The document discusses how web technologies and cultural communication are changing how cultural institutions operate and engage with their audiences. It explores how the internet has led to cultural disintermediation by removing gatekeepers and giving more people a voice. Museums are shifting from being cathedrals that dictate authority to being more like town squares that facilitate participation and multiple voices. New forms of online engagement like crowdsourcing and user-generated content are becoming important strategies for cultural institutions.
Based on a review of the most successful international crowdsourcing projects, this talk will look at the attributes of successful crowdsourcing projects in cultural heritage, including interface and interaction design, participation in community discussion, and understanding participant motivations.
Public Lecture: "Designing Heritage Crowdsourcing Projects" at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute of the Free University of Berlin on 7 December 2015, 6 pm
Choosy crowds and the machine age: challenges for the future of humanities cr...Mia
Presentation at Kings Citizen Humanities Comes of Age: Crowdsourcing for the Humanities in the 21st Century, September 2015
Some of these points are discussed in
How an ecosystem of machine learning and crowdsourcing could help you
http://www.openobjects.org.uk/2015/08/ecosystem-machine-learning-crowdsourcing/
How an ecosystem of machine learning and crowdsourcing could help you
http://www.openobjects.org.uk/2014/09/helping-us-fly-machine-learning-and-crowdsourcing/
Open Data: Trends and Practice within Cultural Heritage. AKA, the good, the b...Mia
Talk notes: http://www.openobjects.org.uk/2015/07/the-good-the-bad-and-the-unstructured-open-data-in-cultural-heritage/
Slides for a presentation on Open Data: Trends and Practice within Cultural Heritage. (AKA, the good, the bad, and the unstructured) at the Linked Pasts event at Kings College London on July 20-21, 2015. Event: http://pelagios-project.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/linked-pasts.html
Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Sector: approaches, challenges and issuesMia
Slides for the Crowd-sourcing, Co-creation and Co-curation in the Cultural Sector workshop by the Scottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources Evaluation
Another Preservation Challenge: MOOCs (massive open online courses)John D. Shank
"Massive, Online, Distance, Self-Directed, Flipped, Blended? Learning models are evolving and changing, and this means new challenges for preservation. With an increasing amount of lecture and course content living in the digital realm, new models for preservation are key. Most courses contain recorded lectures, hosted on YouTube or a MOOC platform like Coursera or edX; required or supplemental readings and resources; user participation forums that may be divided into smaller student-led groups; and other interactions, such as virtual office hours for instructors. Final projects may include student created content. Which of these materials should be preserved? How can such diverse content types be connected to the original course? What copyright issues may be involved?" What role should libraries be playing in this new environment?
Slides from:
Lecture at Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland
MA in Digital Humanities 2014/2015
AFF615A: Doing Digital History
Doing Digital History (introduction)
Based on a review of the most successful international crowdsourcing projects, this talk will look at the attributes of successful crowdsourcing projects in cultural heritage, including interface and interaction design, participation in community discussion, and understanding participant motivations.
Public Lecture: "Designing Heritage Crowdsourcing Projects" at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute of the Free University of Berlin on 7 December 2015, 6 pm
Choosy crowds and the machine age: challenges for the future of humanities cr...Mia
Presentation at Kings Citizen Humanities Comes of Age: Crowdsourcing for the Humanities in the 21st Century, September 2015
Some of these points are discussed in
How an ecosystem of machine learning and crowdsourcing could help you
http://www.openobjects.org.uk/2015/08/ecosystem-machine-learning-crowdsourcing/
How an ecosystem of machine learning and crowdsourcing could help you
http://www.openobjects.org.uk/2014/09/helping-us-fly-machine-learning-and-crowdsourcing/
Open Data: Trends and Practice within Cultural Heritage. AKA, the good, the b...Mia
Talk notes: http://www.openobjects.org.uk/2015/07/the-good-the-bad-and-the-unstructured-open-data-in-cultural-heritage/
Slides for a presentation on Open Data: Trends and Practice within Cultural Heritage. (AKA, the good, the bad, and the unstructured) at the Linked Pasts event at Kings College London on July 20-21, 2015. Event: http://pelagios-project.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/linked-pasts.html
Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Sector: approaches, challenges and issuesMia
Slides for the Crowd-sourcing, Co-creation and Co-curation in the Cultural Sector workshop by the Scottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources Evaluation
Another Preservation Challenge: MOOCs (massive open online courses)John D. Shank
"Massive, Online, Distance, Self-Directed, Flipped, Blended? Learning models are evolving and changing, and this means new challenges for preservation. With an increasing amount of lecture and course content living in the digital realm, new models for preservation are key. Most courses contain recorded lectures, hosted on YouTube or a MOOC platform like Coursera or edX; required or supplemental readings and resources; user participation forums that may be divided into smaller student-led groups; and other interactions, such as virtual office hours for instructors. Final projects may include student created content. Which of these materials should be preserved? How can such diverse content types be connected to the original course? What copyright issues may be involved?" What role should libraries be playing in this new environment?
Slides from:
Lecture at Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland
MA in Digital Humanities 2014/2015
AFF615A: Doing Digital History
Doing Digital History (introduction)
Crowdsourcing as productive engagement with cultural heritageMia
My keynote for the iSay conference "The Shape of Things"
http://isayevents.wordpress.com/shapeofthings/program/
My notes from the conference are at http://openobjects.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/notes-from-shape-of-things-new-and.html
Second Life is a 3D virtual world where users can socialize, learn, work and explore through avatars. Libraries are establishing a presence in Second Life to promote knowledge, help new users, and host educational events like book discussions, conferences and distance learning opportunities. The document outlines what Second Life is, examples of activities for individuals and businesses, statistics on usage and the economy, and how libraries are utilizing the platform for outreach and instruction.
Mobile in Museum Studies (for NYU Abu Dhabi)Nancy Proctor
This document discusses how mobile technologies are transforming museums into distributed social networks. It argues that museums must integrate mobile into their overall strategies to remain relevant. The Smithsonian is embracing this approach by developing mobile apps and websites to engage wider audiences and turn visitors into collaborators who help spread knowledge. The goal is to use mobile to recruit the world and make the Smithsonian's collections more accessible and meaningful to people everywhere.
The document discusses how cultural institutions are changing their designs and programming to better serve evolving audiences. Key points include:
- Audiences are more diverse in age, ethnicity, and interests, seeking social and participatory experiences.
- Institutions are focusing more on social engagement, partnerships, interdisciplinary programming, and allowing user-generated content.
- Designs are becoming more transparent, flexible, and comfortable while integrating education spaces, project spaces for artists, and making collections accessible.
Indigenous Resistances to Extractive Industry as Disruptive Public Participat...Jill Hopke
Research to be presented at the 2017 Conference on Communication and Environment (COCE), July 1, 2017, University of Leicester.
