One provocation for Big Data

I’ve started thinking a lot about Big Data and what it could mean for museums in a time when, as Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford write “The era of Big Data has begun.”

The two have put forward an excellent and provocative paper about some of the weaknesses and problematics associated with the use of Big Data, titled Six Provocations for Big Data. Chief amongst these is the idea that Big Data is changing the very way we research. They write:

Big Data not only refers to very large data sets and the tools and procedures used to manipulate and analyze them, but also to a computational turn in thought and research (Burkholder 1992). Just as Ford changed the way we made cars – and then transformed work itself – Big Data has emerged a system of knowledge that is already changing the objects of knowledge, while also having the power to inform how we understand human networks and community…

We would argue that Big Data creates a radical shift in how we think about research. Commenting on computational social science, Lazer et al argue that it offers ‘the capacity to collect and analyze data with an unprecedented breadth and depth and scale’ (2009, p. 722). But it is not just a matter of scale. Neither is enough to consider it in terms of proximity, or what Moretti (2007) refers to as distant or close analysis of texts. Rather, it is a profound change at the levels of epistemology and ethics. It reframes key questions about the constitution of knowledge, the processes of research, how we should engage with information, and the nature and the categorization of reality. Just as du Gay and Pryke note that ‘accounting tools…do not simply aid the measurement of economic activity, they shape the reality they measure’ (2002, pp. 12-13), so Big Data stakes out new terrains of objects, methods of knowing, and definitions of social life.

This is merely one of the fascinating propositions that the two put forward, as they argue for a serious interrogation of the way Big Data will shape research, and problematise the problems of both the nature of the data, and the way it is used in analysis.

It is a very interesting paper, and one that discusses a very real issue that I think museums will more and more have to confront in coming years, vested as we are in “the nature and the categorization of reality.” Museum collection databases are a significant cultural resource – and a knowledge asset in their own right. However, to date, they have rarely been treated as such. Museum collection data is still generally considered as secondary to the object itself as an interpretive tool. It merely supports the object.

However, as we move further into this new era – an era when data can be related, mined and aggregated with new viscosity, when the value of data for knowledge production increases, then museums need to address this issue. We need to think about the quality of our data, and how we want people to be able to access and use it. We need to ask who should manage and take care of our data, and what data should be included. If it has the potential to be as valuable (maybe even more so?) to society as our objects, then surely it needs to be taken care of with the same level of priority.

In my recent post on whether museums should still be treating the physical space as the main one, Mia Ridge made the following comment:

And to play devil’s advocate… there are probably lots of people who can do more interesting things with museum content online than your average museum can currently manage. That might be because of resourcing or recruitment issues, a lack of imagination, because the organisation doesn’t know how to value or get excited about online content, whatever… but maybe if they’re not going to do digital well, then museums should just open up their data and let other people get on with creating the next wave of museums online.

This too raises interesting issues for museums about how to best make their data available for others to use, however, because effective data modelling is often complex. As Daniel W. Rasmus writes, in his article on Why Big Data Won’t Make You Smart, Rich, Or Pretty

Combining models full of nuance and obscurity increases complexity. Organizations that plan complex uses of Big Data and the algorithms that analyze the data need to think about continuity and succession planning in order to maintain the accuracy and relevance of their models over time, and they need to be very cautious about the time it will take to integrate, and the value of results achieved, from data and models that border on the cryptic.

So, if Big Data is becoming increasingly important in research and the constitution of knowledge, and yet museums are not themselves necessarily likely to be the ones using it internally (assuming that our expertise lies elsewhere) how can we then think of continuity and succession planning for our data, to ensure it is useful for other researchers? Is this something we can even achieve?

The Linked Open Data movement is obviously going to be a part of this, but I wonder how much further we need to go. Surely the notion of moving from object-based knowledge to knowledge that integrates Big Data starts to essentially change the very core of how museums function as a knowledge institution? And if it does, what does that mean? Is it even possible for museums to tackle this without knowing what an anticipated end result might be? Or is this something that is too complex to be dealt with for all but a very few institutions (if any)? And if so, do we just withdraw from what some believe will be the fifth wave in the technology revolution?

This zippy little article shows what 100 million calls to 311 revealed about New York. What patterns could emerge from our collections if we could analyse information about our collections on such scale? Would it become feasible to see both the trees and  the forest of the museum collection – the objects, and the large-scale contexts in which they exist. Could utilising museum  collections data in this way recomplexify museum objects and collections, adding new layers of meaning and reconnecting them   back to the wider world of information?

