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Post date: [04/18]

  • Museum Content on Other Platforms: Flickr Commons and Open Licensing
    Museum Content on Other Platforms MW2009 Afternoon 18 Apr 2009 14:00 Flickr Commons: Open Licensing and the Future for Collections Most current fee models are based on old print industry. Open Access is rare in museums. When 200 images were put on Flickr Commons, there were 40,000 views in the first week. What happened? Tyrrell sales didn't drop. General sales increased slightly. Sydney Sidetracks used Flickr content. Paul Hagon has used photos to compare then-now street views. Flickr comments allowed the geolocation of a waterfall and house photos that would have been largely impossible otherwise. Hence having images posted with minimal image can fill in gaps with user contributions.
  • Frameworks for Redesign: ArtsConnectEd.org; Time to Stop Doing and Start Thinking Web 2.0
    Frameworks for Redesign MW2009 Afternoon 18 Apr 2009 14:00 ArtsConnected.org ArtFinder/ArtCollector Can bring in photo URLs from Flickr Tools for Museum Educators Slide presentation options (templating, branding, Compare/Contrast slide; with/without annotations, etc.) Tagging, bulk tagging, commenting, etc. available now 2-way communication about images -- ie blogging available soon Also includes a content management system. Can edit assets (eg text). _____ Time to Stop Doing and Start Thinking: A Framework for Exploiting Web 2.0 Services Brian Kelly (Univ. of Bath) YouTube, FaceBook, Flickr, Twitter, etc. Let's pause to consider the risks. Quite a few problems/challenges. Now is the time to respond to the many issues which are connected with Web 2.0 Don't overhype things. Backlash is predictable.
  • Location-Aware Services
    Location-Aware Services MW2009 Morning Session 18 Apr 2009 11:00 RFID Tracking of Museum Visitors for Personalized Content Delivery Kubadji project What's this? Tell me more? The story so far? More of the same. Where next? How does this relate to ... ? For example, could do museum tracking to find out where time is spent in the museum. Should be minimal cost and the least intrusive possible. How do we know how accurate it is? Replaces having people shadow guests to watch where they go -- creepy. RFID proximity tags. Possible tech: Passive RFID (cheap 5c like merchandise) -- best Active RFID (too expensive $1k) Bluetooth (triangulation, requires device) Wireless LAN (triangulation, requires device) Indoor GPS (doesn't work well inside) Sensing: automatically sense that the tag is nearby. Generally can tell range of time when tag is in range of the sensor. Put Passive RFIDs in badge holder (5 of them?) RFID readers connected to a central server via USB connections Output exhibit, visitor, time in, time out How accurate is it? Compare against people monitoring visitors. Experiment has 15 visitors, one at a time. Two human trackers (do they agree?) RFID tracker generally performs less well than the humans do. However, the RFID are a fraction. Open plan floorplans are challenging for both human and tracking False negatives due to RFID tracking error (skewed name tag suggested) Out There: Connecting People, Places and Stories 3 Location-based projects: 1 Frequency 1550 -- Create a historical sensation 2 Rituals -- Fostering a personal reflection 3 City Ragas -- Stimulating a cultural exchange Frequency 1550. Visit the actual sites. Seems likely that participants would be more actively engaged by actually visiting the locations rather than reading about them. Takes about 1 day. Views maps on mobile phone. Map image divided into six color-shaded regions. Each team assigned an area and HQ. Winner is the team with the most points earned through assignments (eg take photos, etc.). At HQ they can use the Internet to learn more. Parts of city which were once over water are now paved. Earn rats as points. Seems to be much more effective than other methods. Rituals. GPS walking tour Summer 2008. Used movies to instruct. Recorded confessions in front of a mirror. Asked to burn incense. Climb to the top of a church and tear up paper and cast it to the winds. City Ragas. Connect people in Amsterdam with people in India. Oct 2008. Given theme topics and asked to take pictures which were relevant to the suggestion. Sometimes a photo from one group would inspire corresponding pictures from the other city. The physical environment proves to be a far more effective way to share information than the museum, etc. Game seems to encourage participation and engage their mind and memory. Frequency 1550 was a closed system. Others are more open GPS-Triggered Location Technologies at Parks Canada Passed devices around. As you approach a location with information/photo/details, an audio sound (trumpet) shows the extra information. New media team builds tools to let individual parks and sites build their content. Advantages: don't have to put signs. People seem more interested. Can the Parks people make the content? How does it affect the learning? Yes, staff can do it with appropriate support. Second tour created takes about 1/2 the time. Part-time project manager, content manager, GIS expert, content expert Visitors do read the content out loud to each other. They interact better with each other. Access 2nd level content (eg video, quiz) Visitors do not access information at 3rd level that is not attachet do a point of interest (POI). Do not argue over the device. Did not get distracted by the technology itself. Would they pay? Yes $4-$6 plus admission. Focus on the content and not the technology. Tailor the content to your audience. Focus on pushed/main content Not a one-time investment Start small -- but start! Try out a device early. Create, test on location, adjust, test ... First screen by all, Second screen by some, Third screen by few. People on site should be able to change content. Do the devices work well in sunlight? No. May need to shade screen by person or environment.

