the institution, and how follow-up AHRC Beyond Text funding secured the scoping and implementation of further online developments consistent with RCAHMS’ new strategic vision.Two current projects in particular embody such vision: Scotland’s Places, in which RCAHMS is working with the National Records of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland to create an expanding online ‘Heritage Hub’; and the collaborative project Britain from Above, with English Heritage and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, in which social media will be demonstrated as being an integral part of future online strategies.

The paper concludes with a mention of Digital Futures of Cultural Heritage Education, a recent project funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, through which RCAHMS and the University of Edinburgh, in partnership with the National Galleries of Scotland and National Museums Scotland, set out to create a forum to share expertise, encourage collaboration and set a common research agenda for digital innovation in the Scottish cultural heritage sector.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Case studies in reading web metrics

Site:

http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/

Authors:

michela clari

Philip Graham

MEMA : using tags, posts, and tweets to help users build a personal narrative of the Teeny Harris Exhibition

yiling — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:23:44 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

cultural heritage

Keywords:

narrative

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

microblog

Abstract:

Museum visitors have different perspectives and interests based on how they relate their personal experiences and knowledge to the objects on display in the museum. Many museums and cultural institutions would like to collect these perspectives to complement and augment the content of the museum’s official interpretation. With the temporal and spatial constraints of a user’s visit to a museum exhibition, it has been difficult to collect as much information as the museum would like to obtain from visitors. The emergence of the Social Web has inspired a number of museums to extend the experience of their exhibits by using social features to engage users to contribute opinions and feedback about their museum experience. However, current usage of social technologies focus mostly on the information flow from museums to visitors by the use of blogs and other social media in order to increase the visitors’ awareness of museums’ events and collections.

Although a fraction of existing projects attempt to engage online users as contributors, most often the opportunities to contribute are limited to simple commenting, tagging and microblogging artifacts because of their appealing immediacy and portability. They allow users to publish small elements of content and instantaneously broadcast them to other users of the service. The content produced through those fast feedback mechanisms has been analyzed from many directions. Those studies clearly indicate that those short messages from commenting, tagging, and microbloging not only reflect individual and collective responses in real time but also can capture profound and personal meaning for the contributor. As a result, the short messages might be important components as base for composing personal narratives for a specific object or exhibition.

MEMA (Museum Exhibition MAnagement) is a personalized and interactive community-oriented system with mobile and Web features. MEMA supports a rich feature set that facilitates the sharing of users’ feeling/opinions of the exhibition experience through their mobile devices and further helps the creation of users’ personal narratives with tags, posts, tweets, and other microblogging artifacts. MEMA is built upon a collection with approximately 80,000 photographs by Charles "Teenie" Harris, a photographer for an influential local newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier.

This paper focuses on providing a convenient way for users to share information and to use short messages from potential microblogging technologies to increase the chances of getting users to contribute their own narratives. The paper explores a solution for achieving the goal of gathering users’ personal narratives and experiences by collecting their short messages from diverse social media including Twitter and Facebook through mobile devices In this study, we are conducting an empirical experiment starting on October 29th, coinciding with the opening of the exhibition “Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story”. Actual visitors to the exhibition will be our subjects. All of their activities will be recorded in our session logs. We expect to see that the proposed solution could assist narrative creating in terms of convenience and efficiency.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

MW2012 Demonstrations I

Site:

http://jade.exp.sis.pitt.edu/mema/

Authors:

Yi-Ling Lin

William Real

Xiaoning Bai

Yuanyuan Ye

chenxi zhao

Creating Your Social Media Strategy: A Workshop

jeffdtaylor — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:11:17 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

Arts Marketing

Keywords:

Communications Strategy

Abstract:

As cultural consumers spend more time on social media platforms, thorough and thoughtful institution-specific social media strategies have become a communications necessity. This workshop is designed to guide participants in developing actionable social media strategies for their respective organizations, building from industry case studies, peer best practices, and audience research. Featuring a mix of brief, informative presentations on social media trends and applications, as well as dynamic small-group roundtables, the workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to learn from industry professionals as well as from the collective experiences of peers.

