This document discusses sharing museum and collection information online. It provides examples of museums that have created online collections databases and mobile websites to provide access to their collections. It also addresses challenges around copyright, resources for ongoing maintenance, and audience engagement when putting collections online. The goal is to make more collection information and objects available digitally to reach wider audiences.
2. People want to know what you have…
Public funding. ‘Open access’?
Participation and engagement
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3. Accuracy / completeness of data
Copyright
Sales potential of images
Time to respond to queries
Institutional policies
Maintenance and sustainability
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4. 25-30% of website usage?
Improves your website ‘findability’
Increases dwell time on your site
(Collections Trust)
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19. 25 September 2013 http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18448667/ 19
20. Most people don’t pay for most pictures
Where they do, it’s for specific iconic pictures
for commercial use
Nobody makes money running a picture liby
◦ Make 90% freely available for sharing
◦ Look after the 8% that might have commercial
potential and
◦ Focus licensing & distribution on the 2% that you
know will generate revenue
(Nick Poole, The Digital Agenda in Museums)
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21. 25 September 2013 http://www.memoryprints.com/gallery/birmingham/1 21
22. 25 September 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_the_Web_awards 22
32. Taking your information to places people go
◦ Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter
Making contact, communicating
◦ Blogs, Facebook, Twitter
What are people saying about your museum?
◦ Flickr, Twitter, Blogs etc etc…
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34. 25 September 2013 http://ashbydelazouchmuseum.org.uk/Talking%20objects.html 34
35. Collections information
◦ Mobile compatible ‘responsive’ websites
◦ QR codes / RFID / NFC / BLE
Gallery trails
◦ GPS , TAP, Everytrail etc
Visitors creating stuff about your collections
◦ Adding photos to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram
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36. 25 September 2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Derby_Museum_visitor_uses_QR_Code.jpg 36
37. 25 September 2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Philosopher_Lecturing_on_the_Orrery 37
38. % of V&A website visitors using mobiles:
◦ 9% in 2012, 18% 2013
V&A 2012: 60% museum visitors use their
smartphone to access info about their visit
C.50% visitors travel with smartphones.
◦ 60% smartphone owners use them to take photos
◦ 50% to find more information
Tate: Some visitors strongly opposed to mobiles in
the gallery
Tate et al: Many users expect same resources from
mobile as website
Pattern differs between organisations
http://www.vam.ac.uk/b/blog/digital-
media/museum-visitors-using-mobile
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39. Evaluating impact
Demand not supply:
◦ ‘we have these ceramics, how can we tell people about
them and improve access to them?’
◦ ‘lots of people are interested in pottery, how can we
start a conversation about our shared knowledge [based]
around our ceramics collection?’
Audience segmentation,motivation,behaviour
User testing
Issues with browsing collections information
http://weareculture24.org.uk/projects/action-
research
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41. Audience development strategy
Who are you targeting?
What are they doing? / What do they need?
Why would they be interested?
How will they use your stuff?
How will you evaluate?
How will you (continuously) improve?
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Note the option for web visitors to add their own tags…
… and comments
E-Hive Wordpress site
Good text – great object
Note the ‘friendly’ text ‘story’
This is the other version, using the BM’s catalogue data. More researcher orientated.Should consider audience need and whether to put online:A few objects in depth orAll objects in less depth?
Currently thought to be one of the best collections information websites: high quality images, great metadata, API.Note the Help and other guidance at the bottom of the screen.
Note the poor quality image (& the next slide)
Great example of crowdsourcing
Cooper HewittNote invitations to submit info and link to Cooper Hewitt’s objects
Many large museums outsource sales of their images, both prints and digital imagesMemoryprints and Magnolia Box and Media Storehouse are main examples. Also Internova.Specialise in e-commerce and understand and attract a much larger audience than a small museum website. Also deal with time consuming printing, packaging and delivery.Companies may set up the museum’s site for free and take a percentage of the sales income.Talk to others about income from sales
Good place to find great examples of digital engagement in museums
Art North Carolina: a Best of the Web award winnerNote the Concept maps
UK Learning portal.
Learning resource linking NC to objects.
Overall winner of Best of Web 2013 (Museums & the Web conference).Note the Master Matcher – unconventional means of finding objects of interest – and ability to download large images and adapt them.
Partnerships and syndication
Note the tagging tool
Flickr has been used by museums to distribute images, but it’s also a good way to make contact with people who are interested enough in your museum/objects to photograph them. Can you get them even more involved?If you refer to object records on your website from social media, you must use persistent URLs.
WordPress blog.This site was voted Best Small Museum Project at the Museums and the Web conference 2011Run by volunteers with pretty much no budget. Marvellous example of integrating museum into local community.Most articles written by volunteers with minimal editing.Note that people can sign up to receive email updates.
Ashby filmed volunteers & local experts talking about some objects. Films are on YouTube with links to each film on Ashby’s website. QR codes next to the gallery label can be scanned by a mobile phone QR code reader to bring up the film.This work may bebased on a much larger US museum’s work, showing that even the smallest museum can apply ideas from larger institutions.
Much cheaper to build mobile compatibility in from the start than to add it later.
Scan the QR code to retrieve info on Wikipedia,eg…
Check your museumand highlights on WikipediaFind out what others are saying about your collections on Wikipedia and Flickr
This address also links to a list of social media metrics tools.
Great example of segmenting audiences and asking them about their motivation in visiting your website. Clicks can be counted and recorded and linked to eg Google Analytics metrics.(In practice, unfortunately people don’t seem to understand the differences between these categories and most click ‘Skip’ – so more work needed on segments?)
Use cases/user journeys through your site.The project syndrome…