Post date: [04/17]

  • What is your museum good at and how do you build an API for it?
    What is your museum good at and how do you build an API for it? MW2009 Morning Session 17 Apr 2009 10:30 Victoria & Albert Museum Is my museum good at anything at all? Copyright -- don't discuss it here today. Content completeness and quality is often lacking -- get over it. V&A Collections API http://www.vam.ac.uk/api Uses REST. Better than SOAP or XML-RPC. http://www.vam.ac.uk/api/json/museumobject/search?q=death Used the Django Python framework -- allows them to focus on the code they want to write. Don't have to write cacheing code. No API keys if it's just on the web anyway Copy a system that already works. Largely used screen scraping because it wasn't easy to get information out of the proprietary system. OAI-PMA standard for communicating data. guest/astana The benefits outweigh the costs. Screen scraping is is easier and quicker way to build a prototype. More service, less data. http://www.vam.ac.uk/things-to-do/wedding-fashion/299 http://www.vam.ac.uk/things-to-do/wedding-fashion.json/299 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON { "firstName": "John", "lastName": "Smith", "address": { "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street", "city": "New York", "state": "NY", "postalCode": 10021 }, "phoneNumbers": [ "212 555-1234", "646 555-4567" ] } Drupal has some modules which are useful but not always well documented.
  • Handhelds
    Handhelds MW2009 Afternoon Session 17 Apr 2009 14:00 Many handheld projects repeat the same mistakes. Handheld Wiki: http://tatehandheldconference.pbwiki.com http://MuseumMobile.info/Wiki http://www.HandHeldConference.org (June) _____ Handheld Basics What is mobile? Where (and when) is mobile? Frequently web visitors exceed physical visitors by a large sum so it's worth providing information outside the concept of an actual visit. Who uses mobile? How should we build mobile? Choosing a Platform Do visitors want to use their own devices or museum-supplied devices? If they are supplied by the museums, there are costs and complications so many try to offer content to visitors' devices. No single CMS can offer information to multiple platforms without some work. May need to give people choices between dedicated and personal platforms. Getting it Done What can be done in house and what is better to be done through outsourcing? Work by stealth. Once money is involved, you need "buy in" Next Generation Handhelds Handhelds during a visit. Bookmark a link to home via SMS. Future of Mobile Mobile CONTENT, not mobile DEVICES Should be data-driven Frequently in-person tour is the primary focus. Consider true user-generated content. Quicker turnarounds/experiments. _____ Getting it Done Approach varies according to the type of collection, environment, permanent or traveling exhibition. Could allow people to enter an object number to see picture, hear, audio, discover more information. British Museum doesn't have a linear path through the museum. More random access than linear. Probably need ability to do both. Best to have a prototype before making a major investment. British Museum doesn't develop most solutions in house. Location is important. Hard for visitors to discover which floor they are on. Scrolling maps. Consider video requirements of system. iPod Touch battery charge may fail after 8 months Still considering PDAs. Most people visiting don't come with iPhones (etc) Most people are acclimated to leave phone in cloak room. US has more free minutes. Europe usually has to pay more so a phone-based system doesn't work for them. Advanced features on phones like texting. Wireless networks don't work well in old buildings. If devices are distributed by museum, need to make sure it is connected to wireless network when given to visitor. Interface needs to be extremely simple. 200 objects; translations in 12 languages; etc. May need signing (video/caption). Difference between captions (abbreviated) and transcript. What mobile devices are in use in different places (eg most popular in London)? For the next 5 years or so it will be necessary to offer devices in the museum since not everyone has them. Kiosk where people can download audio tours. _____ Points for each group: Handheld Basics Choosing a Platform Getting it Done Next Generation Handhelds Future of Mobile

Post date: [04/16]

  • Unconference session: Intellectual Property discussion

    Does physical ownership of items imply Intellectual Property rights?

