Open Source Decisions

Bravo to the Guggenheim!

According to the Linux PR newswire, the New York museum has chosen the open source library system Koha for their special collections and archives. This is a great step for those advocates of open source solutions within the community of museum professionals.

What I like about the Museum's decision for open source is the valuing of flexibility as a core system requirement.

"The Guggenheim's future development ideas include creating an interface that allows selected library special collections to be searched online as well as creating a bibliographic "crosswalk" between the catalog and the Museum's collection management software. "

The variables in the management selection matrix are shifting. 10 years ago, this decision (and criteria) would have been unheard of within any cultural institution. I was talking with the DigiComm group last night and we were reveling in the old days in which IT's sole function was keeping servers up and running. With that mandate, open source is the last responsibility that any CTO would into consideration. The refrain is memorable, "I value reliability first and foremost. Who is on the line if the technology fails? That is why we purchase Microsoft because I know that there is always someone to call when things go bad." And so on... As platforms, servers and networks have grown more reliable, IT has been freed from this tyranny of unreliable technology to really become a the natural partner in connecting departments and bridging information/service gaps.

Though the museum world has been slow entering this phase (see my post on the challenges of entrenched vertical managment), the adoption of open source technology in a major cultural institution points to sector-wide shifts that will surely cascade in the coming decade.

Though it is just the library system, this is a start. Publically-accessible standards and platforms have a great way of leading to other, more pervasive open solutions.

Technology Tour - 3/8/2007 - 3/14/2007

This week's tour offers current news items that overlap with some topics I have covered in the past: license-free access to museum images for students and scholars, RFID's ability to enhance visitor experience (and commerce) and the increased stress of multiple profiles, communication mediums and contact information that have arisen.

• On the licensing front, The Metropolitan Museum of Art this week announced that it has formed a partnership with ArtSTOR to serve license-free images to the scholarly and academic community. This was the very crux of my criticism of the Smithsonian and Corbis deal. It did not make any allowance for fair use. Bravo to the Met for its foresight and advocacy of cultural capital in the service of public good.


• In international news, the City of Amsterdam has become the first municipality on the globe to create an RFID infrastructure for tourists. Once purchased, the RFID-enabled I Amsterdam Card enables users to receive free admission to museums and unlimited access to public transportation. The expansion of this technology reminds me of my post this week on Web 2.0 and social good. For whatever reason, Web 2.0 services are most successful when they closely mirror an offline activity. For museums looking to build RFID-enabled collection portals that bridge offline and online visits, a more robust emergence of RFID with personal experience represents a strong step forward. Via RFID, first comes the management solution for access control and ticketing, next comes curatorial opportunities for accessing content. I hope to see similar programs here in the United States.


• Social network fatigue comes to phone. This article from the New York Times (subscription required) points to user communication fatigue across communication channels. Not only are people being swamped by their online social networking profiles, but the communication devices of real-world social networks (personal and work email, personal/home/work/IM/skype phone numbers) are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. The arrival of services to merge phone numbers into one should come as no surprise. Next is the question of how communication network fatigue can be solved online.


• Given their revenue problems (current and future), why isn't big media designing online radio and streaming services? Another NYT article, this time discussing the emergence of a new online radio site catering to a no-hassle model for the young and on-the-go technology users. This new service, called slacker, builds greater personalization and recommendation features beyond what is currently offered by sites like pandora. Funny, the record, media and broadcasting industries seem content to let new developers and syndicators create online services, build user bases and then complain about losing revenue. Hardly a proactive stance, no?


• Finally, I've tried to highlight an interest website now and then. I got word of the Museum of Lost Interactions from 24 Hour Museum. This mini-museum site is a competently design effort that features old and obscure technologies that have helped define the experience of content and media. Enjoy!

RFID and Museums

Last night I had the great opportunity to drop in on the Brand Experience Lab. For this group, the challenge is to create memorable experiences that seamlessly pair consumer expectations with new technologies. Seeing some of the next generation technologies in marketing and interactive media, I was reminded just how far behind the cultural sector had gotten with even current technologies. RFID being a prime example of a solution that is way past due.

RFID in Museums is by no means a new idea, it just isn't being fully explored and leveraged to maximum effect. Back in 2003, RFID was making the rounds of Museum technology conferences and research papers. While there are institutions out there that are using RFID, these tend to be rooted in collections management. After my own epiphany at BEL, I became even more aware of how far RFID could enrich and inform the in-Museum experience for visitors.

I will not pontificate too much on this. Instead, I'll let my readers review some of the resources and links out there relevant to RFID and Museums and hopefully guide some great research and services to the right audiences.

• Cleveland Museum of Art - The publication CIO describes the Cleveland Museum's ventures in active visitorship to their encyclopedic institution.


• The Walker Art Center currently leverages RFID in its collections management and location tracking systems.


• eXspot: A Wireless RFID Transceiver for Recording and Extending Museum Visits - A great research and case study on how RFID can be combined with visitor systems to improve and extend the user visitation experience.


• Another eXspot article. This one presented at the ACM conference. All articles relating to RFID and Museums on the ACM portal can be explored here.


• The National Museum in Tokyo explores RFID in coordination with a PDA-type user guide. This would open up a host of applications and devices from wayfinding to audio guides and other self-guided tour options.


• Far and away a leader in Museum and attraction-based uses of RFID, LEGOLAND implants RFID into tickets and bracelets for admissions and visitor tracking. They also use it to locate lost children.


• Another LEGOLAND case study.


• Finally, two articles on different handheld technologies that read RFID tags in Museum contexts. One at Engadget the other from a university in Germany.