We will kick off the workshop with a scan of recent audience and new media research that examines how culture-seeking audiences utilize social media in their everyday lives, spotlighting their expectations and desires for how such online interactions can enhance their connection to arts organizations. Drawing on the key takeaways of this research presentation, we will lead a set of small group discussions during which each of the workshop instructors will share a series of nuts-and-bolts steps for social media implementation applicable to museums and institutions of all sizes. We will also discuss the ways in which different demographic segments utilize social media, and where differences between these segments are breaking down, so that each participant is armed with the necessary information to activate affinity activities at their respective institutions.

Workshop participants will then reconvene for a presentation of best practice case studies from cultural institutions across the country and around the globe that offer inspiration and new ideas about developing greater connectivity and synergy in online communities, as well as outline some of the objectives of institutional online strategies. We will include an in-depth look at some of the Guggenheim's social media-based projects and strategies.

We will then break into small, moderated groups one last time to discuss the case studies and participants will have the opportunity to share other social media examples they find compelling and effective. The session will conclude with a review of the social media planning worksheets and guidance for the participants on how to activate and/or expand their institution’s social media strategies, including where to focus resources, which platforms to use, how to fund a social media campaign, and how to build institutional buy-in.

Type:

Workshop - full or half day

Creating Your Social Media Strategy: A Workshop

Authors:

Jeff Taylor

JiaJia Fei

Lindsay Martin

State-of-the-Art: German Museums on the Social Web – Benefits and Effects of Social Media for Museum Education and Learning

biancabocatius — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:03:19 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

State-of-the-Art: German Museums on the Social Web. Benefits and Effects of Social Media for Museum Education and Learning

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

participation

Keywords:

visitor experience

Keywords:

social web

Keywords:

social software

Keywords:

museum education research

Keywords:

learning experiences

Abstract:

This demonstration will focus on the questions “What kind of Social Media and Social Software have already been used for Museum Education Services on-line?” and “How do German Museums use the Social Web to enhance their Museum Education Services?”

In Europe museums are places of education and learning (e.g. DEUTSCHER MUSEUMSBUND (Ed.), 2009). Participation, visitor engagement, self-organized and collaborative learning represent keywords mentioned in relation to museum education. Social Media include specific characteristics that can help to guarantee different kinds of participatory learning opportunities to make museum learning self-organized, engaging and community-friendly.

On-line learning is still an exception in the German Museum World, and therefore the gap between the presentation of general information like address and phone number and an educational service using Social Media to engage audiences is still large (INSTITUT FÜR MUSEUMSFORSCHUNG (Ed.), 2008, WWW, 55).[1] The Internet is basically used for public relations (PÖRSCHMANN, 2003, WWW, 1) and Social Media are mostly utilized for marketing reasons, i.e. posting general information concerning events and other press releases to advertise activities of the real museum’s site.

German examples for Museum Education Services on the Internet and the use of Social Media will show the state-of-the-art of on-line education and learning within the German museum field. The Weimarpedia project wiki and the Fundgeschichten blog of the LWL-Museum for Archeology Herne will demonstrate how Social Media is used for blended learning projects to:

guarantee public access to cultural heritage
offer participatory opportunities to contextualized artworks
communicate and activate dialogues
enable user-generated-content

Reference list

DEUTSCHER MUSEUMSBUND (Ed.) (2009). Museumskunde - Museen in der Informationsgesellschaft, Bd. 73 2/08, Berlin: G+H Verlag.
INSTITUT FÜR MUSEUMSFORSCHUNG (Ed.). (2008). Statistische Gesamterhebung an den Museen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für das Jahr 2007, 62, Berlin.
PÖRSCHMANN, D. (2003). Von Piranesi bis Picasso. Die Kunstausstellung im Internet als Instrument der Vermittlung. In electronic conference proceedings „museums and the internet“. Accessed on 24th September 2011 at Internet URL http://www.mai-tagung.de/maitagung+2003/poerschmann.pdf.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