    Attending: James Keeline, BPOC; Jeff Doyle, Open Museum online; Michelle Boeckholt, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, USA

    One of the issues that tends to limit digitization projects is whether the institution has sufficient rights to place images of items in their collection on the web.

    VAGA -- aggressively representing a number of artists (ie RIAA MPAA) and contacting institutions to demand money due to infringements. Sent fee grid based on number of images posted and length of time $200-$300/image. Nelson-Atkins.org (search for George Segal).

    Civil War photos

    Do we need a legal defense group similar to what exists for Open Source Software.

    Standard links for blocked images with information? VAGA doesn't like people linking to their site.

    Lawrence Lessig

  • Unconference sessions: Topic list

    Unconference sessions

    MW2009 Afternoon Session

    16 Apr 2009 15:30

     

    Google Book Settlement / Copyright issues

     

    Sessions will begin at 4:15 and end at 5:30.

     

     

    #1 Inclusive design for Web 2.0 for users with disabilities

    #2 Managing social media for institutions

    #3 Multilingual sites HOWTO

    #4 In-source vs. Out-source debate. When does it make sense?

    #5 Using social media sites to learn how people use social media sites

    #6 Open and Linked data and Semantic

    #7 Open source for mobile development Concept B

    #8 Sustainability -- how does what we do help the bottom line of our institutions [6, combine with economic downturn] Regency C

    #9 How does the web respond to multicultural/multiethnic community?

    #10 Why is it so hard to fund museum technology proposals? (Mellen Foundation) Theory B

    #11 Strangers talking to strangers.

    #12 How to include users in website design

    #13 Emerging communities and emerging technologies

    #14 Scenarios for telling stories to bring data alive Regency C

    #15 Design and development conflict

    #16 Bringing the social online network inside the museum space (eg Matress Factory)

    #17 Museum strategies during economic downturns. Can tech let us work smarter?

    #18 Agile methodologies for internal and external development Regency A

    #19 Pilot programs to use OMEKA [2]

    #20 Return to physicality. Film search engines.

    #21 Cartography of politics.

    #22 Permanent identifiers for works of arts (pearls). [fold with semantic web] Regency D

    #23 Vocabularies which can be downloaded to CMS

    #24 Collaboration between ALA

    #25 Progress enhancement -- engage with users? How are people using the sites?

    #26 Attracting audiences on the web

    #27 Intersections between oral history, social media, mapping Concept A

    #28 Small to medium size inst. with small or no IT staff yet with big ambitions?

    #29 What is the future of the Web for museums.

    #30 How do you get buy in from admin for web projects?

    #31 Do collections institute IP (Intellectual Property)? [4]

    #32 Convergence between archives, libraries, collections? Theory B

    #33 Syndicating museum content in an automated way [4]

    #34 How to feel about failure?

    #35 Other developers using Java?

  • Mapping Museum Content: GIS systems; Historic Philadelphia photos; Location naming

    Mapping Museum Content

    MW2009 Afternoon Session

    16 Apr 2009 14:00

     

    Application of Geographic Information Systems

     

    "If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are." --Wendell Berry

     

    Place is as important as who and when.

     

    "Waverly from South 13th St facing East" poses problems for geocoding.

     

    Name changes are also an issue. Historic Street Name Index.

     

    Error reports contributed by users.

     

    1926 -- Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition -- temporary streets for exposition.

     

    Initially developed before Google Maps.

     

    Users often type in addresses into keyword searches. Now they use: address, keywords, topics, time period, collections, advanced.

     

    What about a radius (box) search around a given address? Year ranges as well?

     

    Fulfillment of photos?

     

    Experimenting with RSS and GeoRSS.