In fall 2016, violent images of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest near the Standing Rock Reservation stunned the world. Facebook users saw security guards sic attack dogs on Native women and children and police fire water cannons at praying protesters in subfreezing temperatures. However, the issue had not gained widespread mainstream media and public attention until the 1,172-mile pipeline was nearly complete, after more than two years of opposition from the tribe. It wasn’t until activists shared violent images on social media that public outrage forced policymakers to act. We argue that activities which heighten public attention to an issue through social media amplification constitute what we call disruptive public participation, which may empower activists and help “outsiders” become “insiders” in decision-making.
In both the Elsipogtog and Standing Rock cases, protest was ongoing for significant periods of time before they received widespread public attention. We argue that police crackdown on Indigenous communities and associated reports of violence and spikes in arrests of demonstrators are correlated with spikes in social media, as well as mainstream media, attention. The stakes of in-person involvement in protests are incredibly heightened. The circulation of violent images on social media—shared by “water protectors” on-the-ground and from outsiders offering solidarity and expressions of moral outrage—resulted in a spike in mainstream media attention.
Beyond the Academy: engagement, education, and exchangePip Willcox
Beyond the Academy: engagement, education, and exchange
This presentation introduces you to the practice and practicalities of public engagement. It draws on experience to explore means and methods of widening access to the humanities, to foster dialogue, participation, and new knowledge.
Beyond the Academy—engagement, education, and exchangePip Willcox
This was presented on the introductory workshop strand of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2016. It introduces the practice and practicalities of public engagement, drawing on personal experience to explore means and methods of widening access to the humanities, to foster dialogue and participation.
The document discusses best practices for collaboration between museums and Wikipedia. It outlines challenges such as copyright issues and concerns about quality and control. However, it emphasizes that partnerships between experts and volunteers can exponentially increase quality information. Specific successful collaborations are highlighted, like Wikipedians-in-residence and editing contests. Museums are encouraged to engage students and share content under Creative Commons to overcome challenges and spread knowledge.
ACRN Barriers to Participation with Archaeology Online Workshop ProgrammeLorna Richardson
This document provides the programme for a workshop on barriers to participation in archaeology online. The workshop will include 6 speakers discussing various barriers identified in digital outreach projects, including issues of connectivity, access to technology, ethics of recording finds online, and risks of social media for organizations. It will conclude with a discussion on best practices for online public engagement drawn from other disciplines at UCL. Participants are encouraged to engage online before and during the workshop using a hashtag and collaborative document.
The British Library's Digital Research Team supports new ways of exploring and accessing the Library's digital collections through computational methods like machine learning, data visualization, and text mining. The Team collaborates on projects that make more content available digitally, and provides training and guidance to researchers. Examples of projects include crowdsourcing accent maps, analyzing patterns in music history from bibliographic data, and transcribing and georeferencing placenames from historical texts.
This document discusses the changing role of academic libraries in the 21st century. It notes that the advent of the internet and widespread digital information has led to a transition for libraries, as information is now available everywhere and users no longer need to visit physical libraries as much. However, the document argues that libraries can adapt by embracing new technologies, engaging with social media, facilitating new literacies, and expanding their roles in areas like scholarly communication and supporting distributed research. The key is for libraries to remain relevant by meeting users' needs and putting resources where users are, both physically and virtually.
The Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton studies how the web is transforming society through technology and social interactions. Led by Professor Dame Wendy Hall and Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, the Institute takes an interdisciplinary approach, collaborating across university faculties and with industry and nonprofit partners. It aims to develop new knowledge about the web's impacts and showcase innovative web-focused education programs.
This document contains descriptions and credits for 15 photos posted on Flickr between 2004-2012 related to trash, waste disposal, landfills, recycling, and reuse. The photos cover topics like waste symbols, overflowing landfills, electronics waste collection, disposable grocery items, and community recycling centers. Each photo is published on Flickr under a Creative Commons attribution license.
The document discusses how the Smithsonian Institution is using crowdsourcing techniques to engage the public. It explains how the Smithsonian is developing mobile apps and digital projects that allow volunteers and citizen scientists around the world to contribute by commenting, sharing, and curating information. Some examples mentioned include using crowds to transcribe historical documents and help curate collections through apps like LeafSnap for plant identification. The goal is to put more of the Smithsonian's collections online and in the hands of people everywhere.
The document discusses three models for mobile learning (mLearning) in museums: learning on demand, learning from crowds and communities, and peer-to-peer learning. It notes that mobile devices allow new opportunities for connecting, collaborating and learning beyond traditional audio tours. The document advocates developing a distributed museum network and integrating mobile strategies into all aspects of an institution's work, such as crowdsourcing collections data and enabling user contributions.
Stories to tell: The making of our digital nation. April 2010 Rose Holley
A new type of digital volunteer is quietly adding to the sum of knowledge of our history and heritage on the web. Ordinary Australians have helped correct millions of lines of text in the National Library of Australia's Newspaper Digitisation Program. They have contributed thousands of photographs to the national digital picture collection. The presentation describes these projects and others from libraries and archives that you can help with. Everyone can help to improve, describe and create our digital heritage.
Reasons for using social media in recruitmentKate Stone
The document discusses using social media for recruitment and provides three key reasons why it is worthwhile:
1. It builds social media capacity across the entire organization by treating social media as an important business communication tool.
2. It provides a better chance of finding the right candidate by allowing more informed choices through access to specialist networks and communities online.
3. It increases an organization's resources by enabling pro-am collaborations through crowd-sourcing, where people can contribute their time and skills for projects.
AAM2010: Communicating your collection on the web.pptKate Stone
This document discusses methods for communicating the National Film & Sound Archive's collection to a web audience. It outlines traditional methods like presentations to staff and conferences that reach a limited number of people. It argues new methods are needed for broader audience reach, relevance, and accessibility given available online tools. The document describes holding workshops to train curators in blogging and social media. It provides guidance on writing for the web, including using an engaging tone for younger audiences and providing historical and professional context.
Case Study: Creating Compelling Online ContentKate Stone
The document discusses creating compelling online content through access to Australian audiovisual heritage to excite curiosity and inspire creativity. It addresses common questions from audiences around viewing full films online versus in cinemas, using content in mashups, and accessing material for research, documentaries, or personal use. It also covers positioning the collection as an in-depth catalogue, exhibition space, and ways users can browse, search, and navigate the metadata through curriculum, chronological, and locative data to find relevant material.
Collaboration between cultural institutions is desirable but requires resources and leadership to be effective. While technology has made collaboration easier by enabling sharing of ideas online, cultural organizations may lack resources for education programs or digital publishing. Data and stories both have roles to play, as collaboration can involve sharing data between systems, but also telling stories with cultural resources.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, promising self-driving cars, medical breakthroughs, and new ways of working. But how do you separate hype from reality? How can your company apply AI to solve real business problems?
