Museums and the Web

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Museum and the Web

• tagging and folksonomy keynote @ DC2008 (Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:39:58 -0700)
  i gave a keynote this morning at the Dublin Core Metadata Meeting - DC2008 on access to art museums on-line: a role for social tagging and folksonomy? that reports on more of the steve.museum tagging data analysis. this talk built on what i reported at NKOS last week [steve.museum: public and professional vocabularies. presentation @ NKOS 2008] and extended it to include some thoughts on user-generated metadata ? useful in the context of DC, which began its life as a format for encoding user-created metadata ? and a bit of work about the relationships between tags and search logs. my slides are here (without some of the funky builds). while we'd hypothesized that there might be a tight relationship between tags and search terms, what we found was a much looser coupling. whether this is a self-fulilling prophesy ? because searches on the kinds of subject and genre terms that they use to tag fail, people don't use them ? or because description and retrieval vocabularies vary at some other level still needs some thought. that's what the examples we looked at seemed to indicate, and a place i'll be looking further. /jt
• steve.museum: public and professional vocabularies. presentation @ NKOS 2008 (Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:50:15 -0700)
  David and i presented the first of the steve.museum research results at the NKOS workshop today. the [many] slides are attached to this post. the take aways, though, can be easily summarized: 85%+ of tags are not found in museum documentation 60%+ tags don't match vocabularies [and those that do match ambiguously] most tags can't be mined from other sources [like published catalogues or other scholarly works] Public tagging vocabulary is different from the vocabulary in museum professional documentation. So tagging does contribute. Contribute to what? well, we still need to look further into the details, particularly the relationships between tags and search terms to talk about that with more confidence. Watch for that from the Dublin Core (DC2008) meeting next week.
• upcoming presentations on tagging and art museums (Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:47:39 -0700)
  the fall travel season is starting up again, and we're in Europe this week and next presenting research results from the steve.museum project. watch for the following: Public and professional vocabularies: comparing user tagging with museum documents and documentation The 7th European Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop at the 12th ECDL Conference, Aarhus, Denmark Friday September 19th 2008 [see the program on-line] David and i will be talking about the differences between public tagging vocabularies and the language of art cataloguing and curators. and steve.museum: tagging art. research and results International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, Berlin, Germany Tuesday 23 September 2008 [see the program on-line] i'm keynoting DC2008 ? talking about the role of tagging in retrieval-focused museum metadata. We're are looking forward to catching up with old friends, and ? of course ? i'll be posting notes and thoughts as we go.  
• IMA blogs in-gallery interactive (Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:19:29 -0700)
  The Indianapolis Museum of Art software development team has blogged some stats about an interactive installed in their Asian galleries, including some details about how and where it's touched. intriguing how, as Charlie Moad says, the heat map shows that people wanted to use the interface in the inverse way from how it was designed: they wanted to use the geographical map to find the work, not plot the work on the map. our paradigms are shifting: "it?s google maps fault"
• Special Issue of Museum Management and Curatorship of ICHIM07 papers (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:35:34 -0700)
  Recently we've been helping editors Ross Parry and Paul Marty put together a special issue of Museum Management and Curatorship containing articles from ICHIM07. Our introduction (http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/MMC-ichim07-intro.html) to the issue, which will contain five articles focused on organizations and changes created by multimedia online, looks back at 16 years of ICHIM history, locating today's discussions in some of the earliest themes from the past.