     

    Each month 2,000 photos added to site.

     

    Allows bookmarking.

     

    Does it allow any sort of tagging or comments?

     

    Mobile technologies. http://mobile.phillyhistory.org

     

    Added historic maps of Philly.

     

    Added photos of murals treating the location as an asset rather than an individual photo and tying the photos to the asset.

     

    Google Street View. Have to move around a lot to get a good view of the mural and save it. New API forthcoming to allow one to specify particular locations and angle views.

     

    Doesn't seem to support tabbed browsing very well.

     

    _____

     

     

    Interpretation of Bias and the Bias of Interpretation

     

    Flickr

     

    Naming places gets tricky.

     

    3B photos. 110M geocoded.

     

    Geocoding (string to lat/long)

     

    Reverse geocoding. Take a lat/long and get the name of the location. What neighborhood would be nice. Not easy.

     

    Project: nearby (radio geocoding).

     

    WhereOnEarth -- lists administrative zones on Earth.

     

    Corrections project. 100,000 in the first week.

     

    Open Street Maps (Buenos Aires) can work with Flickr

     

    Clustr tool is an open source project to work with arbitrary sets of points using Alpha Shapes (ie scoop out the ice cream, leaving the chips)

     

    Donut holes

     

    EC2 -- on-demand virtual server

     

    ws-clustr client/server software

     

    py-wsclustr

     

    Placeography

     

    The MN Hist Soc has the largest coll in the univ of MN

     

    Psychosynthrography

  • Technology Strategies: Using Amazon Web Services, Scraping, Drupal as a Collection Management System

    Technology Strategies

    MW2009 Morning Session

    16 Apr 2009 11:00

    Cool information about Amazon Web Services and how it was used for the IMA ArtBabble video site. Sever instances and storage (S3) allowed for very inexpensive deployment of video.

    Hoard.it is a museum item screen scraping project. Neat idea if we could coalesce the information from all of the BP museums in one place and allow tagging, Wikipedia links to creators, etc. Mentioned date translation system.

    The Jewish Women's Archive has used a collection management system called Fedora (not the Linux distro of the same name) and Drupal to track their items. They moved to AWS for better distributed storage, etc. and seemed very pleased with it.

Post date: [04/15]

  • Measuring Online Success in a Rapidly Changing Online Landscape

    Measuring Online Success in a Rapidly Changing Online Landscape

    MW2009 Afternoon Workshop

    15 Apr 2009 13:30

    At Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, trying to think about how to measure web visitors.

    Probably everything we are using to measure results incorrectly.

    1-6 million hits per month are probably not realistic.

    We don't know much about who they are or whether they translate into visits.

    There is no correct number to the number of people visiting our site though many will try to sell products.

    Segment audience.

    Powerhouse Museum Children's Website: Play at the Powerhouse Museum

    http://play.powerhousemuseum.com

    Flash games -- how much time

    PDFs -- who downloads them, how many

    Log analysis tools often have a hard time distinguishing between spiders and real hits.

    Google Analytics Dashboard can show 1 month or 3 month periods. Number of web visits, page views, pages/visit, bounce rate, avg time on site, % new visits.

    Can show numbers by day, week, etc. Can limit by locale (eg Australia traffic).

    GA has new Advanced Segments feature. See help.

    Can break down by city (eg Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, London). Nearer ones show more pages per visit.

    True Time on Site.

    Bounce rate -- visit one page and leave. 0 time.

    A number of Grease Monkey scripts to help with tracking. Works with FF.

    makedo page was popular but not locally.

    Google Analytics takes a fair amount of configuration to get it tuned well.

    Melbourne (MuseumVictoria.com.au)

    Top content area has some issues. #2 and #3 are "melbournemuseum" and "MelbourneMuseum". Avoid aggregation with URL rewriting.

    Why doesn't GA have a tool to pick two or three entries and aggregate them? It would be easy for them to accomplish.

    Don't obsess about accuracy but rather what can be gleaned from it.

    Good maps and segmentation opportunities.

    Can drill down to specific topics and view pages as well.

    Rare to have most traffic at home page. Most other museums have 5-8%.

    If you find that people arrive deep in the site, you can change the design to get them to view more of the site.

    Filter local views (ie museum IP).