Here’s what AI learnings your business should keep in mind for 2017.
Crowdsourcing as productive engagement with cultural heritageMia
My keynote for the iSay conference "The Shape of Things"
http://isayevents.wordpress.com/shapeofthings/program/
My notes from the conference are at http://openobjects.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/notes-from-shape-of-things-new-and.html
Second Life is a 3D virtual world where users can socialize, learn, work and explore through avatars. Libraries are establishing a presence in Second Life to promote knowledge, help new users, and host educational events like book discussions, conferences and distance learning opportunities. The document outlines what Second Life is, examples of activities for individuals and businesses, statistics on usage and the economy, and how libraries are utilizing the platform for outreach and instruction.
Mobile in Museum Studies (for NYU Abu Dhabi)Nancy Proctor
This document discusses how mobile technologies are transforming museums into distributed social networks. It argues that museums must integrate mobile into their overall strategies to remain relevant. The Smithsonian is embracing this approach by developing mobile apps and websites to engage wider audiences and turn visitors into collaborators who help spread knowledge. The goal is to use mobile to recruit the world and make the Smithsonian's collections more accessible and meaningful to people everywhere.
The document discusses how cultural institutions are changing their designs and programming to better serve evolving audiences. Key points include:
- Audiences are more diverse in age, ethnicity, and interests, seeking social and participatory experiences.
- Institutions are focusing more on social engagement, partnerships, interdisciplinary programming, and allowing user-generated content.
- Designs are becoming more transparent, flexible, and comfortable while integrating education spaces, project spaces for artists, and making collections accessible.
Indigenous Resistances to Extractive Industry as Disruptive Public Participat...Jill Hopke
Research to be presented at the 2017 Conference on Communication and Environment (COCE), July 1, 2017, University of Leicester.
In fall 2016, violent images of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest near the Standing Rock Reservation stunned the world. Facebook users saw security guards sic attack dogs on Native women and children and police fire water cannons at praying protesters in subfreezing temperatures. However, the issue had not gained widespread mainstream media and public attention until the 1,172-mile pipeline was nearly complete, after more than two years of opposition from the tribe. It wasn’t until activists shared violent images on social media that public outrage forced policymakers to act. We argue that activities which heighten public attention to an issue through social media amplification constitute what we call disruptive public participation, which may empower activists and help “outsiders” become “insiders” in decision-making.
In both the Elsipogtog and Standing Rock cases, protest was ongoing for significant periods of time before they received widespread public attention. We argue that police crackdown on Indigenous communities and associated reports of violence and spikes in arrests of demonstrators are correlated with spikes in social media, as well as mainstream media, attention. The stakes of in-person involvement in protests are incredibly heightened. The circulation of violent images on social media—shared by “water protectors” on-the-ground and from outsiders offering solidarity and expressions of moral outrage—resulted in a spike in mainstream media attention.
Beyond the Academy: engagement, education, and exchangePip Willcox
Beyond the Academy: engagement, education, and exchange
This presentation introduces you to the practice and practicalities of public engagement. It draws on experience to explore means and methods of widening access to the humanities, to foster dialogue, participation, and new knowledge.
Beyond the Academy—engagement, education, and exchangePip Willcox
This was presented on the introductory workshop strand of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2016. It introduces the practice and practicalities of public engagement, drawing on personal experience to explore means and methods of widening access to the humanities, to foster dialogue and participation.
The document discusses best practices for collaboration between museums and Wikipedia. It outlines challenges such as copyright issues and concerns about quality and control. However, it emphasizes that partnerships between experts and volunteers can exponentially increase quality information. Specific successful collaborations are highlighted, like Wikipedians-in-residence and editing contests. Museums are encouraged to engage students and share content under Creative Commons to overcome challenges and spread knowledge.
ACRN Barriers to Participation with Archaeology Online Workshop ProgrammeLorna Richardson
This document provides the programme for a workshop on barriers to participation in archaeology online. The workshop will include 6 speakers discussing various barriers identified in digital outreach projects, including issues of connectivity, access to technology, ethics of recording finds online, and risks of social media for organizations. It will conclude with a discussion on best practices for online public engagement drawn from other disciplines at UCL. Participants are encouraged to engage online before and during the workshop using a hashtag and collaborative document.
The British Library's Digital Research Team supports new ways of exploring and accessing the Library's digital collections through computational methods like machine learning, data visualization, and text mining. The Team collaborates on projects that make more content available digitally, and provides training and guidance to researchers. Examples of projects include crowdsourcing accent maps, analyzing patterns in music history from bibliographic data, and transcribing and georeferencing placenames from historical texts.
This document discusses the changing role of academic libraries in the 21st century. It notes that the advent of the internet and widespread digital information has led to a transition for libraries, as information is now available everywhere and users no longer need to visit physical libraries as much. However, the document argues that libraries can adapt by embracing new technologies, engaging with social media, facilitating new literacies, and expanding their roles in areas like scholarly communication and supporting distributed research. The key is for libraries to remain relevant by meeting users' needs and putting resources where users are, both physically and virtually.
The Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton studies how the web is transforming society through technology and social interactions. Led by Professor Dame Wendy Hall and Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, the Institute takes an interdisciplinary approach, collaborating across university faculties and with industry and nonprofit partners. It aims to develop new knowledge about the web's impacts and showcase innovative web-focused education programs.
This document contains descriptions and credits for 15 photos posted on Flickr between 2004-2012 related to trash, waste disposal, landfills, recycling, and reuse. The photos cover topics like waste symbols, overflowing landfills, electronics waste collection, disposable grocery items, and community recycling centers. Each photo is published on Flickr under a Creative Commons attribution license.
The document discusses how the Smithsonian Institution is using crowdsourcing techniques to engage the public. It explains how the Smithsonian is developing mobile apps and digital projects that allow volunteers and citizen scientists around the world to contribute by commenting, sharing, and curating information. Some examples mentioned include using crowds to transcribe historical documents and help curate collections through apps like LeafSnap for plant identification. The goal is to put more of the Smithsonian's collections online and in the hands of people everywhere.
The document discusses three models for mobile learning (mLearning) in museums: learning on demand, learning from crowds and communities, and peer-to-peer learning. It notes that mobile devices allow new opportunities for connecting, collaborating and learning beyond traditional audio tours. The document advocates developing a distributed museum network and integrating mobile strategies into all aspects of an institution's work, such as crowdsourcing collections data and enabling user contributions.
