Nings and things!

Do you know about nings? They seem to be breeding at a great rate. Basically they are social networking sites for people interested in specific topics. You can just read things if you like or you can sign up and join in by asking for information/ideas or commenting on other people's projects. It's just a big love-in really.

I found this post about museums and education on Museum Australia's new ning, maNexus. You might also like to check out the Museum 3.0 Ning (although content seems to overlap substantially) and the CAN outreach blog which has some very interesting content.

Happy ninging

Caz

Who Shot Rock 'n' Roll Pt 2

You may remember I recently sent through a post about Brooklyn Museum's new photographic exhibition, 'Who Shot Rock 'n' Roll'. This is a follow up post showing how they cleverly intergrated new media into their public programs. Although the exhibition is about rock 'n' roll, the focus of the show is photography so they sent out a call for people to come along and take their own rock shots at a live gig set up by the Museum. Punters were then encouraged to upload their images to the Museum's Flickr stream and legendary rock photographer Bob Gruen viewed the work and commented on his favourites both on Flickr and on the Museum's blog.

This sort of program may well be quite manageable for us as it had a very definate start and end date lasting just four weeks. The set up was not that different from our AC/DC Back in Black Friday gig. Next time we could advertise the 'call to arms' on the flyer, we already have a Flickr account (although we haven't actually started using it) and we know lots of great photographers who might have been interested in being involved. Maybe we could try something for 'Women in Rock' - what do you think?

Caz

How objects tell stories

Juggling balls used in "Tex" Glanville's rope spinning and variety act during his career c.1928-1965. Performing Arts Collection

The other day I mentioned in a meeting about the vibe we've been getting from the Dept. of Education about not wanting anymore 'boring Phar Lap-type' collection images. Similarly when Trish attended an all-day FUSE session with teachers they seemed to be more drawn to photographs and documentary images such as posters and lyrics. They too seemed to be a bit non-plussed by images of things like a Melba costume and the Camelot horse.

All this has led me to thinking about the special nature of what we do in interpreting history using objects. If you think about it traditional teaching methods are very much based on the written word. While teachers may also be able to 'read' other media such as photographs, paintings and moving image it is quite another step to being able to 'read' objects without lots of written context.

In my web travels I have come across a couple of sites that acknowledge this boundary and make an attempt to step through the process of using objects to tell history. The best one I have found is the Smithsonian's Object of History: Behind the Scenes with the Curators of the National Museum of American History. The site is aimed squarely at an educational audience and allows students to learn about using objects for history by encouraging them to follow the path of one object. Once you have chosen your object you have access to a contextual video, primary resources and curator interviews about that object. You also have access to web links for further information and get the chance to make your own virtual exhibit.

I think we sometimes forget that not everyone 'gets' what we do. Maybe somewhere down the track we could do our own web project addressing this issue or maybe we should keep it at the back of our minds when developing the 'Treasures' shows? I'd love to know what you all think about this so don't be shy about using the comments box at the bottom of this post!

More soon

Caz

Remember me?

Poster advertising rock band "Chain"at Berties nightclub, Melbourne, 1970s, Performing Arts Collection

Sorry about the lack of posts over recent weeks. Julian and I have been very busy trawling though the Collection to try and find the right material for our Australian Music, Circus and Creative Process packages. It has been a steep learning curve for both of us. I have had to look at the Collection from a very different perspective thinking about connections to curriculum and about how to make historical material engaging in a new medium.

We have started on the Australian music interactive timeline and have been looking at including some of the posters from Bertie's and Sebastian's. Coincidently, I received this blogpost from the Brooklyn Museum featuring some groovy psychadelic posters from their collection.

More soon

Caz

New Strategic Plan for Powerhouse

The Powerhouse have just released a new Strategic Plan. It's only a few pages so take a look when you get the chance. The document is landscape so if you enlarge it to read it on screen make sure you slide the tab across the bottom all the way across.

For me there are some very interesting comparisons with things we either used to do (Advisory panel -Strategy5B), currently do (programs and event aligned to festivals, milestones and anniversaries - Strategy 1C), have tried to do (research program - Strategy 3E) or would like to do (dissolve boundaries between exhibitions, programs, publications and web content -Strategy 1D & E).

For me though the stand out is the work on succession planning and the adoption of the '10% plan' (Strategy 4A) for content development where staff have one day a fortnight to work collaboratively on their own creative projects ...oh yeah!

Caz

8th Australasian Emu User Group Meeting

This years EMu User group meeting was hosted by Sydney's Australian Museum. Some of the Papers are well worth a read and have just been published on the KE website here http://www.kesoftware.com/content/view/1153/437/lang,en/

Some fantastic things are happening online, with EMu as the driving force behind some revamped Collections Web pages at Museum Vic and Te Papa.

