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