what will the museum of the future be like?
Content Creation and Delivery in Museums
This is a bit of a follow on from an earlier discussion thread on the importance of enhancing curatorial work-flow. It seems to me that the issue of efficient knowledge creation systems is often overlooked as museums focus on the mechanisms for delivering content - through exhibitions, the web, publications etc.
The attached pdf is an abbreviated version of a talk I gave on this topic at this years Museums Australia Conference. While this talk focussed on the Powerhouse's development of the narrative module in KE EMU to deliver blocks of content it also highlighted the importance of creating systems that are adaptable to traditional forms of delivery like exhibitions and talks but embrace new possibilities like Facebook, Flickr, nings, twitter, webinars, and youtube.
As importantly these systems also need to be able to capture and store content in ways that make it available for internal integration, backup and migration to the museum database and be available for delivery to future social networking sites etc.
Essential to this process is a focus on high quality research work (footnotes, references, sourced images, video, interviews, a/v) at an early stage in the process allows content to be re-distributed, and re-authored, across multiple platforms. One example is the work on William Hetzer from earlier this year the online content at this URL is cut and pasted from one block of research which has resulted in a narrative, significance statements, production and history notes, a downloadable (and printable!) pdf for voluteers and visitors, a composited a/v of George Street, multiple talks in the museum and to community groups, delivery to Flickr for mash-ups with Google Street View, links through my twitter feed and postings to the photo of the day blog.
The success with which we can embrace all these mechanisms for delivery is relient on increasing the skills of those developing content. I'm not sure how it is within your respective institutions but this seems to be more than just a matter of reskilling people to make sure they harvest those great out-of-copyright images in the their research library, take a video camera with them to talk to donors, or have access to the right software to create a/v's while doing research. These tasks are often carried out by a wide variety of professionals across the museum whose role is not explicitly factored into these early stages of content creation.
Can one person do it all? With the proper training, yes? will it look like the work of a professional, probably not?
However given the broader range of options open to museums perhaps it is clear that museums are reappraising who does what? In this there seems to be a lot of potential for making museums more exciting and productive particularly if we are encouraged to work across some of the traditional departmental boundaries. In doing so it would be nice if Museums were able to ensure their status was less defined by how they look and more about how they behave and the content they deliver.
The attached pdf is an abbreviated version of a talk I gave on this topic at this years Museums Australia Conference. While this talk focussed on the Powerhouse's development of the narrative module in KE EMU to deliver blocks of content it also highlighted the importance of creating systems that are adaptable to traditional forms of delivery like exhibitions and talks but embrace new possibilities like Facebook, Flickr, nings, twitter, webinars, and youtube.
As importantly these systems also need to be able to capture and store content in ways that make it available for internal integration, backup and migration to the museum database and be available for delivery to future social networking sites etc.
Essential to this process is a focus on high quality research work (footnotes, references, sourced images, video, interviews, a/v) at an early stage in the process allows content to be re-distributed, and re-authored, across multiple platforms. One example is the work on William Hetzer from earlier this year the online content at this URL is cut and pasted from one block of research which has resulted in a narrative, significance statements, production and history notes, a downloadable (and printable!) pdf for voluteers and visitors, a composited a/v of George Street, multiple talks in the museum and to community groups, delivery to Flickr for mash-ups with Google Street View, links through my twitter feed and postings to the photo of the day blog.
The success with which we can embrace all these mechanisms for delivery is relient on increasing the skills of those developing content. I'm not sure how it is within your respective institutions but this seems to be more than just a matter of reskilling people to make sure they harvest those great out-of-copyright images in the their research library, take a video camera with them to talk to donors, or have access to the right software to create a/v's while doing research. These tasks are often carried out by a wide variety of professionals across the museum whose role is not explicitly factored into these early stages of content creation.
Can one person do it all? With the proper training, yes? will it look like the work of a professional, probably not?
However given the broader range of options open to museums perhaps it is clear that museums are reappraising who does what? In this there seems to be a lot of potential for making museums more exciting and productive particularly if we are encouraged to work across some of the traditional departmental boundaries. In doing so it would be nice if Museums were able to ensure their status was less defined by how they look and more about how they behave and the content they deliver.
Tags: Facebook, Flickr, Kemu, Powerhouse, curatorial, exhibitions, nings, online, publications, twitter, More…
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PHM GB MA 090512STheory.pdf, 3.1 MB
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by yves apeloig on -
I read with interest your article.
I think the reality is more advanced
Please have a look here
http://www.macplus.net/itrafik/depeche-50770-google-goggles-aussi-p...
Lets the techno on the side for now.
The point is the two bigger ITC operaors made geo-vector THE main direction of their future market in information delivering.
The process is able to determine what you are "pointing" and making automaticaly a research on the web to deliver informations.
Of course you can easily put your own parameters: what theme are you interested for etc.
The great question now is who will control the data bases, the informations delivers, the condition of constitution and delivering, and of course all associated services ?
Percipio is much more powerful than what is showed.
It works without handling any device, mean's every one can use it.
It works as well outside (as android and Iphone) and inside, means all museum, etc.
Imagine the consequences if cultural sites, curators and all responsible left the entire control of such device to thoses operators ?
Imagine peoples coming in museum with a little device on the ears, connected to their cell phone in the pocket which even doesn't need to be in connection.
They will get all information free hand according what they look, their interest, the theme they chose .
They will get all E-services and enriched content at home in post production.
Who will be in charge of the contents ?
Who will get the benefit of all this activity ?
Percipio is not a new gadget I tried to sell as it was reproach to me
It is a new and extremely powerful process, a new paradigm in general and more specificaly in culture !
If you are not aware of it, somebody else is already aware of the huge issues this device contains.
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Permalink Reply by geoff barker on -
Hi Wes
I take your point about redirecting information but I was thinking more abut the internal mechanisms within the museum for creating content in ways to ensure it is ready for multiple platform delivery. From my personal experience I think this has been overlooked in many heritage institutions who have kept their old systems and delivered the same content they have always created or imported content from third parties and as a result the huge investment which museums make in content creation hasn't been terribly efficient in delivering quantities of modular content of a high quality. Content creation on the fly from your i-phone is valid but in terms of the way most curatorial staff currently work I would say little fully references and researched content would be created this way.
The kinds of software you mention will certainly change the way content is reconfigured but to be truly useful the content itself needs worked up before it is ready for delivery to journals or magazines as fully refernce articles of a thousand plus words or reconfigured for a twenty minute talk as well as geo-tagged bites delivered in a gallery context.
Te Papa's Collections Online relational thesaurus is I think an amazing achievement as it encourages curators to upgrade and think about the relationships between groups of objects owners and themes as they create it; and this is a great help in preparing it for delivery to new developments such as the semantic web.
Good luck with Percipio it'd be great to see it up and running integrated with your collections. All the best Geoff.
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