I have no answers here. These are still ideas in sketch, and there is much more to be discussed as my ideas evolve on this subject. But I think it is something we should be talking about.

What would you be prepared to sacrifice for a better online museum experience?

Monday’s post, asking whether the physical space of the museum should still be the most important one, brought all kinds of new readers to the blog, and has started the richest discussions on museumgeek to date. While I had been trying to get a little more into the heads of those who are not enthusiastic about museums’ move into the digital space, I primarily received passionate comments from those who are.

However, as they so often do, Seb Chan’s comments cut right to the very heart of the question. He wrote:

Each medium has different affordances.
The problem is not so much whether museums ‘should’ but whether they are structurally organised and resourced to be able to – even if they want to (which, to be honest nowadays, most do).

While most commenters on the post were arguing for increased digital presence, I wonder how quickly those same calls would dry up from all but the most passionate if people were asked to actually make choices about what would have to be sacrificed in order to have a more significant and inclusive web presence.

What would you be prepared to give up in order to ensure that your favourite museum had a really great web presence (and what does that even look like?)? Some public programming? Would it be ok to have a slightly less active (or interactive) physical museum if it meant that the online presence offered more than simple marketing, like a really strong community space for discussions about art or history that included regular interaction with museum experts and curators?

Would you be prepared to argue that a museum might need to lose a position somewhere else (curatorial? Education? Public art?) in order to fund the position of digital curator, for instance? And if so, which position?

Maybe we could better train our existing staff, to ensure that they were equipped to deal with the intricacies of being online more. But then, if we wanted every curator to consider dealing with the public as a priority, that might mean that some institutions (particularly smaller ones) might end up having one or two less exhibitions a year, because the curatorial time would be so divided. Would that be ok?

And this is where this whole thing gets difficult. It is easy to argue for the importance of being innovative online, but how do we actually make it happen? Is there something we can learn from the shift in emphasis in museums towards education in the wake of the New Museology? Were new positions created (and funded), or were old ones lost? How can we apply what was learned from that experience to this situation?

Or maybe it’s not about sacrificing anything, but instead finding new and more responsive structural models?

I don’t know. But until museums have truly compelling web experiences that are publicly (and politically) regarded as being as valuable as their physical spaces, then the online aspect of the museum will probably continue to be a nice addition to a museum’s core work, but will not be part of that core work.

In a 2010 interview for the Huffington Post, museology’s own Twitter celebrity MuseumNerd said this.

Museums have historically been slow to adapt. In the present day this is tied up with the way they are funded. Basically, the ones holding the funds often have to be forward thinking before a museum can afford to be. It strikes me that this should maybe be the other way around.

I cannot help but agree.

What do you think? Is there something you’d be prepared to sacrifice to ensure your favourite museum had a better and more compelling online presence? And what do we do if the answer to that question is no?

Should museums still treat the physical space as the most important one? If so, why?

When, a couple of weeks ago, I asked what your dangerous idea about museums is, one of the responses really stuck out for me. Damien wrote:

I do not think we should hasten into the virtual world. There is a place for online content and catalogues, without a doubt, but museums need to be physical spaces containing actual objects. We are already teaching out children to disengage with the physical and retreat into the cyber world.

He is not the first person I have heard make a similar argument. In fact, it is something I have heard articulated by a significant number of people working in museums and art galleries (maybe more than those who believe otherwise). This is something that will come as no surprise to those working in museum tech. There is often a sense that we are trying to push against a tide of people who might agree in theory that museums need some form of online presence, but who also see this as being less important than other museum work at the least, and at worst, actually counter to the museum’s purpose. I have had quite senior people in the field argue quite passionately against me when I talk about museums uploading their whole collections to the web, instead believing that what the public can access should be limited to a few hero works with statements of significance (effectively maintaining the status quo of museum publication, albeit with a change of medium).

For me, this is very interesting because I see museum websites as a completely new kind of tool at our disposal that might actually make the work of museums better and more aligned to the changes that are occurring in the creation of knowledge in other fields. It allows what we do to actually knit into the broader world of ideas in a very different way to what happens in the physical museum space, and a way that actually can make our collections more relevant, inclusive of all their complexities and imperfections.