• Job: Program Manager, Interactive Educational Technologies at SFMOMA (Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:49:39 -0700)
  One of the key positions in the SFMOMA IET team has just opened up: the Program Manager, IET. Read on for details. Best, Peter Samis - Associate Curator, Interpretation Under the direction of the Associate Curator, Interpretation, and in concert with the IET Producer, the Program Manager, Interactive Educational Technologies assures the ongoing development of multimedia computer programs and other media products, including Making Sense of Modern Art and its derivatives, podcasts, videos, exhibition features, and online curriculum for in-house and Web delivery. The position is in charge of workload planning and scheduling, quality assurance, critical path tracking of multiple projects, troubleshooting, and assuring that the wide array of deliverable deadlines is met in a timely manner. ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES ? In collaboration with the Associate Curator, Interpretation, assist in planning, oversight and implementation of the educational multimedia programs in all of their components. ? Project management, including establishing timelines with milestones for completion of tasks by research, design, and production teams. Work with team members to monitor progress, overcome obstacles, and assure compliance with production goals and timelines. ? In collaboration with the Associate Curator, Interpretation, develop and manage IET budgets and track expenses. ? In collaboration with the IET Team, conceive and storyboard interactive content including exhibition features and podcasts for designated online audiences.  ? Produce audio and video interviews as needed with artists and other visual commentators at SFMOMA and in the field. ? Prepare content for outside SFMOMA distribution channels such as VirginAmerica, YouTube, and iTunes U ? Develop online animations, games and activities for family audiences and the SFMOMA ArtThink curriculum; manage IET relationships with contractors to produce these resources. ? Supervise the Interpretation Associate in his/her IET content development, database administration, and asset and rights acquisition capacities. ? Recruit, train and supervise interns for various multimedia development tasks. ? Work with other in-house educational multimedia producers and authors in an advisory role as they develop Web and in-gallery projects. Assure proper resource allocation. ? Assure continued maintenance and development of the Education Department?s asset management database and production tools, most notably the authoring and publishing software Pachyderm?. ? Work with Associate Curator, Interpretation, to coordinate the efforts of: -
• New study on factors that improve online experiences (Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:46:31 -0700)
  IDEA, the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement, just released ?Finding Information: Factors that improve online experiences,? which reports the findings of a study that the California-based nonprofit organization conducted recently. IDEA used three complementary surveys to determine how people find information online and how the experiences of website visitors can be improved. Furthermore, the study tries to get at the differences between actual and perceived needs of end users by focusing on three different sets of survey participants: nonprofit organizations, web designers, and the general public (visitors), hence the three complementary questionnaires. IDEA had four key research questions in mind when developing the three survey instruments, which, I am pleased to see, are available as appendices in the report: What makes a website effective? What factors contribute to visitors? enjoyment of a website? Does this vary by segments within each population? From a visitor?s perspective, what factors determine a quality website? Are there differences between visitors? needs as perceived by organizations and designers, and those reported by visitors themselves? The researchers obtained 563 clean responses from nonprofit organizations and cities, 250 from web designers and firms, and 1675 from the general public. Overall, IDEA?s data analysis resulted in eight major findings: Designers underestimate the thresholds for an effective site Easy access to complete information is key to visitor enjoyment Good visual design and up-to-date information are critical Visitors want information fast Visitors want a broad range of topics Designers are overly optimistic about visitors? ability to maintain orientation Visitors still need handholding Visitors point to the lack of breadth and depth of site content as causing an ?Information Gap? The study and executive summary are available online. There, you'll find more details about the study's findings, as well as some recommendations from the researchers. How do you think your organization may use or benefit from these findings? What do you think about the study in general? I'd love to hear your comments.
• Houston? We have a wiki workshop (Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:15:52 -0700)
  I flew into Houston, Texas yesterday for the 21st Annual Visitor Studies Association conference. This is my first time in Space City, as well as the Lone Star State, for that matter. This morning, I presented a workshop with Jes Koepfler, a fellow Museum Studies grad and my ?partner in crime? on the Mischief & Malice: Crime in the Museum online exhibition project (we co-managed this project put together by the University of Toronto?s Master of Museum Studies Class of 2008 using a wiki). Appropriately, we presented Using Wikis for Project Management. It?s our second collaboration for this topic; we led a similar workshop in May at the inaugural Technology in the Arts: Canada conference that happened in Waterloo, Ontario. Jes and I are both pleased with how the workshop went today and are looking forward to receiving feedback on our performance via the eval forms :-) Houston and its residents are treating me very well so far. The folks at Rice University, where we presented our workshop, were particularly nice. Door to door service in a golf cart and a computer lab loaded with coffee, water, and treats--what more could you ask for at 8:30am? The city is home to a large museum district, which I?m looking forward to checking out tomorrow night as part of the conference?s opening event, ?Dinner, Dancing, and Dialogue?. The evening will begin with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at the Children's Museum of Houston. Then it's on to fine dining among masterpieces at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where attendees also will see a performance by the Houston-based Hope Stone Dance Company, who, I?m told, created an interpretation especially for VSA to stimulate further dialogue. The night will wrap up with dessert and dancing under the dinosaurs at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
• [murmur turns five] (Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:21:54 -0700)
  If you attended the ICHIM07 Conference Reception, you may remember seeing a giant, green, ear-shaped, metal sign with a mobile phone number and the words ?hear you are? stamped on it in the atrium of the MaRS Collaboration Centre in Toronto. [murmur], a documentary oral history project, created the distinct marker. And, for the past five years, they have been recording stories and memories and erecting similar signs in neighborhoods around the world. Anyone with a mobile phone can call the phone numbers on the signs to access at least one slice of geographically specific oral history while standing in or interacting with the very place the story inhabits. [murmur] was first launched in July 2003 in Toronto?s Kensington Market neighborhood. Since mounting their first sign in the middle of the night (in hopes of avoiding the need to explain themselves to anyone in uniform), the [murmur] team has put up about 250 signs in 8 cities in 5 countries and collected around 600 stories, with the assistance of dozens of partners and a lot of volunteers. I understand that they have since learned that putting the signs up during the day draws much less unwanted attention. Happy birthday [murmur] and congratulations to the project team and everyone who contributed stories and helped out along the way.
