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).

Second Life thread on the RCAAM listserv

"I've just been told that our historic house museum is now on the Second life website. We did not authorize this. Someone just did it and is now asking us if we want to use it?
Has anyone out had their institution posted onto second life? did you charge any type of rights fee with this use? how about security issues? Was both the interior or exterior used or just the exterior? I've never been to the Second life website. How can I get access to this virtual world to see whats been done with our site? What are my options?"

"First off, is this person trying to sell you this virtual representation, or are they giving it to you free of charge? Real money is part of the economy of Second Life, and if they're asking for cash for their work, I'd ignore the offer.

The most direct way to see what this person has done would be to create a Second Life account at https://secure-web3.secondlife.com/join/ . Basic accounts are free and this will allow you to tour this virtual building. When you get started, you'll receive a tutorial about how to interact with the world, making navigation easier. You'll need to know what community, or island, the building was built on in order to reach it though.

I would reserve any judgement until you were able to view the actual work done. There may be a lot of good intentions here, but the virtual building itself may barely resemble your institution. Having used Second Life's building client myself, I can tell you that while it may be easy to use, it leaves a lot to be desired in the detail department. Before talking fees, see if it's even worth bothering over if it turns out to be a blocky, poorly rendered representation. If, however, the building and detailing is impressive, you may want to work out a donation setup with whoever built this. Several large charities now have virtual locations that accept real money, and I've included a link from the Nonprofit Times about this:
http://www.nptimes.com/07Sep/npt-070915-1.html

What are your security concerns, exactly? Even the most nicely rendered copy of a building in SL isn't blueprint perfect, so it wouldn't be a help to burglars"

Note: the response (the second quote) is from a Museology grad student at the University of Washington

Interactive Webpages

I'll admit that I've never been a huge fan of interactive sites, probably because that's not why I use the Internet. For me, the Internet is largely a resource-gathering tool, and I mainly use it to find information to read. I think my lack of interest in on-line interactives/games stems from not being allowed to play computer/video games as a child (apparently the one time I was allowed to play "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" I played for six hours straight, and they were all largely off-limits after that). I wonder, as well, how on-line interactives fit into the different learning styles that are out there. I want to be able to read about something, and then experience it, but ACTUALLY experience it, not just on a computer screen.

Regardless, here's what I came across:

Firstly, very few of the sites I visited told me straight off what programs my computer would need in order to run these interactives. I have an aversion to loading my new computer up with lots of add-ons, and (even though I don't really even know what my computer has to begin with), it's nice to be told the requirements.

Also, I found that a lot of the games were slightly mis-leading as to what would happen/what I would learn (or perhaps my expectations were off, but if mine were I can only assume others were as well). It's like a game the Boston Children's Museum website used to have that led you to a quiz involving topics like "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome" (the game's now gone, only to be replaced by a cartoon drawing of a kid in construction worker's clothes, and you click on an item and a box pops open to tell you what it is -boring). For example:

The Natural History Museum in London's "Nitfit"
In this game you're a louse who has to navigate your way around a person's head and answer questions to win. I thought I would get to behave like a louse: eating dandruff, laying eggs, causing kindergarten mothers to panic, but no, no louse-y behaviour. Well, then, maybe I'll get to answer questions about lice? Nope, wrong again. Instead I answered questions on topics like:
-the shape of person's hair who's of African descent
-what religion Rastafarian-ism has it roots in (roots, ha ha, roots)
-why Buddhists might chose to shave their heads

I also learned that the word shampoo comes from the Hindi word chhmpo, which means to massage, and am now just waiting for that one to show up on Jeopardy!

The game had text, animation that I got to control, and lots of loud annoying sounds that they kept throwing in, because what noise does a louse make, anyway? No idea what plug-ins were necessary.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/kids-only/fun-games/nitfit/index.html

The Natural History Museum in London's "What Dinosaur Are You?"

I'm a Cryolophosaurus! As a person I like to eat chicken nuggets, most resemble Cinderella out of a list of fair tale choices, and would go to a party if my friends were there, and that makes me a medium-sized, social carnivorous creature. Cryolophosaurus was the first carnivorous dinosaur fossil found in Antarctica (which is pretty cool, I never even knew that there had been dinosaurs there), and it lived there when the continent was closer to the equator and had a lot of plants and animals.

