Im in Ur Museum Blogz

Monday, December 03, 2007

Blog Alert

Missoula, Montana. I've been there. Stayed over one night while driving cross country. A couple of months ago I stumbled across a blog from Missoula. The blog of the Missoula Art Museum, as it happens. And it is titled: Fix. Get Yours. As in your art fix.

I've noticed that I pay more and more attention to this blog. It only occasionally references what's going on in the museum, but the way it's written and the topics it covers make me want to check out more of Missoula, specifically MAM, the next time I'm there. Why? Because it's engaging. The folks writing this blog seem really into what they're writing about. It's just kinda hip. It has an energy. And, since it's my main source of information about MAM, I think that maybe the museum has the same sort of energy and interest. A lot of blogs lack that energy and enthusiasm, or they lose it over time. So far Fix has maintained their enthusiasm since June. I hope they keep it up.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Ad placement

Blogger tells me this will be post #99. Not bad. It also tells me I haven't posted since November 7th - 20 days ago. That's not so great.

Every several months I get the urge to go out searching for new museum blogs, and I google search and I google search and wade through pages and pages of results... I was doing this, quite a while ago now, and I noticed something.

If I search for "museum blog" on google, the Ralph Stanley Museum Blog has a sponsored link on the results page. It's an interesting tact. They don't have a sponsored link on the results page for "museum blogs" though. Nor do they have one when you search for "Ralph Stanley," interestingly enough.

I don't know what I think of this tactic. It's interesting, certainly, but I can' imagine it's terribly effective in directing traffic to the blog. My google analytics doesn't show anyone search for "museum blog" in the last month, though there is one search for "museum blogs." And this blog is on the same page for both (third).

It does separate the Ralph Stanley Museum blog from the crowd of results, but it's such a specific search to choose. Then again, it's an interesting way to publicize a museum blog (although the Ralph Stanley Museum blog tends toward being an events board), and one I'd not considered until I noticed this. With a wider application of the ad to a greater variety of search results, it might have some noticeable efficacy. Then again, maybe not.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Putting my money where my mouth is

As part of my job, I've been asked to think about the design of our website (which does not exist yet) and consider how more interactive possibilities might be incorporated. A link to my collections management blog, obviously, or if we could get it in the frames without leaving the main site would be better.

But what else? Podcasts are out (don't have the time, the tech, or the passion). Something where people can talk back, but not just a link to an email address. Full out forums are too big and too... well... dated (not that they don't work, but those are really designed for super committed special interest groups). Starting a Flickr account would be awesomely cool - and flickr has some widgets that look great on blogs and which could be interesting on a museum website. Twitter? Twitter seems cool and hip and all that, but is the user base really large enough that people would understand it and buy into it?

I think what I want is like "Guestbook 2.0" or a mini forum board. Where people can leave feedback and it shows up on the site immediately and can be responded to by museum personnel (ie, me), but requires little to no tech savvy from the end user, but doesn't look, er, lame. A guestbook with comment threading? Does such a thing exist?

And what else? Easy to use, easy to understand, and minimal work investment on our end. I know you're creative people reading this feed; let me pick your brains.

Edit: Gadunk! A Facebook group/profile! This IS a college campus after all. That whole guestbook 2.0? I want something like The Wall from Facebook to be on the site (except comment threading instead of wall-to-walls). Now where does one get such a thing....

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Tag! You're it!

You know what's useful? Tagging. It must be, because we use it all over the place - flickr, blog posts, on our email, everywhere. And when you get down to it, filing in a filing cabinet is just tagging, albeit only one tag in one place. Unless you have cross-reference paper files, in which case I salute your ambition.

So when I got excited about the Powerhouse Museum's project to tag its collection online, it's not surprising. (By the way, are there other such endeavors I'm not aware of?) It has been asked of me, though, why would anyone just go and tag that? That's boring. It's one thing to tag it for your personal use, but tagging other people's stuff. Yawn.

Fair enough, I sputter, but, but it's COOL!