Matthew Churchward & Ely Wallis discussed the development phase of Museum Victoria's soon-to-be-released History and Tech Collections website. Analysis of their web stats revealed that most people land on their web pages via a search engine that took them directly to an object's catalogue record page. So they took the approach of designing the object page as the starting point and allowing visitors to navigate from there. The result is a detailed (and very nice looking!) catalogue record page rather than a top-down approach to web design - some sneak previews are included in the presentation.

Another great paper worth a read is Adrian Kingston's demo of Te Papa's new website which is driven from EMu Narratives, Catalogue, Parties and Thesaurus Modules. The Thesaurus Module enables web users to simply click on the familiar hotlinks to browse to other objects, or gain more information about a person or topic by clicking on the word.

Have a look around here http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/ and notice the basic level of catalogue entry they provide is even less than our skeleton records. In 2005 when Te Papa released their first catalgoue records online, they published a highly edited and detailed set of 3000 records (just as we did!), but soon realised that a wider sample of records with less detail was a more useful approach to providing greater levels of public access and getting their content out into the world. All food for thought before the Arts Centre's Website is redeveloped....

Rowena

The Future of Museums

Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame originally uploaded to Flickr on July 10, 2006by ricardo.martins

You may have heard that Radio National have just aired two very interesting interviews about the future of museums. You can access the transcript for Part 1 here if you don't want to annoy your colleagues or you can listen to the audio file. Part 2 aired this morning and can be heard as an audio today or as a transcript after midday tomorrow (if you are a quick reader the transcripts are quicker to access than the audio).

Even if you don't follow most of the links in my posts I think that these ones are worth it. Part 2 in particular is worth a look for Michael Cassin on the importance of using everyday language to communicate the 'magic' of collections; Margaret Birtley on national standards for the digitisation of collections and Seb Chan (Powerhouse) on making social media and community engagement relevant to museums.

Don't forget to check out the links at the end of each Radio National page too!

Caz

Common Ground

Photograph from the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Flickr Commons

Look at this great Flickr Commons project. Common Ground is a real-time global meet-up of the instiutions featured on The Commons and their users. The project centres around a user-curated slideshow which will be assembled using collection images voted for by the public (follow the instructions on the link above and have a go yourself!). Each institution will be projecting the slideshow on the exterior of their buildings for viewing by the widest possible audience (imagine Hamer Hall at night covered in luminous collection images - what a profile-raiser!) Users will also be encouraged to follow Flickr discussion to find out about times and places they can meet up in person.

If you look at the images many of them are not that exciting on their own. What they have in common is that they are out of copyright, under-utilised and possibly under-researched by the isntitutions that own them. Positioning them on The Commons has given these images a whole new lease on life and given the public an exciting new way to interact with and appreciate them.

Have a think about what collections we have that could benefit from this kind of profile and get back to me!

Caz

Australia's Culture Portal

Glasses worn by Barry Humphries as Dame Edna, the Arts Centre's Performing Arts Collection

Do you guys know about this site? It was created by the federal government some years ago but it is quite a good one stop shop for leads on all kinds of performing arts including rock music, dance, circus, opera, theatre and comedy. The Arts Centre's collections are linked to some pages too which is always pleasing!

Some of the links are better than other (quite a few to Wikipedia) but it is definately worth keeping in mind. You can also search by audience (children, families and young people!) which can be handy.

Have a great weekend
Caz

Another crowd generated exhibition

Sometimes it's amazing what is going on right under your own nose! Do you all now about the Indoor Laneways Project? It's an online collaborative arts project created and moderated by Dan West in Education, Families & Young People as one of the Arts Centre's Youth Initiatives. Its aim is to encourage regional and metropolitan students to create and manipulate digital sound and artwork.

A curated selection of the works created will be on display in the Blackbox for two weeks during September so look out for it.

Caz

Exhibition inspiration

How would you feel about letting someone else do some of the curating? Here are a couple of different approaches to curating exhibitions that you might not have considered.

The first is Powerhouse's The Odditoreum which began life as an idea for a small school holiday program but resulted in a popular exhibition, book and limited edition print. The project had many constraints including a budget of only $7000 (excluding staff time) and was conceived as a 'low-tech' way of engaging visitors with the permanent collection.

The show was 'curated' by children's book author Shaun Tan. Tan chose 10 objects from a long list he was sent by the Public Programs Producer who had compiled and refined the list in consultation with curators, registrars and conservators. He then wrote fictitious labels of approx. 100 words for each object. Visitors were also invited to write their own labels. The 'real' label information was also included by only at the end of the exhibition.

The show was a hit and is a good reminder that you don't always have to spend a million bucks to pull off a good idea. It is also a good 'real-life' example of a the type of engagement people are also seeking online.

The other idea comes from the Brooklyn Museum and is called Click!: A Crowd Curated Exhibition. This exhibition was inspired by the notion of 'the wisdom of crowds' as espoused by business and financial columnist James Surowieki. Rather than try and explain it just click on the link for a short, sharp explanation.

