Smithsonian 2.0

Tomorrow's the day for the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum

Back in January, I was treated to a preview of the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life. Tomorrow, it opens its doors officially. The in-world ribbon-cutting ceremony and virtual building dedication happens at 1:30 p.m. with three of the Smithsonian Latino Center's Second Life islands, Smithsonian Latino Lobby, Smithsonian Latino Music, and Smithsonian Latino Expeditions, open to avatars. Normally the amount of our collections available to our visitors is constrained by physical space limitations, however this barrier is definitely being broken as many of the museums, research, and science centers find innovative ways to make so much more of our treasures accessible over the Web. The Latino Virtual Museum pulls together a number of different ideas from the Smithsonian 2.0 gathering, more access to collections and artifacts combined with online interaction for research and scholarship, exhibits, and immersive education activities.

I'm honored to pass along the Smithsonian Latino Center's invitation to join us in this adventure to explore Smithsonian world-class collections, superb scholarship, exciting programs and exhibitions through the lens of Second Life, a multi-user avatar based 3D (learning) virtual world environment.

Details are at http://latino.si.edu/education/LVM_Main.htm.

 

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.

ArtBabble anyone?

Have any SI 2.0 folks (or other readers of this blog) checked out ArtBabble yet? I haven't had a chance to explore the content in-depth yet, but looks like a lot of really interesting artist interviews, behind-the-scenes tours, employee profiles, etc.--sort of like a YouTube for art, although it is not open for public videos at this point. 

ArtBabble is hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and contains mostly IMA-related videos, but the FAQ suggests that they are open and interested in having other institutions contribute as well. If some SI units already have high-quality video clips, this may be one way to get knowledge "out there" without having to build the platform from scratch--or at the very least it is an interesting model to generate discussion.

The link is www.artbabble.org --It is invitation-only at this point (I think the site has only be live for a month or two), but e-mail me if you are interested and I'll send you an invite. Would love to hear what others think about it and how something similar might be used at the Smithsonian.

2.0 Enthusiasm Grows with Traveling Exhibitions

There's been a lot of discussion about putting all of our collections online since museum gallery space is limited and so few people will actually make the trek to Washington, DC, to see the real deals. This may indeed be the case, but we should be reminded that the Smithsonian travels outside the boundaries of the nation's capital--way outside. In fact, the Smithsonian's Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) brought SI collections, both big-ticket items and little-known gems, to nearly all 50 states last year. So, yes, we're out there in your backyard in a very real and tangible way.

Nonetheless, even the traveling exhibition service is working on doing a better job of connecting with people outside the Beltway. And in some ways, we're taking our lead from some of the museums out there that are hosting our shows, the folks who sometimes work on a shoe-string budget yet still manage to provide amazingly enriching experiences for their visitors, online and off. Take, for example, the University Museum, University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa; they hosted our satellite imagery exhibition Earth from Space last year. The university could have just followed the rules, unpacked their yellow crates, installed the exhibition, and planted a hard-bound visitor comment book at the door. But they went way beyond that, sponsoring a photo contest that centered around the major themes of the exhibition. The imagery was stunning and was truly a launching pad for discussion about sometimes unnoticed places in Iowa.

Inspiration from Iowa is now migrating to Arizona. Huh? Playing off the success of the Earth from Space photo contest, we've just launched our first public wiki in conjunction with Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography. Brand new for us and very low budget, it's really a pilot project. Hopefully, many other exhibition-related wikis will follow. We're getting there!

Artifact from the Future

I was thinking a bit about Smithsonian 2.0 today and recalled the WIRED "Artifact from the Future" page (April 2008, 16.05) that captured a Smithsonian exhibition from sometime in the future!

Now, is that exhibition space wifi? Can that tombstone text link to your mobile device?