Stories to tell: The making of our digital nation. April 2010 Rose Holley
A new type of digital volunteer is quietly adding to the sum of knowledge of our history and heritage on the web. Ordinary Australians have helped correct millions of lines of text in the National Library of Australia's Newspaper Digitisation Program. They have contributed thousands of photographs to the national digital picture collection. The presentation describes these projects and others from libraries and archives that you can help with. Everyone can help to improve, describe and create our digital heritage.
Reasons for using social media in recruitmentKate Stone
The document discusses using social media for recruitment and provides three key reasons why it is worthwhile:
1. It builds social media capacity across the entire organization by treating social media as an important business communication tool.
2. It provides a better chance of finding the right candidate by allowing more informed choices through access to specialist networks and communities online.
3. It increases an organization's resources by enabling pro-am collaborations through crowd-sourcing, where people can contribute their time and skills for projects.
AAM2010: Communicating your collection on the web.pptKate Stone
This document discusses methods for communicating the National Film & Sound Archive's collection to a web audience. It outlines traditional methods like presentations to staff and conferences that reach a limited number of people. It argues new methods are needed for broader audience reach, relevance, and accessibility given available online tools. The document describes holding workshops to train curators in blogging and social media. It provides guidance on writing for the web, including using an engaging tone for younger audiences and providing historical and professional context.
Case Study: Creating Compelling Online ContentKate Stone
The document discusses creating compelling online content through access to Australian audiovisual heritage to excite curiosity and inspire creativity. It addresses common questions from audiences around viewing full films online versus in cinemas, using content in mashups, and accessing material for research, documentaries, or personal use. It also covers positioning the collection as an in-depth catalogue, exhibition space, and ways users can browse, search, and navigate the metadata through curriculum, chronological, and locative data to find relevant material.
Collaboration between cultural institutions is desirable but requires resources and leadership to be effective. While technology has made collaboration easier by enabling sharing of ideas online, cultural organizations may lack resources for education programs or digital publishing. Data and stories both have roles to play, as collaboration can involve sharing data between systems, but also telling stories with cultural resources.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, promising self-driving cars, medical breakthroughs, and new ways of working. But how do you separate hype from reality? How can your company apply AI to solve real business problems?
Here’s what AI learnings your business should keep in mind for 2017.
How to Make Awesome SlideShares: Tips & TricksSlideShare
Turbocharge your online presence with SlideShare. We provide the best tips and tricks for succeeding on SlideShare. Get ideas for what to upload, tips for designing your deck and more.
SlideShare is a global platform for sharing presentations, infographics, videos and documents. It has over 18 million pieces of professional content uploaded by experts like Eric Schmidt and Guy Kawasaki. The document provides tips for setting up an account on SlideShare, uploading content, optimizing it for searchability, and sharing it on social media to build an audience and reputation as a subject matter expert.
Historically Speaking, Digital Humanities, EWallis July 2012Elycia Wallis
Digital humanities combines traditional humanistic study with digital tools and methods. It values collaboration and sharing through open data. Museums and other cultural institutions are digitizing their collections, making vast amounts of data and resources available online. This allows new types of research, projects, and tools to develop. Digital humanities practitioners encourage opening data with permissive licenses to maximize reuse and partnerships.
Presentation to the CURSO DE VERANO
Bilbao Arte eta Kultura UPV/EHU: museos, redes sociales y tecnología 2.0 (museums, social networks and 2.0 technology)
6-7 July 2010 at the invitation of the University of the Basque Country.
http://tubilbao.blogspot.com/2010/06/bak-uda-ikastaroa-curso-de-verano.html
MW2010: N. Proctor, The Museum Is Mobile: Cross-platform content design for a...museums and the web
The document discusses designing mobile content and experiences for museum audiences. It argues for moving beyond traditional audio tours and instead focusing on social media, facilitating conversations, and connecting communities of interest. Examples are provided of mobile experiences that engage audiences both inside and outside the museum.
1) The document discusses how new media and Web 2.0 technologies can enable museums to have a dialogue with audiences and allow audiences to participate in creating and sharing culture.
2) It argues that museums should move from a traditional broadcast model to an online conversation model where they act as curators and guides rather than gatekeepers, and play a hub role in community discovery and collaboration.
3) The document advocates that museums use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to become virtual social meeting spaces and enable dialogue between audiences, museum staff, and artists.
The document discusses Robert Stein's role as Deputy Director for Research, Technology, and Engagement at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It provides details about Stein's background and experience in various roles at universities and museums. It also outlines the IMA's strategic plan, with a focus on establishing the museum as a leader in research areas like art history, conservation science, and visitor studies. The document advocates for an approach of audience engagement over education and discusses various models and theories around maximizing visitor experience.
1) The document discusses how museums can use new media like social networks, APIs, and web 2.0 technologies to have a dialogue with audiences and become less of a traditional gatekeeper of culture.
2) It advocates that museums should play the role of curator by selecting content and guide by explaining and combining content, while also acting as a hub to facilitate community discovery and collaboration.
3) The key point is that new media should be used as an instrument to further the museum's mission, not as an end goal in itself, and museums must ensure technologies actually enable participation rather than just communication.
Lego Beowulf and the Web of Hands and Hearts, for the Danish national museum ...Michael Edson
This talk was delivered at the awards ceremony for the 2012 Bikuben Foundation Danish Museum Prize in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ideas about what museums are, who they serve, and the role they play in society are changing with dramatic speed, driven largely by social media and the participatory culture of global networks.
Denmark supports world-class museums, with remarkable collections, expert staff, and beautiful architecture. But how can museum leaders balance the traditional concepts of organizational mission and outcomes with the disruptive possibilities being demonstrated by those who love and use museums in new ways?
A text version of this presentation, with hyperlinks and footnotes, is available at http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/michael-edson-lego-beowulf-and-the-web-of-hands-and-hearts-for-the-danish-national-museum-awards-13444266
The document discusses the work of British Library Labs, which experiments with new ways of working with the library's digital content. It notes that most requests are for "everything" because conventional search interfaces don't work for new forms of research. It describes projects like the Mechanical Curator blog that surfaced unexpected illustrations from digitized books. It also discusses competitions like Off the Map that encouraged creative uses of the library's digital collections.
Connecting the Dots: How Digital Methods Become the Glue that Binds Cultural ...Robert J. Stein
The document discusses how digital methods can connect cultural heritage institutions to contemporary society. It notes that 70% of the global population will live in cities by 2050 and that smart cities face challenges in dealing with proliferating information. The document advocates that cultural institutions should focus on using technology to better understand engagement through metrics like repeat visits and diversity. It provides examples from the Dallas Museum of Art of using free admission and membership along with mobile technologies to better measure outcomes.
Guest lecture given to IS40370: Management for Information Professionals, UCD iSchool, 1 November 2019. Invited to present by module lecturer, Jane Burns, Director of AIT Library.
