Embedded Files
Museum Informatics explores the socio-technical issues that arise when people, information, and technology interact in museums.
Information technology is used in many ways to interpret and provide access to the objects in the museum collection.
Traditional Forms of Access and Interpretation
Traditional Forms of Access and Interpretation
Museums struggled for a while with the idea of introducing new technologies into the user experience.
I worked in museums for 16 years and recall the uphill battle that took place within the community to come to terms with using media based technologies. Museums were very comfortable with more traditional forms of access and interpretation such as exhibitions, catalogues, tours, and lectures until just a few years ago.
Museums started out with static collection databases and online collections that accompany exhibits but today the web has changed from being simply about search to being about social context and museums are coming up with innovative ways to share collections.
WEB 2.0
WEB 2.0
Web 2.0 includes web-based applications with an “architecture of participation,” that is, one in which users generate, share, and curate the content. Web 1.0 is passive; you are a viewer, a consumer. Web 2.0 is about participating in the process.
Let’s look at a few ways museums are using this technology.
Folksonomy
Folksonomy
Earlier this week we looked at controlled vocabularies such as Library of Congress Subject Headings and Art and Architecture Thesaurus, in which words have a specific meaning. Folksonomy and social tagging can add multi-cultural and multilingual perspectives, engage new users, expose how works of art are perceived as well as help staff. Of course, some will argue, there’s also the downside to it in that it can become messy.
I’m sure everyone is familiar with this concept as it’s become popular on quite a few different sites. Flickr, Delicious, Pinterest, Tumblr, as well as some libraries.
Brooklyn Museum has utilized social tagging in their online catalog. I like this example of social tagging because you can see the text of the traditional catalog record for this bicycle as well as the tags that users added. Ever since I first saw this bike it reminded me of the bike in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and someone else apparently thought so because they added the tag Pee Wee. If I were to search for this bike I would type in “Pee Wee Herman bike.” Without that tag this would not come up
Crowdsourcing
Similar to social tagging, museums and archives have started asking the public to transcribe documents that they make available online so that they are text searchable.
For example, you can become a Smithsonian digital volunteer in their transcription center.
The National Archives (while not a museum, I’ll plug my work here!) also has a transcription program that is geared toward getting all of their records online and searchable. Much of this work can be done online and both allows the community to pitch in as volunteers and makes more material accessible faster.
Open Content
Open Content
It’s no secret that museums have some OLD STUFF! Because of this quite a bit of what some museums have are in the public domain. This means that they can share their collections online without running into copyright restrictions.
Several museums (as well as archives, libraries and other cultural repositories) are sharing their collections through Flickr Commons. Commons was started as part of an agreement between Flickr and the Library of Congress. Other institutions started to join and can post photographs that are in the public domain.
Getty Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum make digital images of their holdings that are in the public domain available for download. The artwork is high-resolution and free for users to use in any way they would like.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is also providing high-resolution scans of public domain works in the museums available for download (although they do specifically say that it is for non-commercial use) and use without a fee.
Google Art Project, while not all in the public domain, shares content from 758 art repositories through museum views with google mapping technology, item level information and high-resolution images.
3-D Scanners and Printers
3-D Scanners and Printers
Museums have also been scanning some of their artifacts with a 3-D printer and making them available online for users to print out. The Art Institute of Chicago is using 3D printing as part of their public programs. The Smithsonian has implemented this technology by allowing field researchers to scan specimens at their original site to bring back, use of 3-D date for educational purposes (take a look at the video in this link if you can) and for conservators to benchmark an artifact’s condition state.
Discussion Topic
Discussion Topic
There are a lot more ways that museums are using technology to share their collections including creating API’s, blogging, and podcasts. Look through what museums are doing, discover things that I haven’t explored here, and comment on any and all ways museums are using technology. What do you think works? Do you find some of this useful/clunky/exciting? Let’s have a discussion about museums and technology!
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