museumsandtheweb.com - Technology

Digital Storytelling Workshop for Museum Staff

Daniel_Weinshenker — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:12:35 +0000

Digital Storytelling Workshop for Museum Staff - Apr 19-21st and Apr 22-24th in Denver - The Center for Digital Storytelling will be offering two different 3-day intensive Digital Storytelling Workshops for museum staff directly after MW2010 in Denver, CO. These workshops will be lead by Mary Ann McNair, a seasoned digital storytelling facilitator who worked at the Colorado History Museum for over 25 years and helped implement digital storytelling into two exhibits at the museum.

Preservation Survey - DuraSpace Small Archives Group

adavidow — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:51:41 +0000

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229DKEFJWUP

Small archives represent the long tail of cultural heritage. Most of us are coping with inadequate resources available for addressing our primary missions, and lack the time, staff, skills, and other resources to address long-term access to that cultural heritage. This includes the challenge of locating and securing tools and resources to address the long-term preservation required to assure that access.

Survey on Museum Use of Social Media to Engage Their Communities

rasherman — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:41:31 +0000

I'm interested in knowing how other museums - and other cultural institutions - are engaging their communities through social media technologies.

Are you?

Help me gather benchmark data by completing this survey about what types of social media are being used by museums, how much time is spent on it and who in the organization manages this engagement.

Fluid Engage: my intro as a project advisor

jtrant — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:54:56 +0000

two things that i would like to bring to Fluid Engage :

prior art [we've thought about a lot of these questions before, though we might not have solved the problems - see Bibliography at http://conference.archimuse.com/researchForum ]
apis as means of inter-application linkages [see for example http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2009/04/16/the-brooklyn-museum-api-qa-wit... ]

web pages i showed:

Archives & Museum Informatics [our home page]
http://www.archimuse.com/

Unconference discussion notes: Small museum staff, big ideas

Layla Masri — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:49:03 +0000

Our session was a lively discussion of the challenges faced my museums with small staffs and even smaller budgets:

Muriel Cooper: designer of the information landscape

jtrant — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:24:53 +0000

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.

Culture Geeks March Talk: 'eHive - the CMS revolution reaches the museum sector'

val.cartei — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:23:14 +0000

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

New Pew Stats: American Adults and Social Networks

jtrant — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:33:34 +0000

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

hosting/collaborative infrastructure

esiegel — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:39:39 +0000

Hello, all:

Sorry for any cross posting...
=================================

The NY Hall of Science has gone through several iterations of email hosting solutions from large plain IMAP/POP hosts like Verizon to smaller Lotus Notes hosting services. When Google premiered their Google Apps enterprise service last year, we gave it a good long look and decided to take the plunge.

Houston… We have a wiki workshop

ngamble — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:15:52 +0000

I flew into Houston, Texas yesterday for the 21st Annual Visitor Studies Association conference. This is my first time in Space City, as well as the Lone Star State, for that matter. This morning, I presented a workshop with Jes Koepfler, a fellow Museum Studies grad and my “partner in crime” on the Mischief & Malice: Crime in the Museum online exhibition project (we co-managed this project put together by the University of Toronto’s Master of Museum Studies Class of 2008 using a wiki). Appropriately, we presented Using Wikis for Project Management.

Museums and the Web Benchmarking Survey: Time for an Update

jtrant — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:05:16 +0000

Some time ago – in 2005 – Archives & Museum Informatics launched a survey of museum web activities. We noted then that:

Each financial cycle museum Webmasters struggle
to justify their budget requests. Whenever statistical reports are
circulated someone asks, "How do we compare?" When exploring the
benefits of a new function, Web teams ask themselves "Is it worth the
investment?" Answers to these questions are hard to come by.

[see http://www.archimuse.com/research/mwbenchmarks/index.html for the full background]

This survey – the results of which are written up at http://www.archimuse.com/research/mwbenchmarks/report/mwbenchmarks2005.html – was designed to help fill some of the voids in our knowledge. As a first stab at the problem we realise that it wasn't perfect. And things have changed since 2005!

We've been asked to update the survey for a client-group of museums, and thought we'd use the opportunity to ask for input from the community as well. If we're going to launch it again more broadly, we'd like it to be useful to you ...

So, please, take a look at the questions – available as a PDF from http://www.archimuse.com/research/mwbenchmarks/MW-Survey05.pdf – and post your thoughts on revisions or additional questions here.

