deep in the midst of production deadlines for MW2009, i'm celebrating Ada Lovelace day by remembering Muriel Cooper, co-founder of MIT's Visible Language Workshop. a pioneer in thinking about – and visually representing – information space, Cooper's insistence that information had characteristics beyond the linear was of significant influence on me as i worked with the Art Information Task Force, structuring the Categories for the Description of Works of Art in the early 1990s.

Issue no. 8 of e_conservation magazine is now online and available for free download from http://www.e-conservationline.com/.

INDEX - Issue 8, February 2009

News
Conference Reviews

Salt Weathering on Buildings and Stone Sculptures
22-24 October 2008, Copenhagen, Denmark
Reviewed by Anca Nicolaescu

When: Wednesday March 25, 2009 at 8:00pm
Where: the Regency Town House
13 Brunswick Square
Hove, England BN31EH
Get Directions

Culture Geeks is a community based in Brighton, open to everyone who is interested in using digital technologies in the cultural sector.

THE TALK

if you'd like to save money on your trip to MW2009 we've set up a thread for people who are looking for roommates, in the MW discussions.

Hi, I'm a new member so am not sure entirely how this all works yet but excited to find out. I am currently putting together a research proposal for an MA dissertation on museums and the web. I am interested in the Steve. museums project and wondered if anyone knew of any similar experiments taking place in England. I know a lot of museums are going down the digitising route, but are any allowing feedback from their audience? I'd appreciate any info anyone has. Other European sites would be of interest too. Thanks, and looking forward to some interesting conversations!

My presentation at Kieo University, Tokyo, from January is online now, and embedded below.

Culture Geeks is a community based in Brighton, UK, open to everyone who is interested in using digital technologies in the cultural sector.

In this talk we will explore how museums might get involved with the Semantic
Web, both at a practical level - what you actually do - and at the more
theoretical level - what do you achieve by it.

Talk: Adventures in Linked Data land

Tagging, Folksonomy and Art Museums: Results of steve.museum’s research

J. Trant, Archives & Museum Informatics

Abstract
Tagging has proven attractive to art museums as a means of enhancing access to on-line collections. The steve.museum research project studied tagging and the relationship of the resulting folksonomy to professionally created museum documentation. A variety of research questions were proposed, and methods for answering them explored. Works of art were assembled to be tagged, a tagger was deployed, and tagging encouraged. A folksonomy of 36,981 terms was gathered, comprising 11,944 terms in 31,031 term/work pairs. The analysis of the tagging of these works – and the assembled folksonomy – is reported here, and further work described.

the slides from my presentation yesterday at Keio University, Tokyo, are on-line now, at slideshare [and embedded below]. Thanks to everyone who responded to my query about what keeps you up at night.

/jt

There's a new update out from the Pew Internet and American Life Project about "Adults and Social Network Sites". See the summary at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/272/report_display.asp and download the report from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Adult_social_networking_data_memo_FINAL.pdf

A new grant opportunity for projects exploring large-scale data analysis has been announced, supporting collaborative research in Canada, the US and the UK that makes use of large data sets.

From their Web site:

Abstract

Tagging has proven attractive to art museums as a means of enhancing the indexing of online collections. This paper examines the state of the art in tagging within museums and introduces the steve.museum research project, and its study of tagging behaviour and the relationship of the resulting folksonomy to professionally created museum documentation. A variety of research questions are proposed and methods for answering them discussed. Experiments implemented in the steve.museum research collaboration are discussed, preliminary results suggested, and further
work described.

J Trant. Tagging, Folksonomy and Art Museums: Early Experiments and Ongoing Research, Journal of Digital Information, Vol 10, No 1 (2009) available at : http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/270/277

Abstract

This paper reviews research into social tagging and folksonomy (as reflected in about 180 sources published through December 2007). Methods of researching the contribution of social tagging and folksonomy are described, and outstanding research questions are presented. This is a new area of research, where theoretical perspectives and relevant research methods are only now being defined. This paper provides a framework for the study of folksonomy, tagging and social tagging systems. Three broad approaches are identified, focusing first, on the folksonomy itself (and the role of tags in indexing and retrieval); secondly, on tagging (and the behaviour of users); and thirdly, on the nature of social tagging systems (as socio-technical frameworks).

J Trant, Studying Social Tagging and Folksonomy: A Review and Framework, Journal of Digital Information, Vol 10, No 1 (2009) available at http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/269/278

Shelley Bernstein has just announced an initiative to help illustrate Wikipedia articles: Wikipedia Loves Art. Part scavenger hunt, part photography contest, it's involving community in the visual documentation of museum collectons, and enhancing  Wikipedia entries. A far cry from being banned for linking into museum web sites!

Digital Project Manager

Ref. 75816

Salary: £29,305 per annum

Contract: Fixed term, 12 months