MW08 Professional Forum
From HorizonMuseum
Museums and the Web Professional Forum 2008: Audience Comments
Live Discussion (transcribed by Michael Jenkins)
Geo-aware information-We want it to happen, but the challenge for museums is documenting this information. Need to build in community engagement in order to refine cataloguing. One visitor may know exactly where an object is from, the Museum knows approximately where the object is from. How do we facilitate this dialogue and veryify it. Paolo asked whether we should go it alone on this or whether we need to begin to eliminate the institutional boundaries between information. MW forum (Joel Tan, Seb Chan) Probably 3-5 years.
Great promise in decentralization of museum content. Challenges with trust and authority. Source and Citation? Image source identification? (Scott Geffert) GIS community does a good job of this, with a thorough provenance of informaiton related to a map or data set. Also challenges around interface design to fuse these resources in ways that make sense to the user, and are comfortable to museums. If we don't do it, someone else will, Artcyclopedia example. Museums must decide how we will deal with this. (Willy Lee) MW Forum (Rob Stein)
I hear very healthy laughter that wells up from pure anxiety... Today's museum is a brilliant agorophobic... Outgoing enthusiastic amatuers have cleaned our clocks... in a way that we aren't ready to do because we haven't cleaned up our authorities. MW forum (George Eastman House)
3D data models- University of Calgary. Immersive experience. Experiments with 3D models as educational tool with high school students in Europe. MW Forum.
RFID- Both for collections management and infromation sharing/bookmarking. Exhibit at Science Museum of London running on RFID. Also a project with Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam for delivery of multimedia content. Challenge because the RFID is passive. This may also be a MW Forum
Surface Computing/Tabletop computing/Alternative interfaces MW Forum (Peter Samis)
Augemented reality-getting close in a way that you can't within a showcase. MW Forum (Ben Rubinstein)
Challenge: Privacy concerns around tracking of user behavior. MW Forum.
Ubiquitous computing experience in museum space. Possibly different horizons between art museums and science/history museums. MW Forum (Bruce Wyman)
Natural language processing, data mining. MW Forum.
Mobile phone downloads on your site. MW Forum.
Cloud computing. MW Forum. (Seb Chan)
Storing user experience with cheap harddrives. MW Forum.
Ease of use of all technologies. MW Forum.
Small group interactions. MW Forum.
Recommender systems. MW Forum.
Visitor produced media/Photography. MW Forum.
User modelling methods. MW Forum.
Institutional Impact, how do you reimburse users for developing content. MW Forum.
Legal and copyright issues. MW Forum.
Practical, succinct, getting the report to the people that matter. Keep it current. MW forum.
Technologies (Green Cards)
GPS Tagging of everything Social tagging of everything Aggregation of everything Automation of metadata capture
iPhone devices replacing all other mobile devices Spatial information integrated with other info One application for all channels (adapted for each channel) RFID (Paolo Paolini)
Mobile information services Geo-location technologies—where it’s at BUT beware of falling into technology for tech’s sake as in location-aware tech for handheld tours 2000-2003/4 which diverted focus from visitor experience and wasted a lot of resources and time—even bloced new technology adoption in the end (Getty Guide, SI Guide); also consider challenge of adding timeline to geospatial info (see WatWasWaar.nl paper on this) Bookmarking and UGC applications (Nancy Proctor)
Location based services with mobiles and pda’s 3D Virtual Worlds Multi [illegible] interfaces “Intelligent” search engines User storage possibilities ubiquitous (Otmar Moritsch)
Internationalization, multi-language Multi-institutional collaboration Decentralization of museum content Opening up our content for re-use Service as opposed to systems and apps) Convergence of domains (science, art, and even archives, libraries) Open Source Software Policy frameworks, compliance, business resumption, security (Chris Hoffman, UCB)
Mobile technology Collaborating Less/no borders
Wireless networks in galleries Location-based computing (GPS, RFID, etc.) Mash ups – APIs Semantic analysis, semantic web (NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING) Open Source software Wide, distributed search/multi-institution results Internet2—increased bandwidth Virtual worlds (Second Life, etc.) – immersives Handhelds in galleries with take-home abilities (book-marking)
