koven j. smith dot com

For the last two years, the Interpretive Technology team at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has used Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) as a development platform as an alternative to a more laborious, traditional software design approach. This wiki-based approach has enabled the team to give users a working, bare-bones application immediately with the ability to refine the wiki installation as the users’ needs dictate. This approach has additionally allowed the team to get away from the traditional “boxes and fields tied to a SQL database” approach and move towards one in which a majority of the data lives inside free-text fields, but is still available for querying.

Using a Semantic MediaWiki-based application developed for documentation of conservation practices, the panelists will demonstrate:

Using SMW as a software development platform; Using SMW as a data aggregator in conjunction with Web services; Data sharing between wikis; Using MediaWiki extensions to improve workflow (external image management, etc); Using SMW to exploit the Semantic Web with RDF exports and linked data; Using SMW as a platform for vocabulary development and standardization (employing the CIDOC-CRM as a model).
The panelists will give an overview of current development efforts, lessons learned, and opportunities for near-term development.

Chair: Koven J. Smith, Associate Manager of Interpretive Technology, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Participant: Don H. Undeen, Senior Information Architect, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

An update of last year's popular introduction to the Semantic Web, this session will introduce beginners to many of the basic concepts behind the Semantic Web while focusing on the practical issues associated with deploying semantic technologies in a museum environment. The panelists will introduce the languages and tools of the Semantic Web including RDF, OWL, SPARQL, and triple stores, and will present several real-world demonstrations using museum data.

Sponsored by the Semantic Web SIG

Chair: Sheila Carey, Audience & Programs Analyst, Canadian Heritage Information Network

Participants: Nancy Proctor, Head of New Media Initiatives, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Sherry Hsi, Associate Director, Extended Learning Group, Exploratorium; Koven Smith, Associate Manager of Interpretive Technology, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The New Media Consortium's Horizon Report has, for several years, identified emerging technologies and their impact on education. For 2008, the supplementary report, the Horizon.Museum Project, considered a number of emerging technologies and their impact on museums. Mobile devices were identified as having potential impact in the first horizon, "time to adoption: one year or less." As museums try to decide how or whether to integrate mobile technology into their projects, particularly in this time of limited resources, they can learn from the experience of other museums which have already implemented and evaluated the use of mobile devices. This panel will analyze several such projects and discuss the lessons learned in the ensuing evaluations.
Sponsored by the Metrics and Evaluation SIG