But there are lots of people in museums who do not agree with my assessment, and I want to know the reasons behind this. I would love to hear from those people who work in museums, or are simply interested in them, who, like Damien, think that museums should indeed avoid a rush into the virtual world. And if so, why that is.

Do you think museums should still treat the physical space as the most important one?

The eternal sunshine of the spotless museum collection

The first provocative article I read in the new year was Should we erase painful memories?. The author, Alison Winter, interrogates the role that memory has in the creation of our selves, and how trauma can affect our personalities and experiences of life – and what it could mean for our private and social selves if we are able to block traumatic memories. She writes (emphasis mine):

In 2002, psychiatrist Roger Pitman of Harvard took a group of 31 volunteers from the emergency rooms at Massachusetts General Hospital, all people who had suffered some traumatic event, and for 10 days treated some with a placebo and the rest with propranolol [a beta blocker]. Those who received propranolol later had no stressful physical response to reminders of the original trauma, while almost half of the others did. Should those E.R. patients have been worried about the possible legal implications of taking the drug? Could one claim to be as good a witness once one’s memory had been altered by propranolol? And in a civil suit, could the defense argue that less harm had been done, since the plaintiff had avoided much of the emotional damage that an undrugged victim would have suffered? Attorneys did indeed ask about the implications for witness testimony, damages, and more generally, a devaluation of harm to victims of crime. One legal scholar framed this as a choice between protecting memory “authenticity” (a category he used with some skepticism) and “freedom of memory.” Protecting “authenticity” could not be done without sacrificing our freedom to control our own minds, including our acts of recall.

I find these fascinating issues. Even though memory is by its very nature fallible, I know I would be loathe to let someone manipulate my own memories in any way for fear of what else might be lost, including my sense of self. This, too, is something Winter touches on.

These worries draw their force from a deep-seated attachment to two related beliefs: first, that we are, in some ambiguous but important way, the accretion of our life experiences; and second, that those life experiences are perfectly preserved even if our ability to remember them is far from perfect. When Alzheimer’s disease patients lose significant amounts of memory, dismayed friends often say that their very selves have crumbled or faded away and that in some literal way they are “no longer themselves.”

The thought here is not that people believe their memories are perfect — far from it. Common understandings of memory centrally involve the idea that memories are unreliable, fickle and capricious. But there is another belief about memory that has been articulated by many figures in memory research: that in some fundamental way, secreted within us are perfect records of past experiences, even if we might never access them consciously.

It’s interesting stuff.

But why am I writing about this on a museum technology blog? Well, maybe it’s because museums are themselves a memory device, but as I read the article I found myself thinking about museum objects and their ‘memories’. Like our own memories, we know that our understandings and interpretations of artifacts are “unreliable, fickle and capricious.” They change with time, and with new information. However, there is also a sense that our objects contain within them some perfect record of their past – and through them, our own past – even if they cannot be accessed.

The article had one sentence in particular, written about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, that caught my attention:

Emotions associated with a past event can be stored independently of the “data” of the event itself, so that someone with amnesia about a particular event that took place, for instance, at a certain location could feel an echo of the emotion associated with that location in spite of not recalling what happened.

This idea, of the split between the emotion of an event and its “data” or the information about what actually occurred, could be an interesting metaphor for museum collections in our current technological context. How often are our artifacts and their related data stored and read together? As collections databases move online and (ideally) become open and usable in new contexts from the ones that we have to date imagined them, then surely we need to ensure that the data memory of the object is as accurate as possible to allow for interrogation, and even a sense of authenticity – to ensure that it can be a credible witness to the object’s known history? Although the authentic object is not available for investigation online, maybe authentic data could be, if museum object files were digitised as PDF’s and put online (where possible – obviously taking into account privacy concerns and copyright issues etc), and historical changes to collection records were made public.

After all, as in the case of the patients who were treated with propranolol in the aftermath of a trauma, I wonder how trustworthy any interrogation of our collections and artifacts through their online data can be if part of the associated memory is wiped away, and we are left only with a sanitised and safe version? At the moment, in all collection databases that I can think of,** the collection record is more an acknowledgement of what is in a collection (ie we have this object, and it is important because…), rather than a usable resource that tracks the known history of the object and its associated data. As much as there is a tacit agreement within the sector that objects are polysemic and always open to reinterpretation, the way collection data is made available to the public is still largely sterilised. It is untraumatic, but also difficult to interrogate.