Gaming tech (eg Nintendo Wii) that will enable new types of interaction / participation in gallery exhibits potentially crossing over to online (Natasha Waterson, National Maritime Museum, London, nwaterson@nmm.ac.uk)
Integration and development of applications for the i-Phone Simpler and easier APIs
(optimistically): open, publicly documented APIs for collections/object metadata standards authorities (e.g. ULAN et al.) (hypothetical, wished-for, long timeframe). CDWA Lite XML-based sharing/aggregation of object metadata among/across institutions at least in North America (see “challenges” on regional use of schemas) increasingly ubiquitous Unicode support, with effects largely transparent to users—in ca. 3-5 yrs as support is gradually built into apps, etc. (Rob Lancefield)
Augmented reality Geocoding
Mobile technologies Social geospatial tagging 3D experience image of object virtual visit experience Augmented visiting experience via mobile technology
New Media Art integration with website Ex. Real-time delivery of user experiences Projectors and Websites + New Media Art New hardware ex. Digital Globes
Cloud computing Recommender systems Computational linguistics
RFID technology (Ailsa Barry, Natural History Museum, London)
Mobile Tour
RFID Mobile Devices
Recommender systems Tools created by the public with our data/content (Willy Lee)
Digital collection objects—artwork that is born digital
Trends (Blue Cards)
User contributed content organized in layers (scholars, professionals, laymen) (Paolo Paolini)
Participation in collaborative databases
Expanding concepts of provenance of data (ref. Rob Stein’s citation of GIS industry)
Cloud computing
Research museums are increasingly recognizing the value of visitor and usability research, investing more and professionalizing their research—so getting more [inf] to refine product and services (Nancy Proctor)
Breaching walls -between museums -between users and museums
Social tagging Standards Audience’s expectations for access to data Bluetooth? Community-building, micro communities (specialists) Multiple-institution collaborations Google tools—wide adoption and adaptation End of traditional licensing practices OPEN ACCESS Content contribution distribution
Social networking (to state the obvious) Mashups (likewise) Tagging (ditto) (not quite so obviously on radar in much of our community): unified, user-managed identity management (and sso) across sites and social contexts (e.g. Open ID, open social, i-n [illegible], etc. (Rob Lancefield)
Personalization Ladder of engagement – physical, virtual Distributed Content (Ailsa Barry, Natural History Museum, London)
More effective tools for analyzing and visualizing metrics (including Web, attendance, etc.)
Ownership by the visitor of the experience through personalization online/tours/etc.
Multi platform communication User created content pushed from a background to the stage in a similar way that news agencies have been using “user” contributed content
User Modeling Technology
Geospatial services and apps Data mining / NLP Service Oriented Architecture (heavyweight vs. lightweight) Attribution Digital asset management and best practices Semantics / Ontologies Software as a service User centered design (Chris Hoffman, UCB)
Institutional strategic planning that includes technology plans
Social tagging / user generated content
Photography from the public Commenting throughout museums, not just on blogs (Willy Lee)
GPS data use
Embedded systems, i.e. tabletop computers (Otmar Moritsch)
I would like to see a trend of gallery exhibits and online crossing over more – esp. 3D representations of online or gallery – connecting visitors onsite to visits online around the world
Not just RSS feeds on gallery – NOT kiosks Need really good 3D designers on this challenge (Natasha Waterson, National Maritime Museum, London, nwaterson@nmm.ac.uk)
Giving voice to the amateur, whether that means school kids producing audio or video in an educational context, “guest” curation and guest audio tours etc. – many museums appear to be warming up to ideas like these
Blurring of line between bricks-and-mortar institution and online/virtual presence
Challenges (yellow cards)
Integrating different information services to build one global picture → Vanishing barriers among cultural institutions (Paolo Paolini)
