Did you know that the 1st of September (Wednesday just gone) was 'International Ask A Curator Day'? It's not quite clear who made it so but 17 Australian museums and galleries seem to have jumped on board joining 100s of other organisations from 22 different countries to answer any questions the general public wanted to throw their way.

The aim of the project was for the public to have access to curators via Twitter for the day. Some organisations like Powerhouse decided to use Facebook instead as it let them answer questions more fully and is already their most active social networking platform. (This interesting post from the fresh + newer team gives you more insight into their involvement and how it fits in with their overall social media strategy). It's a bit early to tell yet how successful it was but if it becomes an annual event perhaps we could jump on board next year?

Social media and its impact on curators...

Late last year Erica Dicker of the Powerhouse undertook an international survey on the question of 'social media and its impact on curators'. The results are now in and make for interesting reading. In her paper she discusses how the Powerhouse built up a 'team of curatorial bloggers' to create the museum's first blog 'Object of the Week'. She then goes into some detail about how the blog was conceived and executed and what lessons they learnt along the way (lessons for us all).

The second part of the paper is focussed on presenting the results of the survey which includes insights into curators' understanding of social media, the reasons they do/don't use it and the ways in which it is changing the traditional role of the curator. The paper is longish but I think it's worth reading.

Erica will be presenting her paper in April at the Museums and the Web 2010 conference in Denver, Colorado.

Caz

PS: The second anonymous quote in the paper is from me!