Comments on: Museums In the Digital Domain, Part Two – Disruptive Technology

By: Martha Hagood

Martha Hagood — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:06:18 +0000

Thank you for clarifying a problem I had teaching the art history survey — I had to deal with Wikipedia as a competing voice, and it was hell to get students to go to on more authoritative sources. The ones I pushed — hard — were the best-quality museum sites, and the Met’s Timeline was way out in front.

Heard your interview with Paul Miller online and am enjoying this series of posts. I worked at the Met briefly in 2006, helping with the Gilman collection of photographs. Wish I were there now.

By: Maria Mortati

Maria Mortati — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:21:42 +0000

@Koven
Yup, I’m in agreement with your evaluation. That said, museums have a variety of reasons to protect their data. As I mentioned they have their audience’s needs, and often there are stipulations around the usage of “data”. They may not own it all themselves. It is a more complicated, more nuanced problem than even having the long-term view of building technological infrastructure (I’m working with some fairly small institutions and run into this with them).

What I’m hearing you suggest is a need for creating better vehicles to evaluate the accessibility of a museum’s resources and determining what is open for use (I too run into situations where the museum doesn’t see the potential it has).

I’m also hoping we’ll have a sea change in terms of accessibility– because that is the likely the only kind of political will that can make what you are suggesting possible. Being institutions, we’re often at the end of the long tail, so it takes time.

To play devil’s advocate, I wonder if museums HAVE to get out in front of the data access wave, and I’m curious to see what happens if they don’t. I believe in any case that they present a pretty unique service to their communities by being able to dig deeper into a topic than you or I (with or without Wikipedia) could ever get. So we’ll see.

By: Maria Mortati

Maria Mortati — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:19:07 +0000

By: Koven

Koven — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:44:28 +0000

@Maria Mortati Agreed. I think this has been an issue for museums for quite a while, in that each content endpoint (whether it's a Web site, a 'newfangled touch-screen interactive', a mobile device, or whatever) has always been viewed as a self-contained entity, with content produced specifically for that endpoint. Because content developed for those endpoints is often not repurpose-able, each one of those self-contained content endpoints is a missed opportunity to create technical/content infrastructure. Much of my work has been about trying to correct that misunderstanding; if you develop a strong content infrastructure, then any of this information can be made available to whatever output you choose. It's definitely a harder sell, though--you're basically making the case that by developing this infrastructure, each content 'thing' you make will become cheaper and cheaper to produce over the long term. But it also means that you're developing a technical infrastructure that's probably overkill for the first project or two, and that's often hard to justify if you're dealing with decision-makers (be they museum administration, funders, whatever) who have a hard time seeing the long-term benefit of doing that. But I would also say that a lot of museums self-censor their own content before this even becomes an issue. Time and again, I see content that already exists, that is already in a database, that could be put out for public consumption tomorrow, that isn't put out, because we've decided that "our public isn't interested in that." It's this self-censoring that most concerns me, because it's often exactly this highly specialized content that is unique to museums--you can't find it anywhere else.

By: Maria Mortati

Maria Mortati — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:49:48 +0000

Great article, and so far, it all sounds… sound.

In working with new or reinventing museums, am finding it’s hard to create access to their data for a variety of reasons. Part of it is your so noted cultural unwillingness (they’re called “institutions” for a reason). The other is because it’s matched up with something that is intangible in terms of outcome.

Technological infrastructure is what we’re utlimately talking about, and is costly, complex, and a less sexy sell than “we could put that info on the floor in them thar newfangled touch-screen interactive”.

In my world the hurdles tend to be: institutional value system, money, ownership, protection of kids, funders stipulations and… money.

Looking forward to part 3.

By: Koven

Koven — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:53:27 +0000

@John Hiemstra Thanks, John! I hope I didn't take up too much of #Gugg50's feed with discussions of the merits of various museums as roller-skating venues. In the next post I get a little more into the findability/accessibility aspect of things; I'd be interested to hear your take on that. Thanks for reading!

By: John Hiemstra

John Hiemstra — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:09:09 +0000

I must say that these two articles are really well done for works in progress and that you’ve hit on a couple of my recent harangues and put them far more eloquently, especially the paragraph on search results, Wikipedia and Flickr, Peter Chernin’s “You can’t protect old business models artificially” and using the word “findability” for that modern day requirement-for-success.

Thanks, I’m looking forward to part 3.

Oh yeah, I found you through Twitter #Gugg50 event this week.