'Object of the Week'

Image originally posted on Powerhouse's 'Object of the Week 'blog

In the last post I mentioned the Powerhouse blog 'Object of the Week' and recently they had a very interesting post on Lady Sonia McMahon's famous dress that got me thinking. There are so many instances when we could do this sort of thing to make our collection relevant. When 'Hey, Hey It's Saturday' was re-launched we could have done something on Ozzie; we could something on Lauris Elms as the winner of the Green Room Awards; something on Robert Helpmann, Kristian Fredrickson, Bell Shakespeare the list goes on...

In many instance the text is already written (as captions etc) and increasingly we have good images on EMu so something like this would be very achievable. I know that Ro has been working very hard on the new version of EMu which makes web publishing much easier so perhaps that might provide some opportunities. What do you think?

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!

Online Collections - Opening the Floodgates

As a follow up to Rowena's post below you should check out this interesting post from Brooklyn Museum which helps to explain the philosophy behind releasing all possible records even if they are of varying quality.

Caz

Demystifying the Collections

For over a year we have been trying to get some momentum behind a new Intranet site for the Collections catalogue, and it looks like we are getting very close now!

Our aim is to create a simple online search environment (google-style if you like) that will enable the rest of the organisation to explore the contents of our collections without the need to use the relatively complex EMu interface and without using up our limited number of licences.

Significant resources were put into establishing a basic catalogue of skeleton records during the Electronic Cataloguing Project. We've now got alot of basic information about most of the collection. This approach - a little bit of information about the majority of things - has been a major shift from our previous focus when it came to electronic cataloguing - earlier web projects had focussed on creating complete information about a few selected things.

So what exactly is a "skeleton" or Collection Management record?

• Who did it come from? (Collection Name, link to full Accession Lot details)


• What is it? (Classification, Type, Name, Title )


• Who, What, Where does it relate to? (Keywords)


• What does it look like? (Description, materials, dimensions, reference image)


• Where is it? (Current & Permanent Location)

In a nutshell, the skeleton record should provide staff or researchers with enough basic information to know if an object is relevant to their needs, and provides a path to find out more detailed information about an item should you decide it is relevant.

Having a dedicated web environment for staff to browse a read only limited view of our catalogue will help to demystify what is held down in the archives. Another aim of the Intranet site is to test our skeleton data on real users. Only a few fields will be published through the closed staff network, which helps reduce copyright complications as we are not making images available to the public.

Knowledge Engineering, (aka KE) have developed some really useful new features in the web package that we'll be implementing - they've also jumped on the bandwagon and called it iMu (aka Internet Museum). The most useful change in functionality is the overall use of the Narratives Module to link records together and provide a context. So rather than just publishing individual catalogue records and expecting them each to contain enough information to stand-alone, records can now be grouped into relevant themes for browsing using the Narratives Module. Much more useful from a users perspective...



I'm hoping to have a demo version up and running soon to show you all what is possible.

Mashups

Is this term still troubling you? Does the word 'mashup' still conjure up images of inappropriate heads stuck on inappropriate bodies? Well think again. There are lots of different types of mashups and these are just a few examples.

This project by VJ Sustenance was part of Allsorts Online: the collecting sector, academia, the arts and the media in Adelaide last year. VJ Lynne Sanderson used the Australian Newtork for Art & Technology Collection to create a digital work inspired by and shown in the Mortlock Chamber of the State Library of South Australia.

Another exciting site for mashup artists is the ABC Beta site 'Pool'. 'Pool' is a participatory site where the public can upload, download and mashup their own content with that of the ABC to make interesting new work. It is a bit hard to describe but if you have a bit of a poke around on the site it will slowly start to make sense!

The other site that has interesting mashup projects is the Federal government site MashupAustralia. This site was set up to encourage people to make use of the datasets which government are currently putting on open access. Check out the Powerhouse's Flip Explorer on this page. I put 'dance' in as a search term and ended up with some lovely 1930s glass-plate negative images of Sydney ballrooms.

Some of the other mashups on this site include a collating of various datasets to create a map you can use interactively to find your nearest toilet, doctor or school so you can see that once the basic data is released people find all sorts of interesting ways of using it!

Caz

Of Love & War

Uploaded to Flickr Commons on November 12, 2009by Australian War Memorial collection

As we have a wartime exhibition idea on the books I thought you might be interested to know that there are a number of new exhibitions about on this topic. They are not performing arts related of course but they do examine the social impact of war. The first is Of Love and War at the Australian War Memorial. The exhibition features photographs, artworks, letters and keepsakes and looks at the impact of war on relationships and 'the ways in which Australians incorporated affairs of the heart into their wartime lives'. If you can't make it to Canberra it is worth checking out the photostream on Flickr Commons.

Closer to home you might like to see Over-Paid, Over-Sexed & Over-Here? at City Gallery in the Melbourne Town Hall (this link takes you to the associated website). This exhibition explores the myths surrounding the American marines stationed in Melbourne during 1943 and has been curated by Kate Darian Smith of Melbourne University who worked with us on the Andrea Lemon Circus Project.

The last one is in the Western Visitors Centre at the Shrine of Remembrance. Threads of Connection looks at the orginality and creativity behind the many embroidered textiles created both on the homefront and on the frontline from World War I to today.

Enjoy!

Did You Know?

Claude the Crow, Performing Arts Collection, the Arts Centre. Gift of Richard Bence, 1997

Did you know that before his work was exhibited by the NGV or by Charles Saatchi in the 'Sensation' show, Ron Mueck was the voice of Shirl's Neighbourhood's Claude the Crow?

Mueck not only provided Claude's voice (and personality) but modelled all the puppets including Greenfinger the Garden Gnome whose face is based on producer Richard Bence who visited the Research Service this week. Greenfinger's voice was provided by Julian's step-father Christie Cooney who was also a member of the folk band, The Cobbers. Talk about seven degrees of separation!

Caz