• PROPOSAL DEADLINE: American Association of Museums, Media&Technology (Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:03:41 -0700)
  The deadline for submitting a program proposal for American Association of Museums, Media&Technology 2009 Philadelphia (April 30-May 4) is approaching quickly. For Media&Technology endorsement, the deadline is July 11, Friday, 2008. We would like to ask your participation. This is not an empty solicitation, you will be responded to, and this is a direct path to having your voice heard...join in! You can download "AAM Session Proposal Guidelines and Proposal Form" at http://www.aam-us.org/am/am09.cfm. At the same time, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or possible ideas. I am here to work with you! The 2009 Theme: "The Museum Experiment" We encourage you to search for new answers and/or discussions to the following and/or your own ideas, just let me know. Technology and the Small Museum (all areas) Best Models, Best Practice in Museum Online Learning and Educational Programs Web 2.0-Innovative Uses and Practical Implications of Webware, Geo-tagging, Community Networking, and Collaborative Workspaces Packaging and Experimenting Social Participation/Social Networking Beyond Collection Access / Museum Mashup / User Generated Content Evaluating Museum Experiences - New Ideas, New Approaches Future Trends in Museum Technology / Emerging Technology Alternative Interactive Devices / Alternative Interfaces Tapping the Potential of Online Teen Culture / Why Worry About Generation Y? Making Archive, Library, and Collection Systems Work Together Open Source Software Solutions for Small and Large Museums Intersection of Art and Science / Experiment and Implications Embracing Diversity of Participation / Thought and Action Examining World Cultures to Promote Understanding and Tolerance What can you do? For those who attended the 2008 AAM conference in Denver, look over your notes and think back for a moment. Send me your comments as to what were the outstanding topics or individual speakers that you saw. What were the issues that you would like to see addressed again, in greater detail, or perhaps differently? Even if you didn't attend, take a moment to review the same questions: what information or topics need to be explored in a forum where so many diverse associates gather? What should we, as a committee, be looking at as our important, central concerns? DEADLINE FOR Media&Technology ENDORSEMENT is July 11, 2008. Again, thanks to you all for being a part of this committee. I look forward to our further conversations. My best, Herminia Din Program Chair, Media and Technology Committee Associate Professor of Art Education University of Alaska Anchorage Email: hdin@uaa.alaska.edu
• Museums and the Web Benchmarking Survey: Time for an Update (Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:05:16 -0700)
  Some time ago ? in 2005 ? Archives & Museum Informatics launched a survey of museum web activities. We noted then that: Each financial cycle museum Webmasters struggle to justify their budget requests. Whenever statistical reports are circulated someone asks, "How do we compare?" When exploring the benefits of a new function, Web teams ask themselves "Is it worth the investment?" Answers to these questions are hard to come by. [see http://www.archimuse.com/research/mwbenchmarks/index.html for the full background] This survey ? the results of which are written up at http://www.archimuse.com/research/mwbenchmarks/report/mwbenchmarks2005.html
• Media Arts Scotland has announced a Twitterist in Residence (Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:22:41 -0700)
  During the month of July, 2008, you can follow Netwurker Mez as she explores the artistic potential of Twitter. She's New Media Scotalnd's second Twitterer in residence. Follow Netwurker Mez's tweets at http://www.twitter.com/mediascot Anyone else doing fun twitter things? /jt
• IEEE IS Special Issue on on AI and Cultural Heritage (Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:43:00 -0700)
  IEEE Intelligent Systems Special issue on AI and Cultural Heritage http://www.computer.org/portal/pages/intelligent/content/CulHerCFP.html Cultural heritage is transforming as fast as the digital age. While once we collected objects such as books, sculptures, statues, and paintings, we now also face the preservation and archival of digital artifacts. These might be digital representations of physical objects or digital creations, such as interactive works of art, blogs, or even the World Wide Web itself, that are in their own right culturally significant and worthy of preservation. This special issue seeks to explore the problems and solutions of cultural heritage in the digital age. To what extent can computers, and particularly knowledge-based technologies, facilitate the processes of authentication, preservation, and archiving of physical and digital artifacts? Topics for which we invite submissions include, but aren?t limited to, these: * Knowledge representations and reasoning ? for example, ? combining heterogeneous