Practical Examples of Web 2.0 in small, volunteer museums

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on February 2, 2010 at 6:44am

The discussion we had here called Repurposing content: making Web 2.0 easy is also a good resource.

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Permalink Reply by Megan Sheehy on February 2, 2010 at 11:12am

Hi Lynda,

A bit of a larger scale example (but maybe something small/regional museums could pick up on?) is the Now & Then Community Heritage wiki developed by the Collections Council.



The pilot project was in Mallala, South Australia, but it was set up in a way that other regional communities can set up there own as part of the network.

Please make sure you publish a copy of your conference paper online, I'd love to read it.

Cheers
Megan

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Permalink Reply by Megan Sheehy on February 2, 2010 at 11:12am

Woops, link didn't show up in the previous post:
http://mallala.nowandthen.net.au/index.php?title=Main_Page

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Permalink Reply by Peter Gale on February 2, 2010 at 10:36pm

Hopefully, Lynda, there will be examples you can draw upon. Hopefully, as well, your remarks will consider the intentions for the establishment of the kinds of social networking systems that you refer to in your post, and whether they are ones which any museum institution, small or large, would benefit from, and how so. What is the consequence (setting aside time, effort, etc.)? Social networking can have a purpose, as long as it does not become another unimaginative means of communication. Most Tweets that are sent today by museums are rather lame promotional reminders or dull information. Hopefully, we'll reach a point when museums can use social networking systems in creative ways similar to those that they might use to support/engage visitor experience and understanding right at the museum, assuming that the museum has established or articulated a strategy for this. I would argue that this work, and it could be hard work, should come first.

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on February 4, 2010 at 10:36am

Thanks Megan for the link.

Thanks for your comment Peter. I think that's a sensible suggestion - the why before the how. I tend to forget that as at our institution we've agreed on the why and are now moving in to the how. I was re-reading Nina Simon's ideas around the Participatory Museum which gives some good reasons. Also, don't know if anyone has picked up on two recent posts about social media that werer interesting. One looked at how the Grammy's are harvesting Web 2.0 and other reported research that found Australians are number 1 users of social networking sites globally, so I guess we ignore these trends at our peril! I blogged about these here.

One example that springs to mind about creative use of social media is the experiment we're doing here using Facebook and blogger to engage audiences in the developement of an exhbition on evil. We published a paper on that called Exploring Social Media for Front-End Evaluation. I know there are plenty of other examples.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Gale on February 4, 2010 at 11:26am

Hi Lynda. Your comments are very valuable. For my own part, I should have emphasized that we may only be scratching the surface as to the ways that social networking systems can/will be used by museums. I think they have a really great potential, particularly if at least some (even those with limits) can be used in ways that their messages/qualities/techniques, etc., can be tied into or reflect the way(s) a museum might use engagements/experiences/informations, etc., in its in-house presentations. These are 'learnable' skills, and I'm sure we'll see them soon. The 'how' is very important (and should be evolving), but it is also important that a museum gets one or more of these systems in place and then starts to learn how to use it/them. It may not be unlike how a museum learns, hopefully, and perhaps only with practice (a museum seems resistant to actually articulating the 'how'), in order to have its presentations more effective and memorable.

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Permalink Reply by Sophie Lieberman on February 4, 2010 at 6:05pm

Hi Lynda

It might not be appropriate but the NSW national science week committee est'ed a web2.0 site/campaign for its events last year as a solution to the absence of a user friendly and adaptive national site. we have a good report from the experiment and are planning to grow it in 2010 and beyond. in fact it is becoming a model for other state committees and informing the argument for the redevelopment of a fed site....happy to share!
S

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on February 14, 2010 at 7:57am

Cool, thnx Sophie. Be keen to see what you learned. Also meant to post this link to thew social media wiki which contains really useful definitions of all things web.

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