MW2012 Demonstrations III

Authors:

Bianca Bocatius

The Use of Social Media in the Danish Museum Landscape

nholdgaard — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:28:00 +0000

MW2011

Nanna Holdgaard, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

This paper examines Danish museums' use of social media on their own websites and on external sites like Facebook. The paper takes its point of departure in a study of the Danish online museum presence through an analysis of the museums' websites and presence at social media sites. The results of exploring 123 Danish museum websites and social media presences show that half of the Danish museums use social media - art museums being the most active among the Danish museums. Despite the fact that half of the Danish museums are on Facebook and write blogs, the majority of museums on a general level communicate with a low degree of user interaction, participation and engagement. The paper concludes that Danish museums in general use social media in order to attract more visitors to the physical museums.

Keywords: museum, online presence, social media, Facebook, Denmark

Program Item Reference:

Online Presence and the Act of Not Just Being There. The Use of Social Media by Danish Museums

Exploring Heritage in Participatory Culture: The MuseumApp

Dickvandijk — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:24:36 +0000

MW2011

Dick van Dijk, Waag Society, The Netherlands

http://www.waag.org

Abstract

The development of the MuseumApp in so-called 'Locative Labs' – a short, repetitive, interdisciplinary and intense collaboration, 2 days per week, for 6 weeks – took place in a unique meeting of curators, media professionals, concept developers and technical colleagues in the Amsterdam Museum and Waag Society. The joint development is based on experiment: rapid prototyping and testing of city tours; and on the spot content development. The Lab setting is one of the methods used by Waag Society to do creative research: explore interaction principles and demo innovative solutions in a real setting, with real stakeholders and real users.

The MuseumApp is a first step in creating a GPS-based, location aware heritage platform on which museums can create their own multimedia city tours and location-based games: connecting history and current events to locations in the city in an interactive and fun way, allowing the users to be the curators of their own experiences. They can also publish their own images, comments or suggestions related to the tour to other audiences on other (social) platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.

In the Labs the partners explore novel media practices as a new way to engage audiences with heritage. Connecting it to personal accounts and social network communities might help in getting more, new, different audiences meaningfully involved.

Keywords: locative media, social media, creative research, user experience, narrative

Program Item Reference:

The Amsterdam Museum App – exploring heritage in participatory culture

Tag! You're It! What Value Do Folksonomies Bring To The Online Museum Collection?

Susan Cairns — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:02:54 +0000

MW2011

Susan Cairns, The University of Newcastle, Australia

Abstract

As growing numbers of museums invite users to digitally tag online collection objects with key words, it is timely to examine the value that this practice can bring to the sector. These tags in their aggregate are known as ëfolksonomiesí and are broad user-derived classifications that are, at their heart, a form of communication (Huang & Chuang, 2009). As a collaborative process with no hierarchical structure (Cameron & Mengler, 2009), folksonomies stand in opposition to traditional museum taxonomies, and present museums with new opportunities for gaining insight into, and interacting with, audiences. Further, through recording evolving language and tag behaviour, folksonomies have the potential to become autonomously important to the museum in its study of people and written historical documentation. This conceptual paper will present an exploratory examination of the value that folksonomies provide to the museum and gallery sector in the digital age. It will demonstrate that incorporating folksonomies with traditional taxonomic museum classification systems provides the museum with an important new way through which to maintain and grow its relevance in the digital age.

Keywords: folksonomies, museum documentation, social media, tagging, taxonomy

Program Item Reference:

Tag! You’re It! What value do folksonomies bring to the online museum collection?