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered Google's Image Labeler. And was almost immediately obsessed with it. It's tagging. You're tagging images from all across the internet. But it's a game! You're paired randomly with someone else from somewhere else, and you need to match the words you use to describe the images. Some words are worth more than other. Man is 50 points, guy is something like 60, and boombox is 140. And you only have two minutes to match as many as you can and earn points.

I didn't think of it as doing a service to google by tagging; I thought of it as trying to get the high score (which I did hold once for about 8 hours - it broke my obsession, thank the heavens). If it were feasible this would be an excellent way to increase use of museum tagging projects.

Of course, there's the whole problem of reality. Museum tagging sites (probably) don't get the kind of traffic google does, so the near instant pairing up of internet users would not be possible. But are there other incentives? How do we make tagging fun? Is it possible if you don't have Google-sized traffic? I don't have answers.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

How to Study Museums

I just caught wind (via Musematic) of a new MA in Museum Studies offered by John Hopkins University. A new program is not surprising - museum programs and Museum Studies MAs seem to be proliferating like very slow academic bunnies. What is surprising is that the MA is almost entirely online except for an on-site summer seminar.

I have three reactions to this:

1. This MA recognizes that technology and the interwebs are important for museums. A classmate of mine conducted a survey and found that technology in museums is the least covered topic in museum programs nationally. So the recognition of that and the addressing of it is important.

2. How cool. An online MA for museum studies. I would totally love to take some of those courses, but am so not going to pay for that. But it's really appropriate to people in the field who may not be able to devote the kind of class time needed at a brick and mortar instition.

3. How the heck can you have a museum studies program outside of a museum? The most important thing to me, as a relative museum outsider to the museum field at the outset of my graduate work, was having that chance to live and breathe museums for two years. To gain significant practical experience while addressing museum theory. For me, it's unimaginable to have gotten my degree with such limited requirements for hands on.

I think it's very interesting. But I don't think it's the best degree for a young person out of undergrad to pursue. Every spring, the Museum-L listserv has an influx of graduates worrying about getting a job. And the advice is, inevitably, get hands on experience, get your foot in the door. Those are two things I find problematic with this degree. It's up to the student to develop those two opportunities. That was true at mine too, but there were clear doors. I worry that, if the student is a stay-at-home-mom with limited time to volunteer or be involved in the program, that she will have a difficult time actually putting her degree to work.

Nonetheless, I think it's an interesting idea, a good thing for people in certain places, and covers topics which are largely lacking in scholarly museum education.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

A beginner's guide to cool museum stuff online

I am really lucky. The folks involved in creating the museum at which I work are interested in the potential of new media for involving the community. But, they don't have as much exposure to the cool kinds of things museums are doing as, say, me! So a couple of weeks ago I put together this sort of "beginner's guide" for one of the professors with whom I work. And I thought I'd share. I think, if you read this, you probably know which applications and institutions I'm the most impressed with, but, hey, why not? :D

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The Brooklyn Museum has a great all around approach to new media and community: CLICK

Australia's Powerhouse Museum is doing exciting things with their collections online, not just having them there, but allowing visitors to "tag" the online entries with keywords they find useful: CLICK

Eye Level, blog of the Smithsonian American Art Museum: CLICK

The Walker museum in Minneapolis has 6 blogs and are quite good. I especially like OffCenter and the New Media Initiatives blogs: CLICK

The Science Museum of Minnesota has a pretty cool area called Science Buzz with a blog that posts current science stories, polls, and offers registered users the chance to post at top level. There are also interactive kiosks inside the museum from which visitors can comment: CLICK

The Victoria and Albert has a section on knitting which incorporates their collection, but goes beyond it: CLICK The V&A also have a couple of artist blogs.

That's an overview of some of what's out there. The Powerhouse and Science Buzz are two of the most exciting things, in my opinion. Many museums are podcasting; many are creating facebook groups or profiles; some museums are venturing into Second Life; and some are playing with Twitter. Pretty much, any new application which catches on with a segment of the population, museums are starting to experiment with.