The Sonic Histories of Cork City (SHOCC) Project is an interdisciplinary research project between members of UCC Library's Special Collections and UCC's Department of Music. The SHOCC Project explores relationships between sound, space and history and investigates what locations in Cork City might have sounded like in various moments in the city's past. The SHOCC Project is a spin-off from a postgraduate music module and the SHOCC Project has its own spin-off research project, 'Listening to Libraries Sounds for the Library of Tomorrow.' Key take-aways from the module and SHOCC Project are the importance of public engagement, adaptability and curiosity.
Crowdsourcing can be an effective way for cultural heritage institutions to engage the public by having them help with labor-intensive tasks like transcription. Examples where this has worked well include contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary, Wikipedia, transcription of over 47 million lines from Australian newspapers by local and family historians, and collection of over 1.5 million bird observations in one month by the eBird project. For crowdsourcing to be sustainable, interfaces need to be engaging; contributors need recognition; and crowdsourcing should be seen as part of a broader public engagement mission rather than just a single project.
Democratisation of Collections through Digitisation.Simon Tanner
Public lecture: Democratisation of Collections through Digitisation. The talk will be delivered by Simon Tanner, Senior Tutor in the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, and Founding Director of King’s Digital Consultancy Services.
In his talk Simon will explore how accelerating access to unique and distinct library content activates new areas of scholarship and teaching. He will also offer his insight, based on his extensive experience in the area, into the successful collaboration between Libraries, Academic Support areas and Digital Humanities scholars
The document discusses how museums can embrace digital participation and change through involving online communities. It describes how the Smithsonian Institution is using mobile platforms and crowdsourcing to engage global collaborators in its work. Examples are given of Smithsonian projects that have recruited volunteers to enhance collections through tasks like transcribing historical documents and identifying fish specimens. The benefits of this community-sourcing approach are that it can fulfill museums' missions of expanding access to collections more than a traditional product-focused crowdsourcing model.
The Museum as Agora: Identity and collaboration in the 21st century museumNancy Proctor
The document discusses the changing role of museums in the digital age. It describes how museums are becoming more collaborative spaces through various online initiatives that engage audiences. These initiatives include user-generated content on sites like Flickr, Wikipedia projects, mobile apps, podcasts, and games. The museum is transforming from a traditional "Acropolis" model to a more open "Agora" model that facilitates collaboration with other institutions, partners, and audiences.
Design for Participation: Three Lessons from MuseumsNina Simon
A presentation about participatory design techniques that can be applied to reduce participation inequality, increase the quality of user-generated content, and support social interaction among users. Presented by Nina Simon of Museum 2.0 at the BayCHI program on March 9, 2010.
Nancy Proctor discusses the importance of mobile for museums and the Smithsonian Institution. Mobile includes both personal devices like smartphones and the social connections they enable. The Smithsonian's mobile strategy aims to integrate mobile throughout its activities to improve accessibility, relevance, and collaboration. Its vision is to use mobile platforms to engage people globally in sharing knowledge. Rather than focusing on technology, the goal is to put knowledge directly into people's hands.
The document discusses the Powerhouse Museum's journey towards open access and digital engagement. It outlines the museum's revenue model, key audiences, and guiding digital principles of being findable, meaningful, responsive, usable, and available everywhere. The museum launched an open access image repository in 2005 which saw rapid growth in views and engagement from the Flickr community. This led to positive outcomes like more engagement with collections, effective delivery of education, leveraging community interest in research, and an institutional shift towards default creative commons rights.
Cultural Heritage and the Technology of Culture: Finding the Nature of Illumi...Martin Kalfatovic
Cultural Heritage and the Technology of Culture: Finding the Nature of Illumination in Libraries and Museums. Martin R. Kalfatovic. 9th Shanghai International Library Forum. Shanghai, China. 19 October 2018.
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available on those devices, but many of the features provide convenience and capability but sacrifice security. This best practices guide outlines steps the users can take to better protect personal devices and information.
Infrastructure Challenges in Scaling RAG with Custom AI modelsZilliz
Building Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems with open-source and custom AI models is a complex task. This talk explores the challenges in productionizing RAG systems, including retrieval performance, response synthesis, and evaluation. We’ll discuss how to leverage open-source models like text embeddings, language models, and custom fine-tuned models to enhance RAG performance. Additionally, we’ll cover how BentoML can help orchestrate and scale these AI components efficiently, ensuring seamless deployment and management of RAG systems in the cloud.
Building Production Ready Search Pipelines with Spark and MilvusZilliz
Spark is the widely used ETL tool for processing, indexing and ingesting data to serving stack for search. Milvus is the production-ready open-source vector database. In this talk we will show how to use Spark to process unstructured data to extract vector representations, and push the vectors to Milvus vector database for search serving.
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
TrustArc Webinar - 2024 Global Privacy SurveyTrustArc
How does your privacy program stack up against your peers? What challenges are privacy teams tackling and prioritizing in 2024?
In the fifth annual Global Privacy Benchmarks Survey, we asked over 1,800 global privacy professionals and business executives to share their perspectives on the current state of privacy inside and outside of their organizations. This year’s report focused on emerging areas of importance for privacy and compliance professionals, including considerations and implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, building brand trust, and different approaches for achieving higher privacy competence scores.
See how organizational priorities and strategic approaches to data security and privacy are evolving around the globe.
This webinar will review:
- The top 10 privacy insights from the fifth annual Global Privacy Benchmarks Survey
- The top challenges for privacy leaders, practitioners, and organizations in 2024
- Key themes to consider in developing and maintaining your privacy program
In his public lecture, Christian Timmerer provides insights into the fascinating history of video streaming, starting from its humble beginnings before YouTube to the groundbreaking technologies that now dominate platforms like Netflix and ORF ON. Timmerer also presents provocative contributions of his own that have significantly influenced the industry. He concludes by looking at future challenges and invites the audience to join in a discussion.
Observability Concepts EVERY Developer Should Know -- DeveloperWeek Europe.pdfPaige Cruz
Monitoring and observability aren’t traditionally found in software curriculums and many of us cobble this knowledge together from whatever vendor or ecosystem we were first introduced to and whatever is a part of your current company’s observability stack.
While the dev and ops silo continues to crumble….many organizations still relegate monitoring & observability as the purview of ops, infra and SRE teams. This is a mistake - achieving a highly observable system requires collaboration up and down the stack.
I, a former op, would like to extend an invitation to all application developers to join the observability party will share these foundational concepts to build on:
GraphSummit Singapore | The Future of Agility: Supercharging Digital Transfor...Neo4j
Leonard Jayamohan, Partner & Generative AI Lead, Deloitte
This keynote will reveal how Deloitte leverages Neo4j’s graph power for groundbreaking digital twin solutions, achieving a staggering 100x performance boost. Discover the essential role knowledge graphs play in successful generative AI implementations. Plus, get an exclusive look at an innovative Neo4j + Generative AI solution Deloitte is developing in-house.
