Floorplanner - free exhibition layout tool.

Exhibition designer Nina Simon of Museum 2.0 has hit upon a great easy, free online tool for producing 3D exhibition layouts. It's called Floorplanner and you can read a post about it here. It looks like a great tool for mocking up exhibitions/events/displays that don't necessarily have their own design budget but that need that little bit of extra visualisation. 

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?

How to Make History Interesting...

It's not always easy to think of ways to make history engaging for kids...

Tate Online

While we await the new version of our EMu Intranet site, it may be useful to take a look at The Tate's online database. This operates in a very similar manner to the IMu set up we will be using, and includes many similar design features.

Have a test drive here

The overall look and feel will obviously be different, but the built-in functionality is very similar; simple search and advanced search tabs, and the saved objects (known as My Collections in our version).

Tate also use a really interesting Subject classification page - which allows users to browse without any prior knowledge of the collection content. Our "Browse Collections" functionality will be implemented using the Narratives records to provide multiple ways for users to discover our collection overviews.

Also of interest on the Tate website is a detailed explanation of their ongoing digitisiation project - Insight: digitising the Tate Collection - which is well worth a read.

Experiments with Learning

Whilst exploring the Powerhouse blog Fresh + New(er) on a boring tram journey, I stumbled on another interesting post by Seb Chan on their recent experiment with using QR codes on Object labels. Similar to barcodes, QR codes are those little square pixelated codes which are used by mobile devices to photograph or 'scan' an embedded code which looks up an URL (much easier than typing a hideously long url).

What struck me in this post was the powerhouses willingness to experiment and test a new process so that the organisation can learn from the mistakes they may make - rather than just outsourcing the mistakes and the learning... read his comments here.

As Nick recently suggested, it might be useful for us to include Registration Numbers on our Object Labels, and in time when the whole EMu catalogue goes public on the Web, we could consider adding URLs to the labels as a way to provide visitors with access to more detailed information. This would also help redirect people to our website and raise awareness of our collections online facility.

Key to the City

Photo: Louis Armstrong House Museum

Key to the City is a clever project created by artist Paul Ramirez Jonas. To be part of the project members of the public are invited to go (with a friend) to a kiosk in Times Square. Here friends bestow keys on each other and the adventure begins. The key may be for a back door, front gate, community garden, graveyard or museum in all five New York buroughs. The keys open spaces usually not accessible to the general public.

Imagine all the interesting doors you could open in the Arts Centre?

fresh + new(er)

This is the blog I mentioned at the staff meeting this morning. It's called Fresh + New(er) and is written by Seb Chan, Head of Digital, Social & Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse. If you have any interest at all in digital media and museums then this is a great place to find out what's happening at the cutting edge. If you want a short-cut into the site use the 'Categories' on the right sidebar to dip into areas that interest you most or check out this post about the digital strategy for The 80s Are Back exhibition.

Fresh + New(er) was originally set up as an internal 'repository and sounding board' and is now one of the top 10 most visited sections of the Powerhouse website. I think the disclaimer from the organisation is also an interesting feature allowing Seb and his team the freedom to talk about things that may never happen, went wrong etc without it reflecting on the 'brand'.

If you like what you see why not subscribe by email (also on right-hand sidebar)? It is not a daily or even weekly blog so you won't be bombarded with emails and you can save them or print them out to read later.