Media Arts Scotland has announced a Twitterist in Residence

jtrant — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:22:41 +0000

During the month of July, 2008, you can follow Netwurker Mez as she explores the artistic potential of Twitter. She's New Media Scotalnd's second Twitterer in residence.

Follow Netwurker Mez's tweets at http://www.twitter.com/mediascot

Anyone else doing fun twitter things?

/jt

steve.museum announces facebook application: tag art in your profile

jtrant — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:55:33 +0000

steve.museum has released enhancements to the steve tagger. you can now:

share images and tags
invite others to participate, and
display your tagged works on a Facebook profile pages, invite FB friends to tag, and see the most popular tagged works of art.

drupalcamptoronto2008 - part 3 - image solutions

jtrant — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:45:17 +0000

What’s the right image solution for my site?
Jocelyn Stretton
http://2008.drupalcamptoronto.org/content/what%E2%80%99s-right-image-solution-my-site

a review of some modules available

DrupalCamp Toronto - 2008

jtrant — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:06:15 +0000

I'm hanging out at Drupal Camp in Toronto this week -- listening to other TO-based drupalers talk about what they've done. Here are some notes:

Unit Testing with/for Drupal [development] - Simple Test module
http://2008.drupalcamptoronto.org/content/automated-testing-with-simpletest

overlooked at AAM: the MUSE awards announced

jtrant — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:51:24 +0000

The MUSE awards were announced at AAM this week, and the list represents an interesting overview of museum technology activity.

Here's a project that wasn't recognised [something that surprised me a bit]: The milti-touch tables at the Denver Art Museum.

exhibition:editor 3D

Sandra Murg — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:41:24 +0000

On Friday, 11th April, I held a mini-workshop together with Otmar Moritsch. We were showing how to use a software tool to create three-dimensional exhibitions.
Some of the audience were interested in the web site, so I thought I could use this way to give you the URL. Also comments of any kind are very much appreciated!

The website: http://www.exhibition3d.at

You will also have the possibility to download a demoversion of the tool!

Nonprofit IT Staffing: Budgets, Salaries, Training and Planning; a new report

jtrant — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:40:17 +0000

The second part of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) report on information technology in Not for Profits is now available. Nonprofit IT Staffing: Budgets, Salaries, Training and Planning reports the results of a USA national survey.

Findings of the second Nonprofit IT Staffing Report include:

New Report: Nonprofit IT Staffing: Staffing Levels, Recruiting, Retention, and Outsourcing

jtrant — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:37:04 +0000

There's a new report out from NTEN and the Nonprofit Times about IT staffing in Not for Profits. Download the report

Highlights from the Executive Summary:

On average, nonprofits employ one IT staff member for every 18 employees.
Most nonprofits continue to feel understaffed when it comes to IT. Size of organization did not seem
to impact staffing satisfaction.
IT staff spend their time in much the same way, regardless of organization size or level of technology adoption. For the second year, the largest percentage of staff time, roughly 40%, is spent on desktop and application support.
The average tenure for IT staff at nonprofits is 4.3 years. Tenures were longer for larger organizations and organizations that felt they had greater technology adoption.
Almost all nonprofits outsource at least some technology tasks; more technical tasks continue to be
more commonly outsourced.

There are reports coming on Salaries & Budgets and IT Management & Planning based on the same survey

Amsterdam Museums go Mobile

Juha — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:17:45 +0000

From museumlab.org:

KPN Mobile Museum Guide

Readers of this blog have seen a recent surge in news on the Amsterdam Museum Night. The latest instalment in this series is the KPN Mobile Museum Guide. Visitors of the Museum Night can text 'n8' to 4628 to receive the complete program on their mobile phone. The Mobile Museum Guide includes an interactive map of Amsterdam with all the museums, the n8 blog, nachtgeluiden, a quiz and an interactive tour with Blue Tooth, designed for the Amsterdam City Archives.

In the future, the n8 intends to build upon the current infrastructure to launch more services, such as streaming audio and video, mapping and tagging. The Mobile Museum Guide was launched on 24 October. The Amsterdam Museum Night will take place on Saturday 3 November.

Any Twits at MATW?

bryan kennedy — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:47:11 +0000

Hey so will any of us museum web nerds be Twitter-ing during the conference?

Yahoo Pipes - what's it all about?

jon_pratty — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:00:04 +0000

Before my workshop I'm looking at how Yahoo Pipes works. Is there anyone at MW 07 who has used this interesting new setup?