    Top landing pages shows first page viewed.

    Questions to ask:

    What are the key intentions (audience, purpose) for the visitors to your sites?

    What constitutes a conversion?

    How can you improve the process for visitors?

    For example:

    • visit museum -> local

    • education resources -> global focus on Ontario

    • enthusiast knowledge -> global

    • games, etc. -> global

    Land on hours/location and visit museum may be an indicator of a successful conversion, particularly for local visitors.

    Traffic sources -- search is normal to be the highest. Direct traffic relates to advertising where people type in the URL. Keywords searching for your brand.

    History.KY.gov

    Don't have access to profiles so we'll use Compete.com

    Quantcast.com is another good tool.

    .gov addresses are hard to work with. Often orgs like to have centralized addresses (eg .com) to let them market and track better.

    Google Trends is useful for advertising but we can also use if for other things.

    Google Ad Words

    AttentionMeter.com

    Total Visits is one measurement. However, are those engaged visitors? What defines engaged visitors?

    It often helps to have qualitative stories to accompany the statistics.

    Safari, when on, hits RSS feed sites every 30 minutes. It does not run the JS so the Google Analytics stats don't rise accordingly.

    Often have to state yearly targets of visitors.

    Engaged visitors represent about 50% of traffic to server.

    In general, we can tell more about the web visitors than we can know about who sees a print ad.

    A "hitwise report" from Australian government shows that of government sites visited by Australian IPs, the Powerhouse museum accounts for 1.25% (#14), above all other museums.

    What is working? What isn't? How can we make it better?

    Analytics determines priority of what should be digitized.

    Collections system--what are people looking for (and can/can't find) to determine what to prioritize.

    Are the visits keeping or exceeding overall trends for Internet growth.

    "What's on" is a common phrase.

    Tend to only care about iPhone for mobile traffic.

    http://report.reinvigorate.net -- instant snapshot of site. Good for spotting behavior patterns and navigation.

    May need to build JS tools to note when page is active.

    Social Media

    Google Analytics has a visitor loyalty report. Very common for most to visit only on time (eg 79%). However, to make social media work, you need to have high numbers of users who visit 10 or more times.

    Can view content, content drill down.

    The goal of social media is that people keep coming back often.

    GA Advanced Segments and Custom Reporting can allow one to determine clients with multiple visits and use it to determine what topics to use for a social media project.

    How large is the community (eg visited more than 100 times, etc.)

    Measuring reputation

    Whostalkin.com/b>

    It's not as important to know how many people are mentioning the site but rather what they say and if it is something that can be used in an anecdotal report.

    HowSociable.com

    Lots of numbers, many irrelevant. Shows who is linking to you.

    Mostly uses site:mysite.com in Google.

    Some museums will choose to respond to Twitter messages. For example: "enjoyed my visit to the zoo", "glad you enjoyed visiting the zoo"

    URL shorteners (eg tinyurl.com) See http://searchengineland.com) to see what can be tracked.

    http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204

    BackType.com

    Shows who is linking to your site in Twitter Tweets. Often looking at http://tinyurl.com or http://tr.im

    http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/

    Seb's example uses a WordPress plug-in from BackType.com in early beta 0.1. May be something similar for other systems. Really must be moderated.

    More Questions

    What conversations matter to you?

    How do you distinguish them?

    What matters about them?

    What chatter do you elevate or ignore?

    Google has been adding site maps with key links for many sites.

    Toolbars:

    SeoQuake shows number of links in various tools.

    DomainTools.com -- for example, now many links to your site in Wikipedia?

    Wikirank.com -- a measure of interest in your organization

    Reputation among Wikipedia editors of your institution as an authoritative source.

    Flickr stats are pretty basic (geography, etc.). Recent Activity lets you look at the comments. Might want a GreaseMonkey script to drop the short (1-3 word) comments for a given photo.

    # of comments and # of favorites is not especially important. The longer comments from regulars seem to be more significant, at least anecdotally, for the annual report.

    "Who calls you a Contact" -- subscribe to Flickr

    Net Promoter Scores seems to have fallen out of fashion. Asks one question "Would you recommend this to your friends?"