How much more interesting could online collections be if it was possible to see not only when an object was made, but when it was acquired and by whom (and even why). The sense of being able to look through a collection and discover that under one director, the emphasis was on collecting modern art objects, whilst another oversaw the collecting primarily of contemporary ceramics could provide different and incredibly interesting stories about our museums and their collections. Instead of needing to tell stories about our objects, to some extent, the data might begin to be able to speak for itself and make possible new kinds of stories.

And thus I wonder whether museums should be making public the full informational histories of their objects. Doing so would obviously require a significant amount of resources, and would in fact require a major rethink about the role of the museum website. Putting this kind of documentation online would expose the fact that museums don’t always get things right, and there is vulnerability in that. But it could also make possible a more full interrogation of our objects and collections. The museum website could become as significant an asset as our physical buildings, but for entirely different reasons.

Or we can continue to erase the painful memories of our collections data, and show only the cleanest and most current interpretative information… But museum objects often have very long memories, and it strikes me as a shame that we only get to see the short-term and generally agreed-upon ones online, rather than the murky and more traumatic aspects of their pasts.

What do you think?


**If there are any museums that do currently make public and highlight changes to the collection record, it would be great to hear about them.

What is your dangerous idea about museums?

A number of years ago, I acquired the book What is Your Dangerous Idea?, in which significant thinkers addressed the question “What do you believe is true, even though you cannot prove it?” According to the book’s preface, the question comes from psychologist Steven Pinker, who wrote:

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea that you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

The question asks for speculation. It asks for wild, instinctual guesses. And there is a very good chance that many of these guesses will be wrong.

However, what is even more thrilling is the possibilities that some of the guesses will not only be right, but that they will themselves shape the very future of the world and of ideas. Often simply be giving voice to something, we start creating it in fact where it previously only lived in imagination.

This is the thrill and terror of speculation. There is the chance that an idea will be wrong, laughable. But making it known (as terrifying as that can be) also brings with it the chance to write the future of the world and make possible things that once seemed unbelievable.

I recently put in an abstract for MuseumNext that dealt purely with ideas. It did not include case studies. It was not filled with practical answers to problems. Instead, it contained one (possibly dangerous) idea that I firmly believe could be true. I’m not going to go into too much depth about it here until I find out whether it made the cut (although with around 200 applications for 30 places, my hopes are not held tightly). However, the question comes up: What is your dangerous idea about museums?

I would love to know.

Hey girl – (S)useum edition

If you are a museum person who is reading this, I am hoping by now that you have seen Hey girl. I love museums. My awesome friend Erica had one of her own images posted on it the other day, and that has kicked off a little Ryan Gosling creativity amongst the other geek gals I know. So here is my own contribution to the site. I’ve sent it in, but in case it doesn’t make the cut, I thought I would post it here, too.

hey girl

PS – Ten points to any museum that can actually get Gosling to do a guest voice on their audio tours in 2012!

A (personal) 2011 round up

This time last year, as the days crawled towards the start of 2011, I had very few expectations for what the year would bring. I knew that I’d been accepted for my PhD, and that I’d received a scholarship – and I knew I’d been accepted for Museums and the Web 2011. But little did I have any sense about what that might mean, and how much my life would change in the months after the conference.

The first months of the year were quite normal. I got into a study routine, and threw myself into reading. My PhD research started on a different tangent than the one I am now pursuing, and I was trying to get my bearings in a new academic territory.

Then April arrived, and changed everything.

Prior to Museums and the Web, I had never even attended a professional conference, much less spoken at one. I was out of depth, and drowning. I remember hoping desperately to get too sick to travel in the days before I left, so scared was I of doing everything wrong. And I did make some mistakes. Despite this, MW proved to be a true turning point in not only my career, but also my life more generally. Whilst there, I met others who shared my passion for museums, technology and all the nuances and difficulties they bring. People like Bruce Wyman and Koven Smith, in particular, helped me feel like there might actually be a place for me in the field, despite my newness to it.

I also met Seb Chan, and approached him to let me start interning a day a week at the Powerhouse Museum. After reading his blog for four or so years prior to this time (which ultimately lead to me joining the profession and moving to undertake research in the field), this was an incredible opportunity, and I still appreciate that he said yes to an unknown Aussie ambushing him in Philly (Thanks Seb!).