Audience+: A Holistic Approach to Developing Social Media Guidelines for Swiss Museums

Axel Vogelsang — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:37:52 +0000

MW2011

Axel Vogelsang and Bettina Minder, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, School of Art and Design, Switzerland

http://www.blog.hslu.ch/audienceplus

Abstract

The project ‘Audience+, Museums and the Participative Web’ investigates the challenges and opportunities for museums in the German-speaking part of Switzerland with regards to the use of digital social media. It is supported by the Organisation of Swiss museums and aims at developing best practice guidelines for Swiss museums. The guideline not only seeks to give hands-on guidance for the first steps but it also explains how social media can work beyond the role of mere marketing tool, opening up opportunities for a broader user experience. The data, information and insights supporting the research were generated through a diversity of methods, including a survey amongst Swiss museums, a series of workshops, and an extensive use of social media as part of the research process.

Keywords: Audience+, digital social media, user experience, social media, Switzerland

Program Item Reference:

Audience+: A holistic approach to developing social media guidelines for Swiss Museums.

Grounding Digital Information Trends

dbear — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 22:11:01 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

mobiles

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

internet applications - statistics

Keywords:

usage data

Keywords:

technology impact

Keywords:

museum impact

Keywords:

research

Keywords:

augmented reality

Keywords:

Pew Internet and American Life

Abstract:

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project provides data on the rise of mobile internet, the increasing popularity of handheld devices such as cell phones, tablet computers and e-readers, the emergence of social media, and the move towards augmented realities that can help us identify how those trends are shaping the way content-oriented organizations like museums interact with their audiences now and will need to interact in the future. Because these technologies, and others, are revolutionizing how audiences consume information, and are reshaping the public’s expectations about information access and immersion, concrete knowledge of their penetration and the speed at which they are being adopted is crucial to shaping responsible institutional responses.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Opening Plenary

Site:

http://pewinternet.org

Authors:

Kristen Purcell

More than the sum of its parts: pulling together user involvement in a museum website

biblio — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:34:53 +0000

Durbin, G. (2010). More than the sum of its parts: pulling together user involvement in a museum website. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2010. Proceedings.

The CollectionWeb Digital Ecosystems: A Semantic Web and Web 2.0 Framework for generating Museum Web sites

biblio — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:34:50 +0000

Eklund, P., Lawson A., Goodall P., Hijazi F., & Wray T. (2010). The CollectionWeb Digital Ecosystems: A Semantic Web and Web 2.0 Framework for generating Museum Web sites. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2010. Proceedings.

The NASA Night Sky Network & Its Benefit to Museums

j santascoy — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:02:01 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

The NASA Night Sky Network and Its Benefit to Museums

Keywords:

outreach

Keywords:

Volunteers

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

iPhone apps

Keywords:

online communities

Abstract:

In this presentation, we introduce factors that help shape a model predicting individuals’ engagement in outreach activities and the extent to which web-based tools support those outreach activities. The NASA Night Sky Network (NSN) may serve as an example for the museum community to create an online hub for exhibits and programs, as well as help museum workers understand individuals' motivation for outreach, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful recruitment and retention of volunteers.

The NASA Night Sky Network is a nationwide community supporting over 350 amateur astronomy clubs who conduct educational outreach across the U.S.A. at museums, science centers, parks, and on urban sidewalks. An example of how NSN clubs help museums is when the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers, a NSN club, set up telescopes outside of the museum for hundreds of visitors to view the moon and planets, enhancing the De Young Museum's public program called Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Bay.

One NSN objective is to serve the clubs’ outreach needs by providing web-based tools to reduce clubs' efforts in publicizing outreach activities. This presentation introduces findings from research conducted by the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) in partnership with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) on clubs’ use of NSN website and services, and potential factors that motivate club members to actively engage in outreach. Telephone interviews with a dozen astronomy club leaders throughout the country in both mid-2010 and late 2010 indicated specific ways in which NSN tools such as a web-based interactive calendar, iPhone application, and widget were being accepted and utilized.