Tyler Green on making collection catalogs accessible

Tyler Green, the author of the blog Modern Art Notes, posted an entry yesterday that reiterates one of the major themes from the 2.0 meeting. In the post, he laments that it is not possible for anyone to own all the collection catalogs of museums they might like to reference, as they take up a ton of space and some museum's catalogs span multiple volumes. The whole post is good, but this line really stuck out:

 "Because of cost and volume, collections and the scholarship done about them are primarily accessible to two groups of people: People who live in City X who can visit the extremely limited percentage of collection on view at City X Museum on a given day, and scholars who have access to libraries with excellent art-related books collections. If I feel like looking at the Nelson-Atkins' Caravaggio -- let alone learning more about it -- the available images and information are limited"

He then mentions that the Getty is sponsoring a project to make museum's collections more available in an on-line collection catalog format, and that SI's Freer/Sackler is one of the pilot members. Do any Freer/Sackler folks have any more information on this? 

The associated report "LA Art Online: Learning from the Getty's Electronic Cataloging Initiative" details some of the challenges and rewards of "putting it all out there" and making collections accessible--It should be required reading for all of us SI 2.0 and other folks interested in learning how to be less stingy with their collections!! It only deals with digitizing collections (not blogs, etc.) but reinforces themes that came from the meeting and provides some framework for moving forward.

Creating a Dialogue

A significant message to come out of the Smithsonian 2.0 discussions was the need to facilitate a dialogue between our staff and our visitors, both on-line and on site. At the Luce Foundation Center at the American Art Museum, we think we're already pretty good at that. People can comment on our Web site and in-gallery kiosks, or they can talk to people at the always-staffed information desk. We document everything and have made many changes in direct response to visitor feedback. (If you want a list of every question or comment we've received at the information desk since July 1, 2006, we can get you that!) We're talking to people on Facebook and the museum's blog, and created an exciting conversation through the ARG Ghosts of a Chance. But the conference really got me thinking that it would be wonderful to involve our visitors in true behind-the-scenes activites. Can we do this in a way that is engaging for the participant, but also honestly useful and not too time-consuming for the staff?

We came up with an idea that we think might be successful. When an artwork leaves the Luce Center (to go elsewhere in the museum, to go out on loan, or to go to the Lunder Conservation Center) and will be gone for more than twelve months, we need to replace it. Can the public help? We think they can, and created this page as a test run. What do you think?

American history 2.0

Recently I took part in a “Smithsonian 2.0” conference about the future of the Smithsonian’s digital presence. In attendance were many of my colleagues from other museums and offices around the Institution and a group of invited guests representing some of the foremost thinkers on digital technology in the commercial, educational, and non-profit arenas. Over two days we had opportunities to share prior accomplishments and works-in-progress, dream up new possibilities, and address challenges and obstacles...

Read the full post at O Say Can You See?

True stories behind the objects make a difference.

When I think about the experiences and expertise that the Smithsonian staff have regarding important scientific, cultural, historic and artistic objects as well as the context of those objects, I'm excited to learn that there's a desire at SI, and effort being made, to give me a taste of some of the treaures I can find there.

When I found Smithsonian images in the Flickr Commons, and ran across museums' group pages in Facebook, I came away with the feeling that SI is reaching out to me and my children.

I recently heard about meteorites at the National Museum of Natural History. It was by word of mouth, and the story has left me intrigued, wanting to learn more. It's not that I find meteorites visually stimulating; rather I've been gently confronted with the fact that what's buried inside them affected the course of American space exploration. SI, I'd like a few more gentle confrontations like that, please.

FYI - I get and give a lot of 'word-of-mouth' information at places like Flickr and Facebook. Frankly, more than I do with email or real face-to-face conversations. Thanks for putting some of your images there; it's triggered a real interest to learn more about what I've seen and to take a look at what else you have.

Washington Post Discovers Smithsonian 2.0

The Washington Post did a story on the Smithsonian 2.0 event.

Condensing the two plus days of activity into a traditional print journalism article with limitations of space, coming out two days after the event, etc., was a difficult task. Already, readers have been providing some feedback on the WPost website, so that will help expand the coverage. So, for those of you who were at the event, particularly our invited guests, please do take a look at the piece and add some first hand impressions to supplement the story!