No real animations to speak of, just options that I could chose that would move me from link to link, but text and images.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/kids-only/fun-games/what-dinosaur-are-you/index.html

I ended my visit to the Natural History Museum's website by playing "Hair Detectives"

This game was laid out like a comic strip mystery. I had to determine which member of the Sassy Snips stole from the Crucial Cuts dressing room right before the big battle of the bands, and only had some strands of hair as evidence. The game involved text, music and animation, and, surprising, scientific images of hair provided by L'Oreal Industries. This game definitely involved some more science than some of the other ones (I got to "use" an electron-scanning microscope), but I didn't feel that I was learning that much about hair (heck, I learned more when I was a louse).


Some confusion over the term "accessibility:"

On the Museum of Natural History website, their link to information on accessibility listed the following:

"We are committed to implementing all necessary reasonable adjustments to make our new website accessible. We aim to be fully DDA compliant (with level AA).
After consulting with our audiences, usability experts Bunnyfoot Universality and colleagues from across the Museum, we have developed, with design company Graphico New Media, a restructured site that will meet the requirements of our many diverse visitors.

Access keys are keyboard shortcuts, and help users who have difficulty using pointing devices such as a mouse.
This website uses the UK Government access key standards.Below is a description of the access keys that are used on this site:
1 Home page.
2 What's new.
3 Site map.
4 Search.
6 Help.
8 Terms of use.
9 Feedback.
0 Access key details.Depending upon your browser, use the shortcuts as follows:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 - hold down alt and the letter/number at the same time.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and above- hold down alt and the letter/number at the same time, then press the enter key.
Mozilla 1.6 and above, Netscape 6 and above - hold down alt and the letter/number at the same time." http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/website-help/accessibility/access-keys/website-access-keys.html

I liked how they wanted to make their interactives more accessible to people who may not be able to use a keyboard for long periods of time. However, the Museum of London had a different use of the term. Along with:

"We are making every effort to make the Museum Of London Group websites accessible and easy to use for everyone, no matter what browser you choose to use, and whether or not you have any disabilities.
Please use the links below to help you with using the Museum of London Group websites."

Information that comes up as part of the instructions of the game talks about how it's a Flash game and what you need to make the game accessible to play. Some other websites I saw last week would have information about the plug-ins, etc., you would need to participate under "Accessibility," but many other sites have information more along the lines of how to enjoy the site if you're impaired in any way. I can see how the two definitions slightly fit with one another, but it's odd that the term would be used for plug-in information, as I automatically assumed it would refer to the more common definition of the word.

The Museum of London gives fair warning that some games will require flash, I like that.

"All Dressed Up" lets you chose an era and dress up a character in the appropriate clothes. There's music, animation that you control, and interesting information about the choices you make with the option to explore the topic further and see images of the object (jukebox, cameo broach) that the museum has in its collection.

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/X20L/Games/alldressedup.htm

20th Century Alien Detectives lets you travel through time collecting important inventions of the 20th century to bring back to you alien museum. Sadly, I didn't learn much about any of the inventions, but I did learn that aliens have British accents and that time travel always has to involve Jimi Hendrix-inspired guitar riffs. This was one of the games that included accessibility information in the instructions:

"Accessibility: 20th Century Alien Detectives has been designed to be an accessible flash game. If you are playing the game using a screen reader you should find that the various options on each screen are labeled. To play the game using you keyboard, as opposed to a mouse, use the tab key to move around the objects on screen, and the enter key to select an object"

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/X20L/Games/AlienDetectives.htm

During the game, all information was both spoken and written, which was a nice touch.

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium website,

Make a Tide Pool

http://www.mbayaq.org/lc/kids_place/tidepool/tidepool.asp

Had to run ActiveX control on the page, and then install Shockwave, which took forever and slowed down the other stuff I was working on, and in the end it was a boring game and the whole process made me grumpy.

I much more enjoyed the links to songs they had, where you could hear the song and read the lyrics at the same time. It was very simple, easy to use, and while I don't know what plug-ins were required (because it worked right away for me), what I liked the most was that it was something I was able to take away with me after I left the computer.