collections; ? integration or evolution of vocabularies, metadata schemas, and ontologies; ? syntactic and semantic interoperability issues; ? reasoning strategies (for example, context, temporal, or spatial); and ? novel applications of the Cidoc Conceptual Reference Model (CRM), SKOS, and VRA * Intelligent interface support for professional and lay users, for example: ? annotating digital (representations of) artifacts, ? techniques for exploring and interacting with repositories of digital (representations of) artifacts, ? trust and provenance issues, ? personalization issues, and ? integration of semantics with audiovisual media. * Feature detection techniques for analyzing digital artifacts, for example: ? determining physical artifacts? authenticity (handwriting or brushstroke recognition, x-ray analysis, and so on), ? automatic creation of annotations, ? automatic ontology extraction from collections, and ? use of machine learning and natural language processing techniques. However, all submissions must contain some form of knowledge-based technologies (including the Semantic Web) and directly involve some aspect of cultural heritage. Important Dates * Submissions due for review: 15 Aug. 2008 * Notification of acceptance: 17 Dec. 2008 * Final version submitted: 29 Dec. 2008 * Issue publication: Mar. 2009 Submission Guidelines Submissions should be 3,000 to 7,500 words (counting a standard figure or table as 200 words) and should follow the magazine?s style and presentation guidelines (see http://www.computer.org/portal/pages/intelligent/mc/author.html). References should be limited to 10 citations. To submit a manuscript, access the IEEE Computer Society Web-based system, Manuscript Central, at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee. Questions? Contact Guest Editors Lynda Hardman, lynda.hardman@cwi.nl; Lora Aroyo, l.m.aroyo@cs.vu.nl; Eero Hyv
• steve.museum wins honorary mention at PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA (Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:38:42 -0700)
  The PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA were announced yesterday, and steve.museum received an honorary mention in the Digital Communities category. If you don't know these awards, they are always worth a look. The participants come from worlds
• Lullabot Loves You... I Love Lullabot (Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:33:42 -0700)
  Jennifer mentioned in her blog entry last week that I'll be helping out with managing Archives & Museum Informatics' 1275+ member on-line community at http://conference.archimuse.com, as part of my position with the company. Well, in case you didn't know, we use Drupal, an amazing open source content management platform, to run this site. However, considering how powerful Drupal is, it is admittedly rather complex to a non-techie Museum Studies grad like myself. A couple weeks ago, I attended DrupalCamp Toronto 2008 at the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, which also is where I completed my master's degree. This was my Drupal baptism by fire. The Toronto Drupal community members I met there were impressive and very welcoming. However, I left feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the software. Luckily, I spent the past two days attending the Lullabot Drupal Intensive workshop. Despite leaving DrupalCamp singed, the Lullabot team nursed me back to health by showing me everything from installing the latest release of Drupal to building a new site that uses the robust CCK and Views 2.0 modules. It was fantastic! If you are thinking about using Drupal for one of your upcoming projects, I highly recommend seeking out the expertise of the Lullabot team. If you aren't thinking about using it, please consider it. This platform has so much potential, especially for museums and similar cultural heritage institutions. Finally, if you're already using Drupal to create culture, science, or heritage on-line, I'd love to hear about it. Contact me or post a comment. Cheers, Nick
• Nick Gamble joins Archives & Museum Informatics (Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:04:36 -0700)
  
• Slidecast of Seeing Tibetan Art through Social Tags (Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:46:59 -0700)
  For those who are interested in social tagging, or who might have missed the Community Engagement session at MW2008, I have uploaded my slides "Seeing Tibetan Art through Social Tags" along with audio track to Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/s.mannion/seeing-tibetan-art-through-social-tags/ The presentation covers the preliminary results of a social tagging study of the exile Tibetan community in Switzerland. And shares some general insights about tagging within native and diaspora communities. This project, which is being done in collaboration with the Rubin Museum of Art, uses the steve.museum platform. Please feel to contact me at shelley.mannion@gmail.com with questions or comments. Would love to hear what others are working on or thinking about in terms of communities and tagging.