Geographically locating objects –problems of protecting privacy of donors/makers (e.g. Hiraios quilt in Powerhouse collection) If you create communities through technology, how do you look after them / respond to their needs? (Kimberley Webber, Powerhouse Museum)
Fear – of tech, of lack of $, of giving up the single voice Age – making tech accessible baby to elderly, not leaving older audiences behind when adding new tech RIGHTS
I come from a Historical Museum that is part of the Historical Society State Agency. The museum is run by a talented staff. There is one staff person for the entire agency for tech support; she spends most of her time keeping everyone up and running. Our budget allows for staff to get computer upgrades staggered over several years. My computer at the moment doesn’t even have sound – I’m on the list for the next batch of new computers. It’s overwhelming to even keep up with knowing what technology is out there, much less appeal to the directors to acquire or use new technologies. Then, if a proposal for a new technology is successful, what’s to say that it’s still viable once it has gone through the process and we get it? What is the technical resource that a non-technical museum staff person can go to to learn the trends and learn which ones are the most promising? (Emily Peeso, Idaho State Historical Society-Museum)
Visitor Education Museum organization (Natural History Museum, London)
Bandwidth – real time delivery of interactive exhibits and file delivery to websites
Decentralized trust and authority Access to information via new interfaces
Would it make sense for museums to collaboratively determine more efficient approaches to copyright? Would we have to be careful about monopoly issues if we did this?
Adapting content appropriately for new platforms, not just trying to port content wholesale and unedited to new platforms (like early websites that were just digital versions of the museum’s brochure) Managing content cross-institutionally (Paolo’s Pompeii exhibition)—“decentralizing content” but dealing with IP revenue streams … interface and information architecture are key If we don’t do it, someone else will. Maintain credibility. (Nancy Proctor)
The yawning gulf between the stated mission of museums and the real motivation of many? most? senior curators, directors, etc.
Security issues (ICT) Organizational issues Resources (budget, human/time) → developing mobile site Open internet access in museum/wifi access
Fear of loss of authoritative voice by curators Costs: purchase and maintenance Institutional acceptance and support of technology Senior executive management resistance Rapid changes in commercial hardware offerings Historic buildings and permission to wire up ISPs threatening to segment broadband networks Actually getting the green light! (How taken aback we’d be if they suddenly said okay all of the time?) Storage space, I.L.M
Still often deeply entrenched institutional cultures of interpretive control, leveraged in some key contexts of delivery by a semi-parallel stress on ownership branding. Long-term need to bridge national/regional cultures of professional practice re: metadata schemas, etc. (Rob Lancefield)
$ Time Staff (as always) Administration/organization buy-in (as always) Ease of use Accessibility
Develop provenance for digitized artifacts
Authority Resources (duh) Attribution Fragmentation of community along content and practice lines (cultural heritage, science, etc.) Policy Negotiating agreements with Google/Microsoft, etc. (Chris Hoffman, UCB)
Decentralisation of content-getting over [illegible] reluctance to show alternative voices – I don’t think we want to get rid of the curators’ voice – we want it with others. The issue is not institutional voice, but quality of content and noninstitutional content can be high quality. Ref: Journal Nature, paper showing Wikipedia more accurate than Encyclopedia Britanica. For many issues/content eg Evolution, quality of source is v. important to audiences – just as important as including other voices. This is esp. imp. For sci/history museums, perhaps less so for art museums.l Visitors participating online in contributing to quality content, eg stardust@home project (Natasha Waterson, National Maritime Museum, nwaterson@nmm.ac.uk)
Cultural heritage global portal (google.cultural heritage) trusted information with standards Standardization of copyright issues for images and moving images (Otmar Moritsch)
Acceptance of uncertainty in relation to content Pressure to convert content into earned income
$ Staff Institutional buy-in/support
The defeatest attitude of ourselves (Willy Lee)