"Hold on and go with the flow" is a very catchy song, with a lot of useful and easy to understand information about how animals in tide pools attach themselves to the substrate. I've been singing it all evening.

http://www.mbayaq.org/lc/activities/lyrics_rocksong.asp?bhcp=1

Retrospectively, I wonder if I might have enjoyed the interactives more if I'd gone to ones that dealt with topics that I'm not already familiar with. I really liked the Dinosaur one at the Museum of Natural History, largely because the information about my dinosaur was so interesting at the end and it was information I hadn't known. The Tide Pool interactive at MBA didn't interest me, largely because I already knew what you'll find in a tide pool. Because most of these interactives are designed for younger children, the information presented is (hopefully) scaled accordingly. On some subjects my expertise is equivalent to a small child's (actually, on many subjects it is. Who am I fooling?), so maybe I would've had more fun learning in those areas.

Fun with Flickr

In an ongoing attempt to actually know how to do things on my computer, I decided to see if I could post photos to Flickr. It turns out I can!

Sadly I've few pictures since I've been to Colorado, largely because my camera died back in November. However, there are a couple there and some pictures from my days in the far Canadian north.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13210330@N04/

Technology Frustrations a la DMNS

I participated in some formative evaluation of DMNS's upcoming exhibit, "Expedition Health," this weekend. I was really looking foward to the experience, as I've read a lot about visitor evaluation but hadn't had the opportunity to do it yet (for my research, I just spy on people which, while fun, isn't as exciting as it may sound because apparently wearing the glasses with the fake nose and mustache attached actually makes you MORE conspicuous, and who wants to spy without a disguise???).

On Saturday I toured the exhibit and learned that it was entirely dependent upon technology. The whole series of stations are based around a "Peak Pass" card that records data about your body (the concept of the exhibit is what happens to your body when you climb a mountain). Everything worked well on Saturday...not so well today. Instead of evaluating visitors on the themes of the exhibit, I spent most of the day fixing computers. Those frustrating systems, which worked so well the day before, just kept breaking down. Instead of getting comments back from people about what they thought about the content of the exhibit, all I heard were complaints about the method of information delivery (which, yes, is very important to hear, but that's not all we were interested in learning) .

I'm a fan of using technology when it's appropriate and it enhances the experience, but having an entire exhibit be so reliant on "gadgets" worries me. Technology doesn't always work. What do you do, then, when the technological components of an exhibit dominate content to the extent that it is the technology (functioning or otherwise) that people remember, and not the theme of the exhibit itself?

On the upside, I now know the power of "Alt F4."

Millennium Art Museum's crazy digital underground art centre

I'm not sure whether I think this is really innovative, or really just too much...

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-01/11/content_407755.htm

New Bio Hall Exhibit Thought

In our syllabus, one of the project options listed is designing a series of web pages for the Bio Hall. As the handout states, the Bio Hall is in a current state of flux and is about to change dramatically. Instead of just creating a web page for what the new hall will be, what if we were to have a mini-exhibit on-line documenting how we're creating the new exhibit? Not too long from now that space will be closed off, and I know from past experience how frustrating it is to visit an exhibit and discover it's closed. If we can't allow visitors to watch the actual renovation process (although watching me measure mounted birds is a thrilling way to spend an afternoon), perhaps we could at least document it on-line so that they understand not only why it's closed, but what we're doing (and there will be things happening that are much cooler than me and the birds).

The California Academy of Science has done something similar with their Howard St. exhibit (they're currently building a new building, and created an exhibit on how you move collections and create an exhibit: http://www.calacademy.org/aquarium/aquarium_under_construction.php)
and while we probably don't have the space to have a physical exhibit on the renovation the way that we do, we could at least have a virtual one.

This also plays back into the idea of museums being transparent, and letting the public always know what's going on (something I think every museum should strive for).

An Intro of Sorts

Caveat: I have no technological intuition/savvy. The clocks on my microwave, stove and dvd player all say 12:00 all the time, because I can never manage to set them correctly. Last week I broke a guy's blackberry while trying to put my phone number into it. However, I refuse to fear the unknown, and plan to attain the seemingly unattainable. Therefore, amongst (hopefully) many things, I hope this will be a forum to explore the role of technology in museums, and in our lives. That's the plan, anyway. We'll see how it actually plays out.