Does anyone else know of any interesting exhibition concepts? Why not let us all know about them by leaving a comment below!

Caz

Virtual Museums

Uploaded to Flickr on June 12, 2007by bcg8

As we struggle to get our heads around how best to present ourselves in the virtual world, the Smithsonian is, of course, light years ahead. When you have a spare moment check out these amazing online projects. The first is the Ghosts of A Chance alternative reality game which was held last year. The project was set up as a way for visitors to interact with the collection at the Luce Foundation Centre for American Art. The project ran for three months and attracted 6,000 online visitors as well as over 200 on-site visitors. It was a pretty crazy combination of creating, gaming, online communication and detective work and takes some time to get your head around reading about it after the fact but what a concept!

The other project takes virtual reality even further. This is the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum hosted on Second Life. This really is out there! Basically you set up an avatar for yourself in Second Life and he/she walks through the Museum and visits the exhibitions.

Have fun!

Caz

Do You Know TED?

If you don't you should introduce yourself! TED Ideas Worth Spreading centres around an annual conference which invites the world's most influential thinkers to speak on for 18 minutes on a topic of their choosing. Many of the resulting talks are available for viewing online including the always fascinating Clay Shirky on 'How Social Media Can Change History' and Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning.

Check it out.
Caz

Four well dressed men holding beer bottles

Here is a great example of how Web 2.0 applications, in this case Flickr, encourage public interaction with public collections. Do you know about Flickr Commons? The Commons was set up as 'your opportunity to contribute to describing the world's public photo collections'. Participating organisations include various international institutions such as Library of Congress and New York Public Library but also Powerhouse, State Library of NSW, State Library of Qld and the Australian War Memorial. Institutions upload collections with no known copyright restrictions and visitors help describe images either by commenting or 'tagging' (more about tagging and folksonomies in another post).

The Powerhouse photostream is as usual very well set up. This interesting photo is from the Phillips Glass Negative Collection. Check out the comment stream below the photo. It starts and ends with the usual boring 'great photo' type comments but in the middle is this amazing exchange between two people who go on a web quest to try and work out if the unidentified men are actually painters of the Heidelberg School! Even if the result is inconclusive the way in which they go off to other sites and come back to report their findings shows how even an unidentified image can fire the imagination.

There are already a number of performing arts-related images on the site including several from the State Library of NSW. Imagine what we could do with our photographic collection?

Caz

What's the big deal about Web 2.0?

Image: Zweefduik / Swallow dive by Nationaal Archief originally uploaded to Flickr Commons

The big deal is that Web 2.0 is everywhere. As much as it is a collection of applications and uses, Web 2.0 is a state of mind.

With Web 1.0 'users' could log on and read text and images just like in a book - it was all look but don't touch. With Web 2.0 the 'user' has been replaced by the 'creator/contributor' who is free to participate in a global social phenomemon that is all about creating, sharing, re-using and questioning content on the Web. The tools they use include blogs, wikis (like Wikipedia), threaded discussions, podcasts, social networking groups (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter), uploading & sharing (YouTube, Flickr, iTune) and realtime tools such as webinars and instant messaging (Skype, Yahoo Chat.)

Lots of museums are already using the Web 2.0 platform to introduce their collections to new 'visitors'. Once visitors have been introduced they keep them coming back by providing lots of opportunities for them to become involved.

Over the next few weeks I'll send though profiles of some of the most interesting sites I have come across. Hopefully they will provide some food for thought and will get us all thinking about how we can make Web 2.0 work for us.

If you haven't done so already, go on, make the leap!
Caz

Your very own blog!

Image: Tate Modern box installation originally uploaded on Flickr by Guy Meagher2

Welcome to your new blog. As you know I am trying to become a Web 2.0 expert overnight and I figure the best way to do that is to jump right in! This is a permission-based site so even though it is accessed via the Web only CRE staff can enter.

I have called the site 'Out of the Box' because I figure that getting things out of boxes and into the public domain is what motivates us all one way or another. On a less literal note, I hope that using this site will help us to think 'outside the box' by creating new and exciting ways of working together both during and after the redevelopment. There are lots of challenges ahead. How can we best present the Collections onsite, offsite and online during this period? What's the best way to manage and provide access to the Collections once they are offsite? How will this change our current work practises?

Obviously there is not much on the site yet but I would value your comments and any contributions you might have (perhaps you could upload your travel pics Tim?). We all come across interesting websites, blogs, videos etc in the course of our daily work and this is a good place to share them. At the moment you can add to the site through the comments function which results in a discussion thread but if you would like to write a post just let me know and I will set you up with 'blog author' permission.

It might all sound a bit vague at the moment but I really think this has the potential to bring us all together virtually in a way that we never seem to be physically. You'll just have to trust me (would I lie to you?!).

Looking forward to your comments

Caz