Leslie of MuseumBlogging.org had a pretty good series on museums and social networking sites: CLICK

Nina Simon of Museum 2.0 writes very thoughtful and thought provoking posts at her blog: CLICK

Two final things: If you want to look around at museum blogs, http://museumblogs.org/ has a list of 208 museum and museum-related blogs. And the sidebar of my thesis blog has about 100 museum blogs, not all of which are on museumblogs.org: http://museumblogthesis.blogspot.com/.

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Whatcha think? What did I miss that's supah cool?

Oh! I got up the nerve to submit an abstract to MW2008. It's not really anything new, but I thought it might be an appropriate place to share my thesis research. If it did get accepted, I think I'd put up a new, modified survey to beef up that side of things. I won't be heartbroken if it doesn't make it in, but it'll be pretty nifty if it did. Anywho. I'm hoping to go either way.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Wales all around

Over at my job blog I was talking about whale ear bones (cough*shamelessplug*cough), and now I'm going to talk about Wales.

You know, the country! Wales has had my attention recently. Knitting podcaster Brenda Dayne is based out of Wales. The Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood is based out of Cardiff (and it looks like they do a lot of on location filming - I am such a Doctor Who nerd).

Wales is a small country. It has a population less than half that of Wisconsin. And yet, yet! it has two museums with blogs, at least.

First up is Amgueddfa Blog, of the National Museum Wales which posts in both English and Welsh. I can't read a word of Welsh, but I love the look of the language. Can't post much of a review, as there's not been a lot of action since I subscribed, but it looks like there was some fun archaeology stuff over the summer.

And then there's Behind the Scenes at the Oldest Museum in Wales from the Swansea Museum. Sadly, this blog has been dormant for nearly a year, but there are some really lovely photos up in the old posts. It would be great if they'd renew the photo posts, since high quality photos are so much fun to look at.

So, way to go Wales!

Friday, September 14, 2007

Another announcement! and organizational musings

Another one of those posts that a better blogger would split into two separate posts.

Lots of announcements here lately!

I just wanted to let y'all know that I've been invited, and have accepted, to become a contributer to Musematic. Glad to be joining the ranks!

What does this make? That's four and one half blogs! (Museumatic being a half, since it's not all me, all the time.) Well, last night I dropped it down to three and a half, letting go of my languishing knitting blog in favor of Ravelry.

Clicky for bigger.

Ravelry is sort of like LibraryThing for knitters and crocheters. It's still in beta, so you can't fully poke around. I'm kind of fascinated by these organizational tools for the masses. Ravelry allows me to catalog my yarn, my needles, my projects, my books, just about everything, in a fairly extensive way. In some respects, it's like PastPerfect with a social networking side of things.

Now there's an idea. What would a social networked collections management system look like? Would it be a mating of database with listserv? Would there be forums for the small museum? For the curator/registrar? For the collections manager/director? For the dedicated volunteer? ..... Would anyone use it?

It's kind of fun to think about. What if you could comment on other folks collections? As a curatorial tool, it could be very powerful. But realistically, there's just so much sensitive information in these kinds of databases, that it could become difficult to maintain it separately. Not to mention, there's so much going down in the world of caring for collections that the idea of social networking is almost laughable. Although, such a thing would have the potential to envelop the three types of social media communities proposed by the Radical blog in a recent post. Hmmmmm.......

Reconsidering Second Life

In the last issue of Museum News there was that happy colorful exploration of Web 2.0. In this most recent issue, there's an article on museums in Second Life. I remain highly skeptical about Second Life. When I logged in sometime last year, I was frustrated by lag and texturing problems. Either my broadband or my year old laptop were unable to handle the requirements. I continue to feel the technological requirements of the environment make it a less than ideal space in which to reach a broad audience.

But I'm here to say something good about Second Life. Gasp! The article in Museum News - "My Raven-Haired Avatar Flies through the Museum" - had an example which made me pause. When the Exploratorium in San Francisco set up an internet broadcast of a solar eclipse along with a concurrent event in Second Life, they discovered something. Although many people visited the website to watch the webcast, they watched for an average of 7 minutes.

Those who came to the Second World event, about 60 to 70, stayed for the entire hour. They were engaged and asked questions.