Follow-up: Museum Websites

After my post yesterday on the importance of expanded conversation of Museum websites, I wanted to follow-up with examples of successful sites out there.

• GoSmithsonian.com - Although I have railed against the Smithsonian in other contexts, the interactive maps and features of this website are to be commended. They obviously developed this website with the end user's Museum experience in mind and created web services to maximizing this experience.


• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has barely changed in the last 60 years, yet somehow it has learned that creating a dyanic, engaging website can offer the institution opportunities for new connections and insights and relavance. As this article points out, it is not the size of the institution that defines the quality of the web experience. Reviewing the website, one of my favorite parts is the section that describes the Isabella lifetime Membership in which anyone named Isabella may receive a complimentry lifetime Membership to the Museum.


• The Modern Art Museum - Fort Worth recently unveiled its own website redesign that merits a look. The sparse, clean site digitally mirrors the lines and layout of the Museum's new architecture. A well-designed intent, I would have preferred to see content and exhibitions take center stage on the Museum homepage, not an array of house-ads and special event notices. I did appreciate the Museum's blog being front and center though.


• The SFMoMA also recently released a subsection presenting the research to uncover a hidden picture in a painting by Picasso. While neither of the paintings strikes me as overly magnificent, the content model here is fantastic.

Aging Museum Websites

This week, I ran across an article (login required) by Andrew Marton in the Dallas Star-Telegram and winced. In the piece, Mr. Marton writes "a more robust online presence is an attempt to entice a potentially huge number of younger patrons." This perspective is more than a little simplistic in its understanding of the demographics of web users and websites.

Taking a step back, the polarity presented here between grey-heads and cyber-babies is just blatantly false. According to comScore, Internet usage increased by over 24 percent last year. Of particular note here is the list of fastest growing properties for web user over 55. This list of sites includes MySpace, Wikipedia, Washington Mututal and Craigslist. A rhetorical question: what then is the older audience doing online? Well, the same thing as younger audiences. They are finding ways to communicate, research, educate, transact and connect themselves through the online channel.

Though the reality is interesting, it is the misconception of whom the web serves that is essential to understand and dicuss. From my own experience, it is exactly this mode of thinking that drives many Museums to keep websites and online services on the back burner in terms of priorities and strategic thinking – especially when it comes to discussions of funding projects and returns on investment.

The results are easy to see - most museums that I have reviewed are recycling the basic HTML containers they have used for the last five years. This is a pity because, as the comScore survey makes clear, audiences are maturing, growing and moving on. While museum-goers often cherish a more traditional experience of Museums and exhibitions, website visitors do not cling to a similar sensibility. As technology raises the bar of possibility on the web, Internet users raise the bar of expectation.

No Director would permit an exhibition hall to inspire a ho-hum reaction, yet this is frequently the net impact of museum websites.

This is an incredible resource to let go to seed. For perspective, according to the annual report of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, their website enjoyed almost 20 million visitors in the 2006 fiscal year. That is almost five times as many "visitors" than the actual Museum hosted. It is impossible to imagine that all 20 million of these visitors are “younger patrons”. Clearly, how that Museum represents itself on the web impacts a substantial portion of its in-person visitorship across demographic segments.

Lesson: We (technology practitioners and managers) need to be very careful of how we frame discussions on website technologies and whom they serve.

Weekly Tour 2/2/2007 - 2/25/2007

I know, 23 days is a bit more than one week worth of touring. Many apologies to reeaders. I did get a little backlogged with some of the posting these last few weeks. I think the MoMA scandal is worthy of some devoted time and converation. Hopefully, the tour will return to its regular schedule this week and next (unless any other startling revelations hit the press).

• Artful Manager had an interesting look at the economics of nonprofits and how they differ from the private sector (duh!). Buddhist Economics is one approach that he claims offers insights on nonprofit motives and missions. I am still waiting for Buddhist Technology to explain why the cultural sector is such a technology laggard.
  
  
• Though not exactly a Museum piece, I found this article on Org. Charts and Social Networks fascinating. "Org charts are not just about putting people in their place. They are the basis for a social network of professionals. And now that social networking tools and software are advanced enough to express complex relationships between people, projects, and ideas, we should be integrating these technologies into our workplaces." Great idea, but once you've spent capital on this software (ROI anyone?), it seems to me you haven't even begun your task. The real challenge is linking the 75 year-old curator of mideveil art with the visionary project manager and the gifted web developer and somehow finding some common professional ground and vision upon which to build services. Overcoming the silos is only the first step.
  
  
• A cute by rather naive piece on how art informs technology was posted on queeqegs. The one lesson that I did enjoy was "Lesson 7: Experiment with small studies and prototypes. When Monet painted outdoors, he made many small studies and then would return to the studio to climb up onto scaffolding to create the wall-sized panels of water lilies. When Henry Moore developed bronze sculptures, he developed many small prototypes. When you’re building something enormous, build many small, quick prototypes before you’re ready to embark upon the real thing." My hesitation with this analogy? Monet wasn't being ridden by finance offices to produce results or drive revenue. Further, few technologists have the freedom and executive buy-in to go dark and develop projects of genius on their own - outside the confines of their departments.
  
  
• Museum 2.0 asks a great question: who owns visitor-generated content in a Museum setting? As interactive exhibitions and sharing tools turn content production over to users, who owns the work that these Web 2.0 tools generate. How do we even talk about this phenonmenon in terms of rights, licenses and ownership? Is it fair-use that is applicable here or do Museum and other institutions need to develop robust creative commons or ownership policies. This question may arise as the Web 2.0 equivalent to privacy policies and opt-in regulations that arose with the web's last wave.