From there, the year only continued to bring new and surprising opportunities. Koven invited me back to the States in November to be part of his panel at MCN2011 on the very subject that helped re-focused my PhD – on What’s the Point of Museum Websites? I had no money, and no immediately foreseeable way to get there, but I of course said yes.

I had started volunteering with the MCN2011 marketing committee just prior to this time (bringing lovely people like Vicki Portway and Neal Stimler into my life), and so the idea of aiming to actually make it to the conference for real was tantalising. Thus I applied for the MCN conference scholarship, and also for a $3000 arts grant from ArtsNSW – our state arts funding body. And, upon receiving both, suddenly I was heading back to the States for the second time in about 7 months.

If these were the only note-worthy things that had happened during the year, it would still have been amazing. But I was also given the chance to participate in the Digital Culture Public Sphere, contributing to a publicly peer-reviewed submission to Australia’s cultural policy and speaking on my vision for the coming ten years of digital cultural policy in Australia in front of the Minister of the Arts, Simon Crean, Senator Kate Lundy and many more (thanks to Pia Waugh for inviting me to be part of such an amazing process).

I also entered and won an art prize, with a conceptual work of art that played with museological/tech ideas (which, I recently found out, has been accepted for a demonstration at MW2012! So hopefully that means I’ll be back to the States again. Thanks to Tim Hart for suggesting that I apply); I went to THATCamp Canberra (thanks to the Kress Foundation for giving me a THATCamp grant!), and I got to spend two weeks at MCA Denver after meeting the inspirational Adam Lerner at Reprogramming the Art Museum in Sydney.

Finally, at MCN2011, I met even more wonderful people, played with arduino (inspiring the purchase of an arduino starter kit, which arrived for my birthday a couple of weeks ago), and  started an interesting research project on the side with Eric Johnson (which I’ll write about sometime in coming months, once it’s a bit more established).

In between all this, I have researched, written sections of my PhD, thought a lot about museums, had incredible conversations, and met people who will be lifelong friends. I’ve recently started to work with a few interesting digital culture people in my home town of Newcastle on some projects that will hopefully break down some of the silos between cultural bodies in my own city, and I’m also trying to get a semi-regular “drinking about museums” event kicked off too.

As the year draws to a close, I face 2012 with some trepidation, not wishing to farewell a year like this in which everything has changed. This has, without question, been both the most amazing and most significant year of my life. I could not, in my wildest imaginings, have guessed at where it would take me. However, for all the events that have occurred and the opportunities I have been given, it is the people I have been lucky enough to meet that have really made the difference.
Thank you to everyone who has been a part of my 2011. You are amazing to me.

Why should I believe anything you tell me, you nameless and faceless institution?!?

I had the exceptional good fortune at MCN2011 of coming away with dozens of unanswered questions, and more than a handful of lovely people with whom to try to figure out the answers. My hands have barely left my keyboard in the last couple of weeks, as I’ve tried to capture ideas, exchange emails and make possible some of the grander schemes of world domination that have surfaced. But in doing so, I have alas neglected this poor little blog space.

So, to pick up from where I last left off, with a summary of the emergent issues that captivated me at MCN2011, I’ve decided to start with an exploration on the issue of authority on museum websites. It’s something that Claire Ross has also just written about, in her blog on MCN takeaways – although my discussion will take a somewhat different tack to hers. Claire writes:

This Panel took an interesting perspective to the authority question, asking how we should be building museum websites to gain and maintain authority online, something they argued that museums haven’t really earned in the online space yet, rather relying on the automatic ingrained authority physical museums have built up. But really can physical museum authority transmit in a digital space? And more importantly should it? That’s something I really came away with. Surely participation, dialogue and engagement with visitors breaks down the authority barrier to enable museums and visitors to work together to create an engaging online experience? Rather than a transmission of authority? So should museum websites be authoritarian at all? Right enough of a rant on that.

But here’s what I want to know… Can an institution even be an authority?

An individual can be an expert. An individual can be an authority. But I don’t know that a museum can be an authority on anything. Museums can be authoritative, sure, and point someone in the right direction (like the new Walker site seems to do pretty beautifully). But I am not going to believe something just because “the Tate” told me it was right. There is no accountability there. A blog post on the Tate site could have been written by a work experience kid who happens to be good with words and Google. Even collections information, unless it has a specific author’s name attached to it, gives me nothing I can particularly trust and believe in really (particularly in instances where there is no sense of how, when and by whom changes have been made to the collection record).