While research is still ongoing, an intended outcome is to introduce factors that help shape a comprehensive model predicting individuals’ engagement in outreach activities and the extent to which web-based tools support those outreach activities. Additionally, NSN may serve as an example for the museum community to create online hubs for exhibits and programs.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations IV

Site:

http://nightskynetwork.org/

Authors:

Jessica Santascoy

Victor Yocco

Berendsen Marni

Kenneth Frank

Vivian White

Japan: Tradition. Innovation - Crowd Sourcing Application

kentran — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:24:07 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

crowdsourcing

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

microsite

Abstract:

We will demonstrate a visually interactive crowd sourcing web application that engage and allow visitors to discover an upcoming exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. This crowd sourcing application uses a mashup of social media content from Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, and the exhibition.

This crowdsourcing application will be online in February 2011.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations II

Site:

http://www.civilization.ca/japan

Authors:

Ken Tran

Helene Nadeau

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

Accelerating in Flight: Access to a Collection via Flickr

alanrenga — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:27:43 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

youtube

Keywords:

digitization

Keywords:

films

Keywords:

digital photos

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

flikr

Keywords:

aviation

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’s museum collections. This demonstration will show how the San Diego Air and Space Museum (SDASM) has successfully digitized and placed on Flickr tens of thousands of images. The SDASM archival team of Alan Renga and Katrina Pescador were able to complete this enormous task 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 40,000 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 (including images which had been digitized during the past decade) from the collection have been posted. As a result, this collection has drawn close to a million and a half visits, eight times the normal traffic to the Museum’s site. The demonstration will include images of the rapid capture station and will show the Flickr site. SDASM staff members will be on hand to talk about planning, results and challenges that were encountered. The SDASM staff will also talk about and demonstrate a similar project they are undertaking involving the digitization of their 16mm films, which are being put on a YouTube nonprofit partnership channel.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Site:

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

Authors:

Alan Renga

Online activities at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthroplogy

dbear — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:29:35 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

Silk Road

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

ipod touch

Keywords:

searchable collections

Abstract:

Attendees will get a chance to tour the landmark traveling exhibition Secrets of the Silk Road. The Digital Media Developers at the Penn Museum will also discuss the challenges and opportunities they faced in developing iPod Touch tours for this exhibition as well as the the development of the website and integration of social media.

Recently, the Penn Museum upgraded their collections database system from Argus to KE-Emu which will soon be searchable online. A representative from the Registrar’s Office will speak about the development of the collections database and building the web component.

Type:

Other Interaction - describe in notes

Tour 2: New Media in Arts and Social Science Museums

Site:

http://penn.museum/

Authors:

Amy Ellsworth

Social Media and Beyond

dbear — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:20:52 +0000

Type:

Session

Chair:

Gail Durbin

Programs:

Audience+: A holistic approach to developing social media guidelines for Swiss Museums.

Online Presence and the Act of Not Just Being There. The Use of Social Media by Danish Museums

Date & Time:

April 7, 2011 - 11:00am - 12:00pm

Location:

Washington

social media

best practices

guidelines

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

Museums have been seeking best practices for social media development. What are they finding?

Social Media Planning - FULL

dbear — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:53:44 +0000

Type:

Workshop

Theme:

morning

Programs:

Creating Your Social Media Strategy: A Workshop

Tech Level:

No specialized technical skills needed

Date & Time:

April 6, 2011 - 9:00am - 12:30pm

Location:

Adams

morning workshop

wednesday

social media

workshop

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 workshop is designed to to help guide participants in developing actionable social media strategies for their respective institutions, building from a range of case studies, peer best practices, and hot-off-the-press audience research. ...

This workshop is now full.

Social Media and Organizational Change

JackLudden — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:35:59 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Social Media and Organizational Change

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

leadership

Keywords:

management

Keywords:

strategy

Keywords:

audience engagement

Keywords:

social media policies

Keywords:

organizational change

Keywords:

organizational structure

Keywords:

social media coordination

Keywords:

managing social media

Abstract:

There has been great attention placed on how to work in the social media space. This includes how to work with social media in order to improve brand recognition, build a fan base, engage visitors, and expand programming. But you cannot accomplish any of this without staff members who understand how social media can be useful to their work and their institution.