• steve.museum announces facebook application: tag art in your profile (Tue, 27 May 2008 15:55:33 -0700)
  steve.museum has released enhancements to the steve tagger. you can now: share images and tags invite others to participate, and display your tagged works on a Facebook profile pages, invite FB friends to tag, and see the most popular tagged works of art. the steve tagger is at http://tagger.steve.museum. please create an account if you haven't done so. it's optional, but helps with the research. the steve Facebook application (steve Art Tagger) is at http://apps.facebook.com/steve-museum/. When you install it, you?ll be asked to link your FB account to your steve account [or to create a new one]. [note: if you would like to explore both the steve tagger and the Facebook application, you must close your browser between sessions. the steve tagger remembers you; right now, once you are linked with FB, you can't be unlinked.] if you want to see what the tagger looks like, try my Facebook profile page. /jt
• drupalcamptoronto2008 - part 4 - pageroute and (Sat, 24 May 2008 12:03:20 -0700)
  Wrestling the Octopus: Using Pageroute and Nodereference to Manage Complex Node Relationships http://2008.drupalcamptoronto.org/content/ wrestling-octopus-using-pageroute-and-nodereference-manage-complex-node-relationships enables complex page / function structure e.g. within each campaign: events > visits > shifts nodereference - standard part of CCK relationships between nodes (dropdown or autocomplete) any type of node (not just CCK) pageroute - chains pages [forms] together http://drupal.org/project/pageroute uses subform_element built-in support for states, workflow_ng constructed for use with nodeprofile + nodefamily routes + path overrides edit access to the cotent type creates new menu item access control by role options for navigation buttons, messages, ... pages variety of types: node add, edit, display, management for each page, specify type of content, and path, and button tab-like submit buttons w/custom labels [can multiple roles use the same pageroute?] pageroute_nodereference routes based on specific content type e.g. add children to family record (jetsons: george, jane, judy) based on content types (parent, spouse, child) lists children inside parent - showing full node view [but really should be a view of the node] enhancements requires naming conventions to work (but should be based on CCK definitions) more options for management + display demonstration [code now linked to issue in pageroute]   option: node relativity http://drupal.org/project/relativity complex relationships between nodes that could be multi-level hierarchies could also combine with pageroute (to enforce creation of concert before review) [this could work for brla / property + family relationships] example at kwlug.org | agenda item part of meeting / presented at meeting    
• drupalcamptoronto2008 - part 3 - image solutions (Sat, 24 May 2008 09:45:17 -0700)
  What?s the right image solution for my site? Jocelyn Stretton http://2008.drupalcamptoronto.org/content/what%E2%80%99s-right-image-solution-my-site a review of some modules available image http://www.drupal.org/project/image combiles well with slideshowpro [makes flash slideshows from xml feed - use views as an intermediary] -- there is a snippet somewhere on drupal that enables paging for image galleries [like ours] imce http://drupal.org/project/imce - integrates well with tinymce [the wysiwyg editor used here] asset http://drupal.org/project/asset: manages files; asset embed [extra] lets you embed youtube video files; will also get youtube favourites using "youTube" sync embedded media video filter http://drupal.org/project/video_filter to enable embedded video or try a CCK embedded media field