In a museum exhibition, I suppose there is a level of trust that the museum display has been created by someone who is an expert in the field. If someone got a job as a curator, I am hoping that they have some level of knowledge/expertise. Within this space, there can be room for intuitive judgement, for creating relationships between things based on experience and instinct.

But the information I get online, I want to be accurate – not accurate within a context. I want to be able to use it for my purpose (whatever that may be) – and so authority becomes more important in a different way.

In our panel, Koven raised the authority issue because he wanted to know how he should be building his museum websites. It’s a really significant question, but authority in an information context comes from more than just SEO and a trustworthy visual space and design. I want to know where the information came from. I want to know who entered in, and when, and why there has been a change in interpretation. If a collection object is re-dated, I want to know what prompted that change in associated information. I want to know who made that call, and why.

Until that happens, I don’t know whether our collections online will be truly authoritative. As some of my own research at the Powerhouse Museum shows, even curators don’t necessarily trust online collections records to be accurate. And if we don’t trust in our own information online, why should anyone else?

 

***nb obviously institutions have a name, but I’m sure you get my point.

Initial takeaways from MCN2011

I wrote this post on the plane on the way home from MCN2011, trying to wrangle some sense from the myriad of stimulating and interesting conversations and sessions. It captures my first takeaways from the conference, and is something I will no doubt expand on in coming weeks.

This was a very interesting conference. Much of the focus of the sessions and the conversations I participated in seemed to be really about the broad frameworks and implications of the work that is happening in the museum tech field, which was fascinating and useful. I got an incredible amount out of attending, and am already starting to think about how to get back next year.

So what kinds of issues and questions emerged from MCN? Here’s a brief summary of some of the big ones I came away with:

Authority, inclusion and visual language/design choices
In our panel on What’s the Point of a Museum Website?, Koven raised the issue of museum authority online. He wanted to know how we should be visually building our websites to gain and maintain authority online, something he argues that we haven’t really earned in this space (gambling instead on the fact that our offline presence confers us with automatic authority online).

Having said that, I think the issue is bigger than this. Our sector spends a significant amount of time and energy trying to find ways of making what we do inclusive and participatory. It’s one of the findings of the potential benefits of folksonomies and social tagging – to invite and acknowledge other voices. However, if the visual language (and actual language) we use online is one aimed at gaining authority (as might be expected, since this is still an important issue), then maybe that goes against any claim to inclusion. The austere appearance of our buildings is the same thing that makes them at times foreboding to those not comfortable in those spaces… if we design our websites to be authoritative, do we not risk the same thing in the digital space? How can we resolve these seeming contradictions in intention?

Communicating what we do better
Another issue that emerged for me particularly was a growing sense that for all the great work happening in our sector, we often seem to do a poor job of communicating the benefits of it to those outside our immediate community. Therefore, I want to know what big (or small) issues that the museum tech sector needs to become better at communicating to those outside our immediate community? How can we create a compelling framework/language for communicating the value of what we do to funders/directors/curators etc?

New funding opportunities? New models for museum websites?
What new funding opportunities might be available for museum technology projects if we can change the language/reshape the argument? If we can demonstrate our value beyond the financial in more effective ways, will there be new ways for attracting support for what we do?

Similarly, are there new funding models that we could consider for the online space? In the discussion of one session, Nate Solas asked what would happen if we made all of our images available for free, but put a price on interpretation. It’s an interesting idea, and makes me start wondering further on what other new models we could investigate. I recently raved about my love for Bjork’s Biophilia app, which was released a few weeks ago. The app, which accompanies her latest album, brings with it depth, games, essays and ultimately, new discovery. It is super easy to get music for free online with so many file sharing sites. What is not so possible is gaining access to this same experience without paying for it – and it’s the first app I’ve really spent money on. What can museums learn from these sorts of creative solutions to content and context?

Digital conservation/preservation
This is one that came up in the Horizon Report (launched at MCN2011). How can we ensure that works of art that utilise technology (esp ones that might only function on a particular piece of equipment/OS etc) can be preserved? Can we create and set some industry standards for this practice, which individual institutions can then adapt to their own needs? How can we start ensuring that there are conservators adequately trained in both the ethical and technical issues that this will involve? And how can we do it fast, since we are already losing works to the ravages of time and obsolescence?

