We are the future

We are the future. And we want your collections to be accessible online. And we want them indexed on search engines so we can find them.

I'm sitting here in the Wallingford Chocolati (chocolate, espresso, and wireless. What more could I want?) with Larissa, the Museology program digitization queen. We're here with the purpose of creating our defense presentations, but we haven't quite gotten to that point.

We've been sidelined talking about the places where our theses interact. Larissa's all about digitization of collections and public access to those online. And I'm all about, well, blogging. Duh.

Why are there no blogs that take you behind the scenes in collections? Why? Or are there and I've missed them? Every once in a while I'll see them take a peek, but rarely. Most museum visitors are not aware that there is vast collections storage beneath their feet, much less of the COMPLETELY AWESOME stuff that goes on in collections and is held in the collections (is my bias showing? Oops.). I think that Glenbow's Dear Miss Griffis does a pretty cool job of using their archives as their blog, but this is not what I'm talking about.

Can we juxtapose the Botany Photo of the Day blog with the Powerhouse Museum's Collection Database with your average blog? Yeah yeah yeah, I know there are copyright restrictions - I'm thinking of historical collections primarily, not art. If I weren't a museum person, that is what I would want to see. Cool old stuff. Not just the 3" by 4" placard of information from an exhibit, but the story. Stories. Museum 2.0 just had a thought provoking post on the power of stories.

What are the really successful blogs? Boingboing? Yeah. It's the places where you find all the cool little stories that not too many others know.

Am I being totally coherent? No. But I am excited by the possibilities! It's not only the possibility of making collections accessible to the public, it's making collections accessible online for researchers, for everyone. It's using Flickr to encourage accessibility and invite participation.

This is what I want the future of collections to be. Collections so often gets the short end of the stick, but the potential. The potential is huge. So much potential countered by so much institutional Fear. But look out museum world. We're coming and we see the potential and we have the Trust.

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The I-Generation

One of my LJ friends posted a link to this nerdcore video:



And it fits in with what I've been thinking about lately. Trust vs. fear. Younger vs. older.

When I presented at Rethinking Museums last Thursday, there were some interesting questions, some stemming from my use of the Creation Museum Blog as an example. Museums are afraid of the appropriation of their words and images from blogs by other organizations with goals counter to those of the museums. I have trouble understanding this fear. That is, I understand the fear, but I have trouble understanding how it can be contextualized anew. Museums had this fear when they first started going online, but they decided the benefits outweighed the costs. And, even with the fear, words and images can be appropriated from printed material. I don't fully understand why this is fear is being transferred to social web application. And it frustrates me.

I've called it The Fear. Museums have The Fear. But maybe it's me and my generation; we have The Trust. We grew up with or got involved at a relatively young age with the internet and then with social applications. We Trust others online. We share information, personal opinions, stories, photos, and more with people online who are "strangers." Some my best friends today, I met online first.

Maybe I can really only speak for myself in this capacity, but I Trust. I Trust that people are basically good and basically well intentioned. I know that my words could be appropriated for use beyond my control. But it's beyond my control, and there might be someone out there who finds what I have to say interesting and useful. It's worth the cost.

I've heard people older than myself say that they were scared at how trusting younger people are. So I wonder if this Trust v. Fear thing comes down to Younger v. Older (gross generalizations, of course). As the younger people of today gain footholds in museums, I wonder what will come out of it. More of the cool open tagging initiatives like the Powerhouse Museum has? More blogs? Avenues for freely uploading visitor produced podcasts? Something else? And what about people who've been doing social networking since they were 12 and didn't start easing into it at 18? What is their worldview? What kind of initiatives comes to someone who literally grew up participating online?

The future is wide open. I trust it.

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MW2007: Days 3

Day 3 was not so eventful as Day 2, primarily because I didn't arrive at the conference until about 2:15 when I grabbed a mocha and settled in a couch to knit with Larissa.

Around 3:30 we headed to the cookie break, grabbed a cookie, and got roped into handing out evaluations. We are loyal volunteers.

The closing plenary was nice. Something Seb said provoked an "A-HA" moment which will be blogged about in the coming days. One commenter mentioned that there are a lot of Hows being discussed and many fewer Whys; I felt validated.

The closing reception was held at The De Young Museum, which was very lovely. I was completely taken in by the Vivienne Westwood exhibit. Having become much more knowledgeable about textile design through both Project Runway and my own knitting, I found it fascinating. Although I was disappointed when a dress that was quite clearly crochet was labeled as a hand knit. Research, people, research.

The De Young's new building has a tower with some simply phenomenal views of the San Francisco. I took, approximately, a bajillion photos. But have yet to upload them, so it is simply a taunt at this point.

All in all, I quite enjoyed this conference. I hope I have the opportunity to attend next year, although so much is up in the air when it comes to my immediate future that I can't commit to anything. I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet all the people I met (okay, except the one guy who made me cry, I could have done without that) and to really feel like part of a movement. Power to the people.

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Woot Woot!

I'm in San Francisco!

Proof!


If you're joining me for MW2007, and you're thinking about doing some touristing at Fisherman's Wharf, might I suggest a visit to Musee Mecanique? It's free, and so amazing. A collection of old time and contemporary arcade machines and early mechanized scenes, which are ALL IN WORKING ORDER and you can USE. It's one of those really interesting things: Preservation or Use? Only through Use do we get the full effect of the object, but with Preservation we can understand them longer. I have to say, using them was so cool! I didn't read any of the signage, but I came out with a better understanding and appreciation of early mechanized entertainments.

Like this one. Put in a quarter and there's a scene with dwarves heading to the mines and a mushroom house, all very neatly mechanized.


Or this one. Put in your quarter and it lights up to reveal a spinning fun house mirror.


The element of wonder at this exhibit was high. There was so much to see and it's the sort of thing you find one of here or there, usually not in working order. If you have the chance, go.

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