    0 not at all likely

    10 extremely likely

    0-6 are detractors

    7-8 are passive

    9-10 are promoters

    Although it doesn't work well with services and products, it works well for free museums and web sites since there is little financial barrier.

    Survey can be placed on site with score.

    %promoters - %detractors = NPS (Net Promoter Score)

    "How likely is it that you would recommend [the company] to a friend or colleague?"

    Rate this article (5 stars).

    Content, Images, Style and readability

    Not everyone fills it out but those who do provide useful information.

    Reports

    Google Analytics has some custom report features.

    Good book: Web Analytics an Hour a Day. Tips on using the tools to make your site better.

    SEO Toolbars

    SEOQuake http://ff.seoquake.com

    SEO for Firefox

    Webmaster toolbar

    TinEye.com image search.

    GreaseMonkey scripts

    GARE (Google Analytics Report Enhancer) -- included Real Time on Site column

    Better Google Analytics (has GARE in it plus five other plug ins).

    SEOMoz.org ($80/yr for paid tools e.g. Trifecta performs an SEO report). Good blog.

    http://kaushik.net/avinash/ -- another good SEO blog with basic info.

  • Planning Social Media for Museums

    Planning Social Media for Museums

    MW2009 Morning Workshop

    15 Apr 2009 9:00

    3rd time, new format

    Flicker commons book (similar to Apple's offering via iPhoto)

    Encourages participation and examples from our institutions.

    Why use social media?

    Social media allows technology to connect with our visitors in a more participatory fashion than traditional methods. Not necessarily Twitter or Facebook used by individuals. Rather how the output impacts the institutions.

    Offers a chance to bring new, often younger, audiences to the institutions.

    Right now there's an issue where less authoritative sources of cultural knowledge are gaining ground against the traditional cultural institutions.

    Although technically simple to set up, getting the institutions to use it is a challenge.

    Presentation less about technology than the changes to the institutions.

    Consider what we are offering now, what does it say about the org.

    Write a 100-word summary of the service and the experience it offers.

    In the presenter's new feature to present curator blogs, there was strong resistance to having photos of the people. Comments on the blogs, as they introduced themselves or presented a favorite item from the collection, some of the more pointed comments focused on the appearance of the person rather than the content of the post.

    Quilting Wiki

    Hard to transform lurkers into users who contribute.

    Science Center (Ontario Science Center)

    For a museum who posted science videos, what is the end result? Does it motivate merely comments or can it encourage visits or parody videos?

    BlipTV evoked frat house comments. YouTube was more mixed in its comments. Of the nearly 2 dozen video sharing services, few have generated comments outside the like/dislike/LOL simple responses.

    What works? Is Twitter a waste of time? Sometimes social media efforts work but not all the time.

    Social Media Strategy

    Engagement (different methods needed for different situations)

    1->many

    many->many

    hybrid (eg Amazon)

    Experience

    Knowledge sharing (eg educate -- most common initial goal)

    Voice (eg curators blogging gives them voice, share opinions)

    Education

    Communication Strategies (ranges from conversation -> collaboration)

    Purposes may include rapid publication, personalization, content sharing, cocreation. To achieve these you may use blogs; podcasts, vodcasts; tags, social bookmarks; online audio/video; creation & distribution tools.

    Sometimes it is easier to achieve the purposes in the traditional sense than with the technology.

    Figure out what you want to achieve and pick the tools most likely to facilitate that.

    Flicker Commons characterized as a 3rd generation project with many people contributing and using the content.

    Moderation requirements higher as the strategies move from conversation to collaboration.

    Blog examples (http://discussions.mnhs.org/collections/index.php)

    Is the success measured by the views or comments? Web or digital team tracks these.

    Curator blogs in the presenters' example were written by the curators themselves rather than the media department or IT folks.

    London Transport Museum (http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/default.aspx") has a "share a story" feature which requires a lot of personal information to post a comment. This tends to discourage comments (perhaps by intent).

    Indianapolis Zoo has http://www.mycarbonpledge.com to let people identify their location as they replace bulbs with CFLs. (No word about the Hg impact).  

    The pushpins are much larger than the houses so it exaggerates the "impact". Meets their mission is met because climate change affects animal habitat. A lot of negative feedback. If the people had contact information, they were contacted to discuss their disagreement.