Essentials of Automations: The Art of Triggers and Actions in FMESafe Software
In this second installment of our Essentials of Automations webinar series, we’ll explore the landscape of triggers and actions, guiding you through the nuances of authoring and adapting workspaces for seamless automations. Gain an understanding of the full spectrum of triggers and actions available in FME, empowering you to enhance your workspaces for efficient automation.
We’ll kick things off by showcasing the most commonly used event-based triggers, introducing you to various automation workflows like manual triggers, schedules, directory watchers, and more. Plus, see how these elements play out in real scenarios.
Whether you’re tweaking your current setup or building from the ground up, this session will arm you with the tools and insights needed to transform your FME usage into a powerhouse of productivity. Join us to discover effective strategies that simplify complex processes, enhancing your productivity and transforming your data management practices with FME. Let’s turn complexity into clarity and make your workspaces work wonders!
“An Outlook of the Ongoing and Future Relationship between Blockchain Technologies and Process-aware Information Systems.” Invited talk at the joint workshop on Blockchain for Information Systems (BC4IS) and Blockchain for Trusted Data Sharing (B4TDS), co-located with with the 36th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE), 3 June 2024, Limassol, Cyprus.
Unlocking Productivity: Leveraging the Potential of Copilot in Microsoft 365, a presentation by Christoforos Vlachos, Senior Solutions Manager – Modern Workplace, Uni Systems
Goodbye Windows 11: Make Way for Nitrux Linux 3.5.0!SOFTTECHHUB
As the digital landscape continually evolves, operating systems play a critical role in shaping user experiences and productivity. The launch of Nitrux Linux 3.5.0 marks a significant milestone, offering a robust alternative to traditional systems such as Windows 11. This article delves into the essence of Nitrux Linux 3.5.0, exploring its unique features, advantages, and how it stands as a compelling choice for both casual users and tech enthusiasts.
For the full video of this presentation, please visit: https://www.edge-ai-vision.com/2024/06/building-and-scaling-ai-applications-with-the-nx-ai-manager-a-presentation-from-network-optix/
Robin van Emden, Senior Director of Data Science at Network Optix, presents the “Building and Scaling AI Applications with the Nx AI Manager,” tutorial at the May 2024 Embedded Vision Summit.
In this presentation, van Emden covers the basics of scaling edge AI solutions using the Nx tool kit. He emphasizes the process of developing AI models and deploying them globally. He also showcases the conversion of AI models and the creation of effective edge AI pipelines, with a focus on pre-processing, model conversion, selecting the appropriate inference engine for the target hardware and post-processing.
van Emden shows how Nx can simplify the developer’s life and facilitate a rapid transition from concept to production-ready applications.He provides valuable insights into developing scalable and efficient edge AI solutions, with a strong focus on practical implementation.
5. The virtual revolution Map of the Internet, the Opte Project, project creator Barrett Lyon http://opte.org/maps/
6. “ The biggest media petri dish in four centuries” Paul Saffo, visiting scholar at Stanford University Devastation Explosion Revolution Enlightenment Rapid change Digital deluge
20. Museums: Cathedrals or Town squares? http://www.marcuswestbury.net/2010/09/30/cathedrals-vs-town-squares/ “ The idea of uncontested authority is evaporating”
38. Crowdsourcing Strategies for Archives Rose Holley, NLA 8-12 November 2010 Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/RHmarvellous/naa-archives-20-week-roseholleycrowdsourcingnov-2010
Thankyou for inviting me to speak here today. I work in the online area at the National Film and Sound Archive. I’m a content producer / manager and this talk has created a brief but welcome opportunity for me to stop and think abut the environment I work in every day. I’ll look at some examples of social media that I think work well, and also about some of our experiences at the National Film and Sound Archive which hopefully you might be able to learn from.
But before that, it’s worth looking at the big picture of what change the web is bringing into our lives, in the political, economic and social contexts. There’s no doubt there’s been rapid change. This 1961 IBM computer is a far cry from the PC’s and mobiles of today. http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_virginia/2898506631/
This is a visualisation of the internet by a group called the Opte Project. It is a real representation not just a pretty picture.
Described variously as devastating, an explosion, a digital deluge, a revolution, and likened to the Enlightenment, whatever change the web is bringing, it’s here and there’s not much point saying whether we like it or not, whether we should ‘adopt it’ or not. Adaptation, innovation and experimentation is the rule in a period of rapid change. “We’re experiencing the biggest media petri dish in four centuries,” says Paul Saffo, a visiting scholar at Stanford University who specialises in technology’s effect on society.
But to adapt to change you have to accept the change before you can redraft your map. It’s a little bit like Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s stages of grief. And if your response to web technology is any further up this list than acceptance, you might be experiencing difficulty not just adopting new tools and adapting, but retaining relevance.
Late American writer Susan Sontag said, “Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past present and future Sontag, Susan, 1966, Thinking against Oneself: Reflections on Cioran , in ‘Styles of Radical Will’. Picador, NY, USA.
Some of the changes to the traditional political and media landscapes are exemplified by this website (slide of Ushihidi) http://www.ushahidi.com/ . Ushihihi was developed spontaneously in response to reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. The traditional lines of communication through media and government had failed. A group of web developers, some working in Kenya and some in Europe, built the platform, in collaboration with Kenyan citizen journalists.
The website mapped incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. It had 45,000 users in Kenya and ensured the attention of the world outside.
The initial group of volunteers has become an organisation. that continues to develop the platform as a free, open source application that anyone can use to collect and visualize information. To use their own tag line, they’re democratising information, increasing transparency, and lowering the barriers for people to share stories. There’s clearly an opportunity here for the mapping of cultural heritage sites and enabling people to share their stories.
The web is also transforming our economy, even if it’s still hard to measure. To take one example, technology research group Forrester estimates that online retail sales will hit $28 billion this year, up 17.5 per cent from last year, with one quarter of those sales - worth an estimated $7 billion - going overseas (Zappone, 2010). http://www.smh.com.au/business/retailers-face-hit-as-shoppers-go-online-20101013-16if9.html?autostart=1
In economics , disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain : cutting out the middle person. Buyers skip wholesalers and retailers to buy directly from the manufacturer and presumably pay less. It’s been argued that the Internet modifies the supply chain due to the market transparency it provides.
