Hitechmuseum

that many of the major museums’ communication departments are starting to get the idea that communicating is a lot more than putting out a press release and that they are keen to be part of this new environment, this new conversation.

hstryqt:

Great post from @Kippelboy on @MuseuPicasso’s blog about his experience at the Communicating the Museum conference (Tumblr here). I pretty much want to pull quotes from the entire thing, so just read it. It’s a short read, but chuck full of important insight into the state of the GLAMs and Wikipedia.

““If the 20th century was primarily about collecting, I believe the 21st is about programming. [Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream] is not about collecting anything. It’s about engaging in serious research that results in vibrant public programs. Our goal is not so much to be the change agent, but rather, to create the kind of conversation that might lead at some future date to change by addressing critically important problems that engage specialists within the field as well as a more general public.””

—

Glen Lowry, Director of Museum of Modern Art in It's Not Just a Museum, It's a Think Tank (via Will Cary)

I liked very much this quotation of the interview, and I tried to relate to the aid that new technology can give to museum. The main effort I’m seeing here in Europe is about the use of informatics in collecting purpose. I’ll take the example of Europeana project. I lke very much Europeana, and a lot of friends are involved to. The work seems to be actually putting all the collections browsable via web, and to add metadata, change metadata, link the linked open data to make all the collection browsable in this huge and extraordinary project. Europeana in my opinion has some limitations, and the first one of that will be:

when we will have all the collections of all the cultural institution in Europe, what are we going to do with this think?

That’s also the question that some museums are asking to themself, because one day Europeana asked to all museum to irrevocably convert the license in which they gave Europeana the data from CC 2.5 in CC0, to allow the commercial reuse from everybody.

That started a big discussion between the ones that wanted to share all the materials with Europeana project also for commercial reuse, and the ones that preferred that the museum, in this moment of financial difficulties for everybody, can decide to use the heritage however they like.

In all this discussion that is, at the end, about collection, I think everybody missed the point:

What people is going to do with this on-line collection/archive? What kind of instruments are we going to offer to visitors? Where is the vibrant public program that we can create now, with our web collection on line? What kind of conversation can we start with our visitors in our wonderfull collection website?

I think that this will be our primary goal, instead run aground types of CC licenses, or metadata formats that are important I know, but the first goal must be thinking about “the big picture”.

hstryqt:

hstryqt:

A wrap up of @futureofmuseums recent Twitter Chat.

I was most interested in these two points regarding accessibility & museum content on the web, both of which directly relate to the role of Wikipedia in distributing resources, all while museums are hesitant to “give up” control over these resources.

What are your thoughts?

The ethics of museums having many artifacts in storage which are never shown and are “inaccessible.” One participant noted that the “pendulum swing from emphasizing preservation to emphasizing access brings new ethical issues.” In the digital age, with all materials potentially accessible in some way via the internet, what are a museum’s ethical obligations to invest in such access?

newcurator:

This seems like a powerful tool. Just thinking about its uses for museums to organise their communities. I like the idea of volunteering and earning credits.