Ponencia de Martin Flynn, responsable de los Servicios de Información V&A, Londres, para los V Encuentros de Centros de Documentación de ARTIUM.

1. Closing the Gap – Maximising the Potential of
Technological Innovation for the Discovery and Delivery
of Art Information
V Conference – ARTIUM, 4 November 2010
Martin Flynn

2. V&A - Home of National Art Library
2

3. Themes
 Technological innovation – some general observations
 Art institutional websites
 Aggregated websites
 Library catalogues
 Commercial publishing
3

4. 4
Phases of Implementing New Technology
 Adoption
 Adaptation
 Absorption
 Time lag for full understanding

5. 5
New Technology in Action – Some Examples
 Early printed books
 Mobile Phones
 TV/Video
 Digital Radio
 Interactive Digital TV

6. 6
Early Printed Books
 Hybrid model of print
and painting
 Mimicking manuscript
techniques

7. 7
Mobile/Cell Phones
 Executive status
 Landline on the move
 Adoption by teenagers
unanticipated
 Texting a minor feature
 Camera, video, music,
internet, apps
unanticipated

8. 8
First Mobile Phone
‘

9. 9
Television Recording
 Logical combination of
equipment but not generally
marketed
 Separation allows for greater
sales through updates

10. 10
DAB Radio
 Considered to be the future of
radio
 Large investment by BBC
 Failed to achieve quality of FM
 Required new player
 Didn’t fully anticipate online
listening

11. 11
HD Radio
 Now seen as way forward for
radio broadcasting
 Reflects general
developments in media
access

12. 12
Interactive Digital TV
 Firmly believed that this was the
way forward about ten years
ago
 Resistance from users
 Remote control lacked the
flexibility of keyboard
 Slowness of operation

13. Institutional Websites – Comparison Between
British Museum and V&A
 BM has 2 million catalogue entries for online for their print collection
 30% of these have one or more image attached i.e. over half a million
images
 Achieved through integrating into workflow of all staff
 Difficult to find on website as requires user to know organisational
structure and professional terminology
 Images not searchable through the image function of search engines
 Some poor quality images i.e. text within them is unreadable
 Engages with users by welcoming their input
13

14. Sample page from BM
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15. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)
 1 million catalogue entries for a range of museum objects online
 13% of these have images attached i.e. about 130k images
 Dedicated and project staff undertake this work so most staff are not
directly engaged with the full process
 Images are searchable through the image function of search engines
 Presentation is very attractive
 Metadata is extremely variable
 No engagement with users – a one way process
15

16. Sample Page from V&A
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17. Challenges
 Duplication of effort and content
 No integrated searching of books, museum objects and archives
 Poor subject searching
 Lack of linking to book catalogues
 Invisibility within organisational website
17

18. Aggregated Websites
 VADS (Visual Arts Data Service)
 Kultur Project – institutional repository
 Culture Online
 Every Object Tells a Story
 24 Hour Museum
 Intute

19. Aggregated Websites
 Suncat
 Copac
 artlibraries.net
 WorldCat
 OCLC
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20. VADS

21. KULTUR

22. Culture Online

23. Every Object Tells a Story

24. 24 Hour Museum

25. intute

26. V&A Website as a Comparison

27. SUNCAT

28. RLUK - COPAC

29. OCLC - WorldCat

30. OCLC
 72k library members out of 1.2m libraries worldwide
 Net scale ambitions
 170m records (a third of these added in the last 18 months)
 15.5b books in libraries
 5k transactions per second in libraries across the world
 See the choice as between collective innovation and silo cottage
industry

31. National Art Library Catalogue
31

32. National Art Library Catalogue
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33. 33
Catalogue Problems
 Contents invisible to search engines
 Process of cataloguing is complex
and difficult to master
 Users struggle to understand
catalogues
 Duplication of effort in catalogue
creation
 Doubt about whether the current
model of localised catalogues is
sustainable

34. 34
Catalogue Problems
 Automated versions of card
catalogues
 Lack the enhanced features
users have come to expect
 Printed materials to the
exclusion of digital formats
 Confusing search methods
 Poorly organised results
 Search dead-ends
 Catalogues are effectively over-
engineered

35. 35
The Catalogue of the Future
 Re-use data available at the point of
selection or automatically generate
this information
 Manual data creation should be
reserved for ordering, receiving,
claiming and cataloguing for those
situations in which it is the only
viable approach
 Local customization eliminated in
favour of accepting as much
cataloguing copy as possible

36. 36
The Catalogue of the Future
 Assist the searcher by providing
hints and suggestions in a
commercially disinterested way
 Abandon local catalogues in
favour of unified catalogues
based on sectoral, national,
trans-national or subject
parameters
 Catalogues should understand
the common use of terms and
weigh results towards these

37. 37
The Catalogue of the Future
 It should be possible to refine a
search through faceted navigation,
filtering your results in multiple ways
 Link to LibraryThing to take
advantage of their 16 million user
generated tags
 The fast turnaround and delivery of
library materials to the users should
be the standard of quality service,
not the fullness of catalogue data
 Abandon comprehensive LCSH
subject analysis in favour of subject
keywords

38. 38
The Catalogue of the Future
 Customised cataloguing effort
should be concentrated on rare
and unique special material
 ‘More like this’
 New book lists
 Reviews
 Best-match retrieval
 No search dead-ends
 ‘See also’ and ‘see instead’

39. 39
The Catalogue of the Future
 Relevancy ranking
 Subject guides
 Items tagged according to their
level e.g. suitable for beginners,
domain experts etc
 Summaries/excerpts highly
visible in the catalogue

40. 40
The Catalogue of the Future
 Links to further information such
as Wikipedia, specialist web
pages and library resources
 Links to full text, abstracts etc
 Information on how and where
to obtain a copy or facsimile
 Journal contents catalogued

41. 41
The Catalogue of the Future
 The discovery of books, journals,
journal articles and digital resources
should be federated
 Links to citations and reviews
 Tables of contents, cover images
and blurbs
 Faceted navigation enabling the
filtering of results in multiple ways

42. Example of Hard Copy/Digitally Published
Product
 Physical format drawbacks – very
small print, poor paper quality, old-
fashioned notion of who is important
in today’s world
 Costs approximately 230 euros
annually for book
 Online version also available for a
further 230 euros but you must buy
the book as well!
 Publishers veering between panic
and denial

43. ARLIS UK & Ireland – Art Libraries Society

44. Arlis UK & Ireland
 Operating for 40 years
 A model for other similar societies in Scandanavia, Australia, US etc
 International status
 Employ an administrator
 Fee based
 Income declining
 Operational basis under threat

45. MLAG – Museum Librarians and Archivists
Group

46. MLAG
 Operating for 8 years
 No fees
 All activity voluntary
 Cheap but mainly free courses
 Blog rather than website
 Share membership with ARLIS but different cultures affect
organisational behaviour
 Expanding role and influence