This is the most compelling argument for Second Life I have yet heard. Quality of visitor interaction. Yet, I still wonder about the trade offs in terms of cost to develop and maintain an in-world space... But I'm open to being persuaded.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Up and running!

With the blessings of my supervisors, I have now started a Collections Management blog! I have been in my position as Collections Manager for the Anthropology Department at Central Washington University for nearly four weeks now, and it's high time I started blogging about it! So check out Adventures in Collection Management. If I am not mistaken, I think this is the first Collections Management blog associated with a museum (well, museum in the making). There are blogs about Collections objects, but I haven't seen anything like what I intend to do - a little bit personal reaction, a little bit chronicle, a little bit instructional discussion.

There's only one post - I registered the url about half an hour ago - but keep it on your radars. I'm excited.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Updated Links List!

My sidebar links became obsolete almost as soon as I first posted it. I have finally revised it to include all the new museum blogs I have found. There are now about 100 museum blogs in the sidebar! Yowsa! Not all are active, but they're self identified as blogs.

Since I am no longer doing academic research, I am getting a little bit loosey goosey with the definition of museum for the purpose of blogging. Essentially, if it takes itself at least mostly seriously, I will consider it. Besides those museums are usually the most fun.

Anyway, check it out. Am I missing anything?

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Scan Once, Scan Right

Are you or your institution looking to scan a slide collection? Are you interested in knowing more about digital imaging? Do you not know your DPI from your .jpg? Then check out Scan Once, Scan Right, the most excellent thesis project of one of my Museology classmates, Larissa, goddess of digitization.

Although the thesis addresses a specific project, Larissa envisions it as "something that other museums or institutions could use as a guide or starting point for their own projects."

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Brooklyn Strikes again!

Anyone who saw the session with the good folks from the Brooklyn Museum was pretty blown away by how, well, awesome they are. The Brooklyn Museum has a huge backing of community involvement and web forward thinking. And awesome Flickr use.

And now they have blogs! Have they been around a long time? Did I miss them?

Links!
feminist.bloggers@brooklynmuseum - Feminist art, news, and events from the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

and

bloggers@brooklynmuseum - a behind the scenes blog.

Both blogs have full text syndication. How I love full text syndication. I hate stubs, I hate clicking through, I really do.

Plus, and this is really cool, you too can be on the Brooklyn Museum's blogging community, if you ask nicely.

I look forward to seeing how these blogs read!

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Will you be my friend?

I've noted a lot of talk in the past months about the internet and the changing meaning of friendship. I haven't actually gotten to reading what people are writing, and once I do, I'll return with a follow up post.

But these are my raw thoughts in their usual semi-coherent form.

I started blogging because one of my friends was doing it, and he was doing it on a site which combines the internet-special idea of "friending" with independent blogging - Livejournal. So I signed up, identified him as my friend, and have, in the intervening four year, accumulated around 50 individual "LJ friends," some of whom I know in real life, some of whom I have since met, and some whom I have never met but am, nonetheless, good friends with.

And all these social network sites which revolve around the idea of friending - they are all incredibly popular. And even reading a blog on a regular basis offers the idea of intimacy, of getting to know someone a little bit.

But, I wonder, can museums be your friend? This is why that issue of voice is so crucial. If there's not a real person communicating about the museum in a genuine way, I think it's harder to gain that friend-like trust. Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't feel a strong connection to the museum blogs I read, not really. I feel a stronger connection to the museum-related blogs I read, where it feels more individual, more specific. And I assume myself to be representative of others, so this is how it must be, right?

It's something to think about though... if Web 2.0 is about social connection, social collaboration and interaction, how can an institution which might shift personality with each new director maintain a sense of the personal in a blog? Or should it? I'm just not sure.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Astronomers spend millions, find nothing

I know this is a museum blog blog, so to continue under that premise, I will link to the Buzz Blog post: Nothing to Write Home About. Plus they linked to it before I saw it on BBC News.

Mostly, I think this is super cool. I'm a great big nerd, a well rounded great big nerd. And Sci-fi is one of my nerd foci. So when astronomers are willing to admit they found nothing, I think that's awesome. When it's a nothing that's a billion light years wide, devoid of even dark matter, that is super awesome. BBC Article Link.

