Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person

(open the animation in a bigger window)

I made this animation for the 2009 Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Webwise conference.

I was on a panel titled Online Communities and The Institution chaired by Nina Simon of Museum 2.0 with Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology at the Brooklyn Museum and Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services.

Nina wanted us to be provocative and I thought this might be the time and place to, as @ulotrichous (Eli Neiburger from Ann Arbor Public Library) said, defuse "traditional arguments against letting go of content." I was a little worried about the presentation. I thought that either I was being too harsh in caricaturing those who have reservations about online content, or that Webwise attendees were already past objections like "if we put content online nobody will come to our museum/library/archive."

Far from the case apparently.

Deanna said she thought the animation "was filmed inside the Library of Congress" and many many attendees told me that the script cut very close to home.

I'll cross-post this in alternate formats to slideshare and youtube, or you can follow this link to get to the .swf file for download and/or full screen viewing.

Comments

[Shelley]

It was flipping hilarious!

[Lawrence Swiader]

Mike, thanks for this. Honestly, it says it all and I am somewhat ashamed to say that I was driven out of the museum business because of it. I just had to go to a place that embraced the possibilities of new media and new spaces in order to make the world a better place. Museums that don't stop trying to control the conversation risk becoming irrelevant. Those conversations will (and are) happening without them anyway.

[Pam Corey]

Awesome! Thanks for posting this - and having the ability to do so.....

[Larry Cebula]

Cinéma vérité!

So sorry to have missed the Museum 2.0 conference, I did not even hear of it beforehand. Will it happen again next year?

[Sue Pridemore]

What a clever way to have each of us step back for a second and listen to ourselves! I've shared the blog with several people who are on "both sides" of the issue. Well done.