There are critical questions concerning how to sustain, organize, and implement social media within an institution. How do we manage the "brand" with so many people creating content, while also being flexible and bringing out the many voices in an institution?

How to manage social media is a question asked by museums of all sizes and types. We will identify trends in the field as well as available resources that can help facilitate best practices for using social media. We will compare different approaches at different types of institutions (large vs. small, history vs. art museums, local vs. international)

The authors of this paper are from various parts of the country, from different type of museums and ranging in size. With our multiple perspectives, we will address:

Internal social media policies and guidelines and how best to introduce and maintain them
How social media can be coordinated. Should you distribute management of social media content across an organization, or should there be one point of contact?
Tactics for educating and training staff about what social media is and how it can further the mission
The new expectations for current staffing positions held within the museum

Promoting a cultural shift that embraces collaborative, agile ways of interacting with our peers and our audiences is critical to our success. We know that different museums have very different attitudes and comfort levels with social media. While risk-taking may not be for every institution, all museums must face the ever-changing world of online engagement. Social media is already altering how museums interact with the public and how museum professionals approach their jobs. This change is fast-paced. It is important that we address it and embrace it as a community.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Organizational Change

Authors:

Dana Allen-Greil

Susan Edwards

Jack Ludden

Eric Johnson

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

Online Presence and the Act of Not Just Being There. The Use of Social Media by Danish Museums

nholdgaard — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:14:00 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

The Use of Social Media in the Danish Museum Landscape

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

Facebook

Keywords:

Museum Websites

Keywords:

Denmark

Keywords:

online presence

Keywords:

survey

Abstract:

Through the last decades, a large amount of different initiatives have been set to explore, innovate and develop the presence of museums online both in an international context and in a Danish setting.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the Danish museums understand and approach online communication with a focus on the use of social media. So far, the empirical based knowledge of how museums' actually act online in terms of social media is very scarce. This study will provide new insights into the field of digital museum communication and point to challenges of the present museum website categories by and ask if we need new categories to describe the museums online presence and communication.

The paper will take its point of departure in an outline of the Danish online museum landscape through an analysis of the museums' online content. This includes the presentation of the results of a content analysis of all the 123 state-owned and state-subsidized museums' websites and a study of the museums' use of social media. The content analysis focuses on the use of images, videos and sound effects or podcasts on the museum websites. The scope is to analyze how the Danish museums present themselves online and to discuss whether or not German media researcher Werner Schweibenz' four museum website categories (brochure, object, learning, and virtual museum) cover the reality of today's online museum communication.

The main part of the paper will, with Facebook as an example, examine the museums' presence on and use of social media platforms, examining different cases of Danish museums' interaction and communication on Facebook. According to Facebook's own statistics, Denmark is one of countries with the highest percentage of users per capita and every second Danish Internet user has a Facebook profile. Hence, the outreach potentials for the Danish museums are presumably high. The initial results of the investigation of the museums' social media use show, that half of all the Danish museums are present on Facebook, typically with a 'like' page, but a marginal number of museums also have a profile or a group. The paper will also use data from interviews with museum professionals and Facebook users and a content analysis of selected museums' Facebook ‘like' pages, profiles, and groups. The final paper will analyze how Facebook as a social network site with its specific design and interface and possibilities of interacting create both great potentials and barriers for when the museums interact and communicate online.