It also changes the retail experience, completely. I bought a washing machine recently. I bought a new one online in twenty minutes from start to finish: I researched brands and prices, found a supplier, read the reviews of other customers, made the payment and organised delivery for 7am the following morning. In the time I would have taken to locked up the house and got in the car it was done. There may be some people who prefer navigating a shopping centre car park, trying to find floor staff in a goods store and then putting up with their spiel – which may or may not tell you what you want to know -while you’re trying to compare prices in your head and smile at them at the same time. Back at home, I could compare features, brands and prices with a click of a mouse
and quickly check customer ratings and comments for each one. Some of them were quite detailed and very useful. There’s a saying in the film industry “ Everybody wants to be the director!” (throw hands, roll eyes, pull hair). And now they can be. When I bought my washing machine I was directing my own retail experience, I felt more in control than if I had gone into somebody’s shop and listened to their version of the product description. I controlled this experienced and I liked it, a lot. And I recommend you visit this site and others like it as they exemplify a quality of user experience that we should be aspiring to whether you are offering cultural heritage or washing machines.
The web is also changing how we do our jobs and what jobs we do. Internet and social change commentator Clay Shirkey noted that the printing press made reading so valuable to everybody that it stopped being valuable as a profession and put the scribes out of work. Shirky describes this as the first case of mass amateurisation. This is an article about how YouTube and other self publishing social media sites has enabled disintermediation – the musicians from anywhere in the world could auditioned by submitting a video on YouTube.
This is most challenging to those who feel their jobs are threatened and their professional skills are being undermined. I’m calling this cultural disintermediation. As expressed here – it’s not always a positive – they feel ‘under siege’.
There is debate everywhere about the positives and negatives of who gets a voice and how to balance that with the traditional voices of authority – broadcasters, editors, authorship, curatorship.
As Marcus Westbury responds here, ‘despite the risks, the case for the more inclusive approach is overwhelming. It doesn’t come from within the museums but from the changing world outside. ‘ So these significant new communication tools are inextricably entwined with social change that is about people wanting to be the participant, the creator, the centre of it.
What exactly does web technology ‘do’ to cultural heritage? In an online environment, collections become content; Historic houses, science museum artifacts and audiovisual archives all become digital media assets (images) and some text held together by html. A web developer I work with calls text ‘lumpy bits’ or ‘text chunks. It’s a technical term.
The benefit of digitisation is that a collection item or artifact, in becoming content, becomes infinitely replicable, and more accessible, sharable and communicable. It emphasizes replication and transmission rather than uniqueness. Digitisation also shifts the emphasis from the material object or physical collection or site to information and ideas.
Because people like creating dichotomies, I’ll offer this one – “Data versus narrative”’ I find it useful to think about the two key ways that you can put to use your digitised content. Use your warehouse – the data – or build a boutique – the narrative. I think we need to do both. Some people might prefer this (stories website SLIDE) to this (SLIDE open data)
individual cultural organisations have stories to tell about their collections that are unique and finite and not at all flexible but rich and engaging as all good stories are.
But as a major archive our collection database is a powerful tool that if offered as open data online could enable a million more uses than we could offer by building expensive websites – uses we’d never think of ourselves, uses that could create and enable invaluable new ideas and works.
This guy might have a few Kubler Ross stages still to work through in adaptation, but I think it’s true that the best web experiences and use of web tools is when the online offer is well designed to be aligned with and in service to the offline experience, because at the end of the day that’s the one that’s real. How well the two interact and are aligned is often the cause of a web project’s success or failure.
In 2008 the Brooklyn Museum mounted Click ! - A Crowd Curated Exhibition’ which connected the online exhibition process with actual physical exhibition beautifully. ‘Click!’ gave the public the job of ranking photographs for an in-gallery display in 2008. The exhibition was inspired by the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki who asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals. The project began with an open call to artists for photographs on the theme of ‘‘Changing Faces of Brooklyn.’
An online forum invited people to evaluate the works submitted; when you registered you were asked to rate your own knowledge and expertise and invited to rank the works,
The ranked photos were then installed in the exhibition with their size reflecting their ranking. You can still view the results online, in a kind of data visualisation. I think this worked so well because both the online elements and offline could be experienced totally independently of each other but still as completely satisfying experiences and clearly completely connected. Also, the theme of the exhibition - which through the photos emerged as being about gentrification of inner urban areas – was one that the many people – not just Brooklyn locals - could relate to and have been affected by or have an opinion on. In other words they have probably already had a discussion about it somewhere else and could bring this to the experience. This is really important. If you’re not starting with this you really need to factor in something to lower the barrier to participation in your exhibition or online experience. I participated in the online component. It was a well managed pleasurable experience - thought provoking, satisfying and addictive.
Then I heard Shelley Bernstein from the Brooklyn Museum talk about the onsite component and it sounds like it was a huge success as well by every criteria (numbers, engagement, feedback). Shelley has left a blog post that describes exactly how they designed and ran the exhibit and I recommend you make use of it as valuable information well worth a read.
Crowd Sourcing Crowd sourcing is a way that curators and interpreters can collaborate with subject experts using social media.
A major Australian crowd sourcing project was the newspaper correction project run by the National Library. It was an enormous success and the project manager has produced some very useful information about running a crowd sourcing project. The results surprised the National Library and the world. In Nov 2009 over 6000 users have been actively correcting text each month and have corrected 7 million lines of text. They have also been using the other features especially tagging to further improve the quality and depth of the article information. By Oct 2010 – 20 million lines corrected.
It was an enormous success and the project manager has produced some very useful information about running a crowd sourcing project. I recommend you access her presentation on Slideshare for the full story.
COGNITIVE SURPLUS Clay Shirky in his new book Cognitive Surplus’ is about how the web can enable grand projects such as this one and Ushihidi using untapped potential of volunteers. He estimates there are a trillion hours a year available that could be employed on such projects.
User generated contribution on your website can take many forms and include tagging, comments and adding descriptive information of metadata. The Powerhouse Museum has an online collection database, which like most, has some incomplete records. In April 2009, a scientist found a record for a collection item described as an ‘‘H7507 Inclinometer, (also called dipping compass or dip needle), made by Gambey, Paris.’’ The notice said that the object record was ‘‘currently incomplete”. The scientist could identify the object and complete and update the information record.
From publishing their collection database online and allowing people to contribute, the Powerhouse have learnt a lot about their own collection including how people see their collection and that what others value is quite different to what their own curators value in the collection and how they might describe it. Unexhibited items have proven to be the most popular online, and people’s tags differed from curators’ descriptive terms. The Powerhouse’s Seb Chan says it has changed how they write our own collection records.
In our own collection, tthe National Film and Sound Archive discovered a piece of film that was actually older than then oldest known film taken in Australia. We digitised it and put it on the australianscreen website, asking our web audience if they had any information about where the film might have been taken and who the vaudeville performer might have been.
We had an enthusiastic response, with some useful information offered.
Open data lets people do things with information that is interpretive and thereby bring more layers of meaning and aggregate records
Trove was launched early this year by the National Library and has aggregated over 90 million records from deep linked collection information from Australian libraries museums, archives and galleries.