There's my news contribution for today.

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Then there's the Unicorn Museum which is a slick satire of the Creation Museum. Hey, I like unicorns as much as the next guy.

Monday, August 20, 2007

200!

Anyone else notice that Museumblogs.org has hit 200 blogs?

This is gettin' big people....

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Truth time

I gotta be honest. For the past month or so, I have not been in ur museum blogz. But now I'm back home, settling in to a more regular lifestyle, and I'm ready to dive back in.

I just ran through my feeds. I did not read them, oh me oh my no. You all are a productive lot. I pretty much glanced at the most recent post and moved on. I read my blogs via bloglines. I am more likely, by several times, to read a post if it is syndicated in full text and not just title or title and snippet. This applies to all my feeds, not just museum and museum-related.

While I was out of blog range, I did get a chance to visit the John Michael Kohler Arts Center which is putting on an amazing show right now - all about environmental artists, mostly of the outsider and visionary persuasion. They've taken out their usual standard galleries (Art and Industry industry gallery, the Hmong Gallery, the Kohler House setting) and used the entired building as a showcase for their amazing collection of environmental artists. I do believe most of the stuff in the show belonged to them. I loved it. I've long been a fan of Eugene von Bruenchenheim, but I became acquainted with Levi Fisher Ames, Stella Waitzkin, and Emery Blagdon, among others.

I grew up in Sheboygan County, where the JMKAC is located, and I am consistently amazed by the kind of exhibition they produce and their adherence to recognizing outsider and self taught artists. I would wholly recommend making a by-trip to see this show if you have the opportunity.

Of course, I may be biased. I used to work there. And the Kohler Foundation once awarded me an art scholarship. Nonetheless, I think this is pretty cool. Plus they produced a hoodie with Bruenchenheim's chicken bone chairs on the back which I do intend to purchase.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

We're coming to a museum near you.

Remember that video I posted ages ago - the I-generation? Probably not. But the premise is that folks my age and younger are often pretty well connected to the internet and technology things.

Well, we've finished our museum degrees and are out looking for jobs. Some of us have found them (yay!), some of us are still looking (just keep swimming, just keep swimming), but we're all probably going to get there in the end. For example, I have two friends that are still in the interview process. Both of them, although their interests lay in collections management, are interested in updating their potential employers' web presence.

We represent the intersection of web savvy and university trained museum professional. It seems that many museum tech people have not been trained originally as museum professionals - nothing wrong with that, just saying. Given that we are something of a shift, or even an intersection, I think it will be interesting to see what happens. Are we isolated? (No, probably not, as at least two other folks we graduated with are very involved with podcasting.) Will the degree-bearing museum person with an interest in technology shift what the museum online world looks like? (I'd wager no, actually, because, while we are passionate, most of us can't code to save our lives.) But I think there is potential. Something to keep an eye out for, in any case.

When I think of blogging for my new institution (which I haven't even started yet, due to circumstances), I imagine a blog which is, at first, very informal. Possibly even personal. Basically, I think of me blogging about my job. About the day to day of collection managing a previously undermanaged collection. And I imagine a tone very close to the tone of this blog. Because it is hard for me to blog things I am excited about without having this crazy, half-developed, decidedly non-refined tone.

Anyway, watch out for us. We're coming.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Incommunicado

Expect radio silence from this corner of the blogosphere for the next several weeks. Sometimes you have to drop everything and then try to put the pieces back together.

I'm sure you'll get on fine without me. May I recommend perusing the xkcd webcomic if you are looking for something to fill the time?

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Props

Props to the Wood County Historical Center for blogging collections. The linked post is the third ever on their blog, and I found it fascinating. It takes a piece that might not get out on the exhibit floor, gives a lot of background (with photo examples), and shows how something as, well, down right weird as a whiskbroom holder (weird in the modern era of DustBusters, anyway) can tell us a great deal about social life and relations over a hundred years ago.

I find the writing sounds quite formal, but they break it down into easy to digest sections. So props Wood County Historical Center, I look forward to reading more.

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