Career path development and longevity.
This question emerged out of some more personal discussions than actually out of conference sessions, but it is still a very significant issue. How can we create succession lines, and better opportunities for career development so that we don’t lose the best people in our field?

Museum content on external sites
How can we capture and archive our “museum” content that lives offsite, on platforms like Facebook? Is it problematic that so much interpretative content exists in spaces that we cannot necessarily harvest?

Crowdsourcing and exclusivity
In the History Museums are Not Art Museums. Discuss session, one crowdsourced history project was discussed in which people were asked to transcribe old documents. Before being able to transcribe, they were asked to join the site, and were given a short questionnaire that included a question that asked why the person wanted to contribute. It was estimated that 75% of contributors wrote a significant piece on why they deserved to be allowed to contribute to the transcription. It makes me wonder if there isn’t some value in actually raising barriers to entry in some cases of crowdsourcing, particularly when the quality of the work is important. I might be wrong on this, but there is something like the idea of “I would never want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member” is playing in my head here. Maybe sometimes communities want a sense of exclusivity that the easy access of the web takes away? I haven’t thought this through fully yet, but it’s something that I want to explore further.

Metrics
Rob Stein wanted to know if there was a way to measure for epiphany? Or, do our online metrics measure the right things? And if not, what are the right things, and how can we measure for them?

Provocation
Following on from that, are we doing enough to provoke epiphanies, rather than just trying to teach people things? This is something I am definitely going to explore at a later stage, but it seems to me there is a particular value in things that don’t have easy answers or ready conclusions. These are the subjects we dwell on, that stick in our minds (or at least in mine). These are the things that we keep coming back to. So why do we, in museums, feel that we have to teach (ie, to provide answers)? Maybe we would be far more compelling if, like the art and objects we display, we asked more unanswerable questions. What if we again became philosophical centres, rather than centres for education. In the History Museums session, there was considerable talk about equipping people with the means to conduct historical research. What if the emphasis of museums becomes less about education, and more about enabling people to think critically through issues – without providing the answers? This is probably something that already happens, particularly in the best museum spaces, but it does seem like a critical issue that could be addressed particularly well in the offline space.

The museum website of the future?
Does the museum website of the future become as critical and central to the museum purpose and mission as the physical building itself? What happens when we start thinking about our data as a collection of digital objects to be curated? Does the position of digital knowledge curator become as essential as that of object curator? Can we reconcieve our online collections data in new ways that can be more beneficial to both museums, and society more generally?

…Ok, I think that is enough to get started. I am obviously going to continue to flesh out and develop these ideas in the coming few weeks, so stay tuned to this blog if you want to gain some insight into the nuance of the discussions that I had whilst at the conference.

In the mean time, thanks to everyone who was a part of my MCN experience. It was absolutely incredible, and I cannot believe what an interesting, supportive and warm community I have become a part of. Special thanks to the ever-amazing and provocative Koven Smith for inviting me to be a part of his panel, and to the MCN scholarship committee and ArtsNSW for their support in making it possible.

I leave you with pandas.

Aren’t they the cutest?

Back in 5.

It’s been slightly longer between posts for me this month – and it’s a trend that might continue for a couple of weeks. I’m currently in the States for the dual purpose of attending (and being a panelist) at MCN2011 in two weeks; and I’m also spending two weeks at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver after meeting the MCA’s Director Adam Lerner when he spoke at the Reprogramming the Art Museum symposium in Sydney a few weeks ago. I’ve just finished my first day at the MCA, and I think it is going to be a fabulous – if intense – couple of weeks. Add into the mix the heady combination of new people, new sights and a little jetlag, and I don’t know how much energy I will have left for blogging.

No doubt the experience in a very different museum environment from the two that I currently work in will leave me with huge inspiration and food for thought that will inspire future blogging. Similarly, I think MCN will open me up to some interesting new conversations as well. I think the period straight after I return home will probably be the antithesis of this quieter time on the blog front, but in the mean time, you should check out O, Song! This blog has nothing to do with museums, but does always link to interesting articles that will give you a different and interesting perspective on the world. And after all, one of the reasons I frequently try to work in institutions that are very different from the ones that I’m already familiar with is because creativity happens when seemingly disparate things are combined. Therefore, reading things just because they’re interesting is recommended – and you’ll probably find something worth looking at on O, Song!