    Spread by word of mouth to 42 states and several countries.

    Reports # people, # bulbs, total CO2 reduction (over what time period?)

    http://www.whostalkin.com is a site to see what sort of references to a site are being made.

    Kentucky Historical Society (http://history.ky.gov). Good looking but a lot going on. People get lost and don't always drill down from the first page.

    http://search.twitter.com is another tool to see who is referring to a site.

    People tend to give freely of their time when participating in social media sites. When you show that you are aware of these tools, you build loyalty and trust by giving the participants a voice. Sometimes this is called "radical trust". It can be fragile and easily damaged.

    How do people react when contacted about their blog content which refers to an institution? It depends on whether the blog is directed towards a narrow or broad audience.

    Marketing team should be monitoring blogs and other social media references and selecting which ones to contact.

    Often a video criticism may cause you to change how you present information if it is not possible to change the actual source.

    If your institution has a liberal photography policy, encourage Flicker posting and tag so it can be found by others -- and us.

    For museums where the marketing department feels they must control everything, often this distorts or changes the message. You could overload the marketing department to the point where they are overwhelmed.

    Presenters found a blog called MuseumsSuck.com which was specific and articulate and irreverent about what is wrong with museums. Museum 3.0--what will the future be like? Site since taken down because author had a lot more comment than he anticipated and that he did not feel like he had enough authority to speak on museums to such a large audience.

    Many photos on Flickr probably aren't intended to be public.

    Implementation (Part 1)

    What is the objective, audience, tools & technology?

    Consider the sustainability/scalability, evaluation methods

    Prepare a budget/resourcing.

    Curator blog budgeting

    Curators wanted monthly. Web people wanted daily. Settled on weekly object descriptions. Estimated that each curator would take about 2 days for write up. Many objects needed cataloging and photography and/or digitization.

    Although the software (WordPress) was free, the manpower was fairly high, about 100FTE/yr.

    Directive: one less day on academic writing for this sort of writing.

    Experience: underestimated work required. Have about 100 images up.

    Noted that Flickr allows annotations of portions of an image.

    So far, giving the photos away from the Power House has not reduced income but it has not significantly increased it. Lowers requests for PD material from other departments.

    Flickr meetups every 6 months. After hours.

    Estimate it now costs AU$20,000/yr to run. About one full-time position.

    Seems to be encouraging more visits and interest. About 300 people locally, 700,000 views of photos.

    Estimate running a blog takes 10 hrs/wk for blogger.

    RSS feeds are a little difficult to measure success. Google Analytics being used to look at site. Would be good if traffic could be identified at one level and note differences and compare with goals. Some people who are "fans" of the RSS can be contacted to find ways to improve communication.

    Wikirank.com

    Closing thoughts

    How does your organization view its role in guardianship? How is it changing?

Post date: [04/14]

  • Indianapolis Museum Tours

    Each of the museums on our tour (Indiana Museum of Art, Children's Museum, Zoo) had interesting aspects and the behind-the-scenes tours were all very good though not quite long enough.

    The IMA has a pretty good sized IT staff with pretty good support in their institution. They are doing some interesting things, especially with the new http://www.ArtBabble.org video-based web site. They are a Drupal house for the public-facing sites and MS SharePoint for their intranet. They have many windows servers, several Linux, and one VMWare server deployed on an experimental basis.

    The Children's Museum has some interesting programs, including the ability to do green-screen videos on a budget or Flash animation to report on topics. The example here was plant growth but they will use it for other exhibits in the future. They also had some interesting tablet computers for a CSI-style investigation of an unidentified liquid leak. We didn't get to fully explore this due to the short amount of time but it was interesting what I saw. I don't know how expensive these devices are. They were a little challenging to use at times. One could spend all day here.

    The Zoo is smaller than SD, of course, but they seem to do well with what they have. We got some behind-the-scenes tours which were not particularly IT-related: dolphins, walruses, and their aquarium with dogfish shark petting, penguins, polar bears, etc. Here, too, Sea World has a bit more scale on some of these areas but what they do is effective and interesting. I note that they have kiosks to let visitors buy tickets/passes without waiting in the person counter. There is also a separate entrance for zoo members. This sort of technology is becoming more common in fast food so I think we'll see more in our museums.