Trove was designed to: provide a single point of access to the resources of the deep web facilitate access to a significantly greater range of resources from major sources, including selected digitised material freely available online support searching of, and access to, full-text content enhance ease of discovery by providing improved relevance ranking, refinement by facets, grouping of all editions of the same book (this is known as FRBR-like grouping) and exploitation of thesauri engage with communities and individuals through annotation services ensure that relevant information is not missed in a search by reducing the need to search material-specific discovery services separately provide a platform for niche services to query a vast resource of Australian metadata and adapt if for their own needs.
It would be fantastic if records about cultural heritage sites were added to this search tool to add another layer and provide further context.
The History Wall is an example of merged data – still in Beta, it is part of an experimental project exploring ways of representing history online. Starting with a curated set of 100 'defining moments' it assembles a contextual cloud drawing together date-identified data from a range of sources including the National Library's People Australia and Australian Newspapers projects, the Australian Dictionary of Biography , the collection of the National Museum of Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Flickr collections of the National Archives of Australia and the Powerhouse Museum, and the discussions of a historians' workshop held at the Museum in November 2009. Just like history itself, no two views of the History Wall are ever quite the same. Random elements are built into the selection and display of the content. Just reload the page for another perspective. Once again – if a resource like this was also drawing on broader historical information about cultural heritage the richer and more useful it would be. Interpretation is about context and merged and aggregated data can provide unexpected context and juxtapositions.
Information overload is a serious problem in the social web, and there are a lot of companies trying to tackle the problem. One of them is Paper.li, a service that organizes the links shared on Twitter into mini-newspapers. With just a few APIs, Paper.li has figured out a way to curate the most popular links on the web. The application connects to your Twitter account or you choose a keyword or Twitter list as the basis of your new newspaper. Paper.li can generate a summary of the most popular and relevant links based on your keyword or friend list, and it is updated every day, week or month, depending on your preference.
Digital Humanities Now works in a similar way – it’s a real-time, crowdsourced publication for the digital humanities community that selects articles, blog posts, projects, tools, collections, and announcements worthy of attention. It’s automatically generated - created by ingesting the Twitter feeds of hundreds of scholars followed by @dhnow (a list of scholars taken from this digital humanities Twitter list ), processing these feeds through Twittertim.es to generate a more narrow feed of common interest and debate, and reformatting that feed on this site, in part to allow for further (non-Twitter) discussions. Digital Humanities Now was created by Dan Cohen , assisted by Jeremy Boggs , and is a production of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University . If you work in digital humanities or a related field and would like to join the editorial board of Digital Humanities Now , send a reply to @dancohen on Twitter and he’ll add you to the list. For more on the thoughts behind the creation of DHN , see “ Introducing Digital Humanities Now .”
Blogs are an easy way to provide a lively, informal source of information with the opportunity for a two way communication through comments. Blog interfaces are easy to use, so anyone can post and maintain their own content. They’re easy to update and shareable through RSS feeds.
You can blog about how you engage with the issues of your business – Powerhouses’s Fresh and New and Brooklyn’s Blog provide a rich source of information for people in the same business and an interesting behind the scenes look for those who aren’t.
There’s also the collection blog – photo of the day and object of the week.
Or there is the knowledge blog - organisations broader theme or mission and bring insights to it that are more external looking such as the Paley Centre’s blog from its curators, on broadcasting and media. Their curators have specialist knowledge and the writing skills to share it, it’s a strength and they use it well.
Like with all these new web tools, Twitter just depends what you do with it. Yes there are plenty of trivia. But it also seems to me that the most generous people in my professional areas of interest are on there sharing valuable information – sometimes via a succinct but insightful 140 character comment, but most often via links to other content – their blog post, a conference paper, a new report, a news article. Annabel Crabbe suggests looking at like a newspaper put together by your friends – and your Twitter stream will reflect the quality of the people you choose to follow so if its full of rubbish, un follow them and search for the people with the goods.
Don’t underestimate the power and use of some networking tools to build communities and share information. low cost and rapid or real time sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work easier. Internet allows groups to easily form
This website is not only a great resource for people working in the area of cultural communication but Nings are a great tool for cheaply easily and rapidly building online networks and collaborations.
People are afraid of what happens when the masses arrive. Will they steal stuff, say rude things? Generally behave badly. In my experience, getting people to come is the hard bit and when they do come they are incredibly well behaved. But really, the hard bit is getting the participation happening. You need a strategy and clear purpose to entice them. Its ‘pretty much the same as designing an exhibition, making choices, creating a pathway for people, or a story to tell that gives them an experience of something like CLICK! the Brooklyn Museum exhibition – you’re exercising your knowledge but also letting people share theirs.
NFSA kicked off a lot of its first social media activity with a project based on its Sounds of Australia registry. We have a wonderful sound collection and we wanted to promote it. Nice idea but not the easiest starting point. Promoting anything for its own sake rather than what it offers people in a specific environment is wrong. On top of that, the sound collection is diverse and esoteric - not all rock music and arias. There won’t be an global audience with pre-existing knowledge of or engagement with the collection material and there is no central idea or theme behind it to pull it together. Like there was for the theme of gentrification for the Click exhibition. The registry of recorded sound as the unifying concept is also a hard concept to communicate. It is a curatorial, archival concept not easily understood among the general population. So we achieved many worthwhile things individually -
Publishing sound titles on australianscreen for the first time
Setting up our first blog
A YouTube Channel with a video sampling the registry sounds
And some beautiful photos from the artifacts collection which we published on Flickr because there was already a community on Flickr around ‘vintage sound equipment.
we developed our Facebook and Twitter presence,
using both to send people to the material we were posting on Flickr, YouTube and the blog. But there was no narrative, or theme to bring it together in a connected experience for audiences. It needed to be designed just like an exhibition. There was enormous value in the individual outputs but an opportunity lost to really be interpretive and offer an overarching narrative to hold it together.
The web is measurable in many wonderful ways.
One you put content on the web, you can measure it very easily. Using Get Clicky, Google Analytics and many other cheap or free tools, we can find out who is coming, from where, what they look at, how long for and where they go to from here. You can click through to see IP address, how many schools, how many from overseas, by following where they came from we discover blogs and forums and pages we never knew existed that we share interests with. Snowy hydro forums, roller skaters club in Russia. Your audience is not who you think they are. This poses plenty of challenging questions – who are you doing it for? What do you want to communicate? Your knowledge? Just showing off? Or giving people what they want? Web metrics can inform your outcomes, and help justify and therefore resource your efforts.
On a final practical note I want to mention this paper by Tim Sherratt who is currently at the National Museum working on that history wall I showed earlier. This paper, which can be found on Scribd, despite seeming archive orientated is worth a look as he describes many web tools with lots of simple and practical information about how to use them, with lists of further resources.