Museums and Technology Workshop at CAJM, Toronto

jtrant — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:09:02 +0000

David and I gave a workshop yesterday on 'Museums and Technology' for the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM). It was a last minute favour for a friend, that provided a chance to think about strategies for approaching technology choices.

The future of museums

dbear — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 03:49:54 +0000

In November I undertook a project with the Canadian Heritage Information Network to explore potential future information technologies and their implications for museums. First I identified 25 technological scenarios based on technologies that already exist, at least in the laboratory. Then we asked a number of experts who would help to predict when, if ever, these technologies would be widespread within North America. Subsequently, we held a session with museum professionals, consultants, students and educators to explore how these technolgies might be used in museums and imagine their transformative potential. The process is continuing this month with the writing of a number of 'vignettes' that depict new realities in which the museum might find itself in the coming years and the response to these vignettes by second year Museum Studies students who are looking at their current plans for an exhibit in 2007 and how these might change in light of tgechnological opportunities envisioned for 2013.

Several very useful observations can be made on the process to date. In this posting, let me simply make one: few information professionals estimated timeframes as short as the ones predicted by our experts. The effect of their longer timeframes was largely to remove developments from the 3-6 year planning window. Yet our experts (myself, Stephen Downes of the Canadian National Research Council, Clifford Lynch on CNI, Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, John Tolva of IBM and David Weinberger from the Harvard Berkman Center on Internet Law and Society), placed the following technologies in the 3-6 year window. What is intriguing, is to imagine the social world of a person who takes all these information and communications technologies for granted;-)

The experts predicted that within six years, most North American museums clients (though of course the statements say "Canadian" since the study was funded by CHIN) will consider it commonplace to:

Barry Wellman on the "Internet and Everyday Life": people who talk, talk!

jtrant — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:46:27 +0000

Barry Wellman spoke last night at the University of Toronto about his ongoing research into the 'Internet in Everyday Life'. It was an interesting, but somehow dissatisfying presentation of some significant research into the role of communications technologies in maintaining social ties. If that doesn't sound like the 'Internet' to you, it's because it isn't.

Though Wellman casts his net widely, and talks about researching the Internet as a whole, his work focuses on e-mail (which when the first of these studies was conducted was the major source of traffic on the net). The most interesting set of statistics presented last night were about the inter-relationships between the use of fixed phones, mobile phones, email and SMS and how their use breaks down across type of social ties, and the distance between communicants. He found a group of people who are very heavy communicators, high users of all types of media. Communications technologies enable communication. Wow.

upgrade to drupal 4.7

jtrant — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:29:17 +0000

i'm doing the drupal upgrade from 4.6 to 4.7. sorry in advance if you encounter strange behaviour. please let me know if things aren't working, or if there are changes and enhancements you'd like to see.

there are a number of new features i'd like to deploy (including better menus) and i'll post notes here as i notice things that change.

/jt

flickr badge + other uses

rasherman — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:27:28 +0000

Hello Jennifer,

Thank you again for a memorable and useful conference. I came back with so many ideas that my staff is hiding whenever I head to their offices.
We're inspired by the flickr pools and see some interesting applications for it in our website. Can you tell me what code was used to create the flickr thumbnail collage on the right hand nav of conference.archimuse.com?

Thanks!

Rose

Work of Art Microformat

TimG — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 02:25:57 +0000

Hi All,

We're developing an xhtml markup standard for the presentation of works of art on the web, based on existing XML schema.

I've initiated exploratory discussions on the microformats.org wiki at:

http://microformats.org/wiki/work-of-art

I'm sure a lot of you have thoughts about how best to use semantic markup to present artworks. What class names do you usually use? What is the structure of the "object information" page on your website? What metadata schema do your museums use behind the scenes?

Research Forum: Technology

jtrant — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:20:51 +0000

Technology issues in museums and the web research include:

How well are existing tools and methods serving digital museum users? Do we need virtual museum evaluations to determine:
- Are educational sites useful to teachers, students and free choice learners?
- Can researchers effectively locate information about any given topic?
- Do exhibition and content database creators have sufficient technology tools for their tasks?
How can technology and tools be improvded to provide access to museum information? Focus qestions include:
- How can the visibility of on-line museum resoures be improved?
- How can the museum community provide better service for information seekers? including
  - integrating access to multiple museum resources
  - support for image-based retrieval