IMA Dashboard

The Indianapolis Museum of Art created a dashboard in order to measure the museum's performance in a variety of areas. According to the site,
"The goal of the Dashboard is to seek to quantify and report out on areas of activity of general interest to museum observers and to particular interest to museum studies specialists, colleagues, and patrons."

Well, we're museums studies specialists, colleagues and patrons (hopefully), and I don't know how interested I am in most of the areas they're reporting on. They're giving me stats; stats with graphics and pretty colours, but stats all the same. Click on "more" for any of the sections, and you get more stats. So why should I care? What is the museum doing with that information? I'm sure they'll write a paper on about the dashboard before they've actually done anything with the data (as people so often seem to love to do), but the mere presence of the dashboard seems to me an opportunity to engage the community in a discussion about the dynamics of the museum within the city (afterall, most of the stats are about those people to begin with).

In all that the applications of things like blogs and dashboards are supposed to provide different ways for visitors to engage with museum material, so many of them end up being very one-dimensional, like this one. Apparently it's a new addition to the website, so maybe time is needed to figure out how best for the museum to use it, but I've yet to see why people are so excited about it.

The Ballad of Marshall McLuhan

All this talk about mass media reminded me of a song by Radio Free Vestibule called "The Ballad of Marshall McLuhan"



P.S. The little player works on some computers, but not others. You can also hear the song here:

http://webjay.org/iteminfo/550305/e155228f7d57945733f381dc65cb3767

"Marshall McLuhan, you're such a groovy thinker..."

Building a "Memory" for the National Science Digital Library

Interesting artcile:

http://www.npaci.edu/enVision/v19.1/memory.html

From the RCAAM listserv, re: AAM's Media and Technology Website

Hello everyone!
AAM's Media & Technology SPC is currently developing a new resources area on the Media & Technology website. The Resource Web (as it's currently called), is intended to facilitate the sharing of information regarding various subject areas of interest to the cultural heritage community. Written by museum professionals for museum professionals, a major feature of the Resource Web will be a wiki targeting such topics as imaging, preservation, blogging, Web 2.0, Second Life, video and audio podcasting, content management systems, data migration, and whatever else is useful! We are looking to launch the Resorce Web in early 2008, prepopulated with some topic areas in the wiki and some archival material from past Media & Technology Clipping Service issues.
The Resource Web wiki is intended to be useful to all levels of users, from the "accidental" techie to established museum technology professionals. Also, since many museum disciplines are dealing with the same issues regarding technology, please feel free to forward this to non-technology-related groups, such as CARE or EdCom.
We want to know which topics are useful to you and which you'd be willing to share your knowledge about! The survey is short and should take less than 5 minutes: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=1Z2uI7B0wZRBcDcjYyxTWw_3d_3d
Thanks everyone! (and apologies in advance for the cross-posting)
Perian Sully Collection Database & Records Administrator Judah L. Magnes Museum Contributor, http://www.musematic.org Board member, Media & Technology Standing Professional Committee

Sound Mapping

Hello all,

This American Life did an episode on "mapping," and one of the acts dealt with mapping your environment through sound. While what they talked about specifically are the sounds we hear inside, I thought it was an interesting compliment to Elisa's work.

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=110

The sound section starts at around 12:30 on the player's time bar.

~K

Thoughts on Papers for 15 October 2007

OpenCollection Web-Based Collection Cataloguing and Access Software

I wish we had something like this in our museum - I have a feeling the work being done on the Bio Hall specimen inventory would go much more smoothly...
I remember that, back in the day, some people were nervous about setting up information systems that were web-based for fear of people hacking in and mucking things up. I don't even know if this still a concern, but since accurate records are so vital to museum collections, I wonder how many institutions would opt for this vehicle?
I also wonder if perhaps this system isn't too advanced for many museum collections managers/registrars/etc. Not to imply that most museum people are stodgy old fogies who can't keep up with technology, but...

My Evidence: Who’s the Authority Here?

I wish Galileo was alive and did have a blog...
I love the idea of being able to create personal knowledge maps - the idea of being metareflective on what we think/believe/understand is very intriguing.
This project brings up interesting questions on the idea of authority, something that a lot of people define museums as having.
I agree with Mack that it would be interesting to incorporate categories into the project that weren't necessarily "hard science" based, especially since the Exploratorium touts itself as being "the museum of science, art and human perception."
This sounds great on paper; I wish it was up and running so I could experience it.

Searching For Our Heritage - Yukon Artifacts and Natural History Collections Around the World

Searching For Our Heritage: http://www.archimuse.com/ichim07/papers/charlie/charlie.html

This article explores an ongoing project by the Government of the Yukon to create a digital resource of all of the natural and cultural objects that were collected from the Yukon and are held by museums outside of the territory.

Initial Thoughts:
-I was impressed by the dedication to cultural heritage that this project demonstrates, and was interested in how a community is chosing to define digital information in a way that makes it comprable in significance to the physical objects themselves.
-I've heard talk recently of people beginning to wonder how a system like NAGPRA could work internationally, where you have almost every museum possessing objects from other cultures. One of the largest arguements against a sort of "international NAGPRA" is always that to return every object to its country/region of origin would leave many museums very empty. I've also heard people argue that objects shouldn't be returned to countries/cultures that are not in a position to protect, exhibit, and even appreciate (although how you would define that I have no idea) them. This seems as if it could be an interesting solution, and one that has a lot of potential to grow and develop in interesting ways.
-The article mentions the exhibit "The Bishop Who Ate His Boots" currently online at the Virtual Museum of Canada. I had an opportunity to see a version of this exhibit, and it's quite interesting.
Check out the link: http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/BishopStringer/english/fullstory.html
and explore the Virtual Museum of Canada: http://www.virtualmuseum.ca, especially the "MY Personal Museum" component (an interesting extension of some of the interactives we looked at earlier where you get to create your own personal museum based on your selections from their collections).