In addition to the above mentioned survey of Danish museums online, this paper will draw on data from my Ph.D. project on Online Museum Communication from a User Perspective and on new and unique data from a national survey of the Danish Museums' Web Users (2010) by The Heritage Agency of Denmark.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Social Media and Beyond

Authors:

Nanna Holdgaard

The Mystery of the “1940s Time Traveller”: The Changing Face of Online Brand Monitoring

david.harkness — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:22:40 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

The Mystery of the "1940s Time Traveller": The Changing Face of Online Brand Monitoring

Keywords:

viral marketing

Keywords:

virtual museum of Canada

Keywords:

CHIN

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

intellectual property

Abstract:

In the spring of 2010, the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC) at the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) witnessed a viral Internet phenomenon. One seemingly innocuous photo from the Bralorne Pioneer Museum in central British Columbia, hosted on our servers in a virtual exhibition exploded online. From one post on Digg.com, the image radiated across the web through personal blogs, popular news sources like Fark.com and Gizmodo.com, and across "traditional” social media networks. International media outlets were requesting information and interviews, and web-savvy entrepreneurs were asking for high resolution copies of the photo hoping to be the first to solve the mystery and capitalize on the image. CHIN’s Business Development and Marketing team followed the story online for months, an exercise which was instrumental in helping the organization develop a more comprehensive and integrated social media strategy beyond traditional channels and social media applications.

While CHIN watched the VMC visitation statistics climb exponentially, at the same time, it also recognized that sometimes what is put online can move out of a museum’s control, and that institutions may be sceptical in their approach to social media. In this case, as our intellectual property moved further out into the Web, the further it became its own brand, removed from both CHIN and the Bralorne Museum. This is particularly poignant in this era where the jury is still out on fair use and the posting of full resolution images online. Any museum would welcome this flood of conversational capital, but to monitor this wave and try to bring it back to the institution’s name can become an unexpected human resource cost and a frustrating exercise. Most importantly, the organization-models of larger institutions often do not allow museums to move at the speed of the conversations around them in social media channels, and keeping up with this minute-by-minute pace can be challenging.

This paper presents the mystery of the "1940s Time Traveller" as a case study in viral phenomena and social media, and their potential implications for and impact on museums and cultural institutions. Should museums remain focused on ownership and copyright, or would their collections and knowledge be put to better and broader use by opening up? It also explores online museum marketing in an era where the phrase "I Can Has Cheezburger?” can launch million dollar online companies, an aftershave ad campaign can crash YouTube, and a photo can propel a small community museum to international recognition.

Le mystère du « Voyageur dans le temps des années 1940 » : Le nouveau visage de la surveillance en ligne d’une marque

David Harkness, Sheila Carey, Julie Marion, Réseau canadien d’information sur le patrimoine (RCIP), Canada

Résumé

Cet article se sert du mystérieux « voyageur dans le temps des années 1940 » comme toile de fond pour procéder à une étude de cas sur les phénomènes viraux et leurs retombées et conséquences potentielles sur les musées et les établissements culturels. Une approche efficace et globale de la surveillance d’une marque nécessite d’être à l’écoute des commentaires générés par le public. Bien que ces conversations puissent être lancées par l’entremise d’activités marketing, elles peuvent aussi survenir spontanément et évoluer rapidement. Une surveillance appropriée devrait s’effectuer parallèlement à ces conversations, et non être à leur remorque. L’étude examine les préoccupations d’ordre muséologique se rapportant à la perte de contrôle de la propriété intellectuelle pouvant survenir en ligne. Elle s’intéresse aussi au marketing des musées à une époque où une phrase comme « Donne-moi une Pop-Tart! » fait vider les tablettes des supermarchés, une campagne publicitaire pour une marque de lotion après‑rasage peut faire planter YouTube et une simple photo peut apporter une renommée internationale à un petit musée communautaire.

Mots‑clés: Surveillance d’une marque, image de marque, marketing viral, Musée virtuel du Canada, Web social, droit d’auteur, capital conversationnel

Cet article sera disponible dès le 7 avril 2011 sur le site Web Échange professionnel du RCIP | This article will be available in French at CHIN's Professional Exchange website after April 7, 2011. http://www.pro.rcip-chin.gc.ca/sommaire-summary/voyageur_temps-time_traveller-fra.jsp

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Multi-Channel

Site:

http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/

Authors:

David Harkness

Sheila Carey

Julie Marion