Digital Preservation Management

The Digital Preservation Management reading really caught my attention this week.  I started off with the quiz and it told me that not only should I read this but I should do their workshop as well (not in a failing sort of way but as in  I could really use this in a museum setting) and I have to agree.  With the goal of digitizing over 40,000 slides in the next two years, it is extremely important that I keep up to date with current technologies.  It would awful if after all that work I found out that what I saved the photos on was no longer relevant to technologies.  I definitely plan on bringing this to my director’s attention to see if we can either actually do the workshop or find something compatible to it to bring us up to speed on available technologies. 

Some highlights in the reading for me were the terms and concepts page as well as the obsolescence  and physical threats page.  The terms and concepts were helpful for obvious reasons: it defined key terms that I did not know.  It also brought me up to speed on what current technologies there are.  The obsolescence page was helpful in showing me what to do and what not to do.  As we have talked about in class before, new technologies in a small museum is not always an option and it is really easy to continue to use obsolete technologies because there is no choice.  I hope that with the photos my Museum will be able to maintain it so that they never become obsolete because they are such an important part of the collection.

Cohen, Chapter 5

For my final project, I am writing a grant proposal to get money to build a website and the class reading gave me numerous tips on how to build a successful one.  I already know that the web address will end in “.org” because it will probably be linked to our original website somehow.  I agree that website design is very important when building a page and I would like the one I am going to eventually build to look both professional and accessible to audiences of all ages.  I also think that it would be great if we could have a games section on the website (with something like memory with the photos) but I am not sure if we have the capabilities as a small museum to do that.  This weeks’ readings have given me a bunch of new ideas to use for the website when it does eventually get built.

Tagging

The idea of outsiders tagging a museum’s collection really caught my eye in this week’s reading.  Incorporating tagging on collection website is very useful not only for visitors to the website but to the staff at the museum.  It forces them to look outside the conventional terms used in a museum setting. From personal experience, trying to find particular masks on a museum’s collections page is not easy to do because the terms can be so specific.

 The museum software PastPerfect allows you to add keywords to make items in collection more searchable because they sometimes have a very limited list of descriptive terms. When creating the website for the photographs I would like to add objects to the page to show what the women were bringing back with them.  If I had to use only the terms provided in PastPerfect, I am not sure that people would easily find some of the items easily.  If visitors could also tag the items then it may help.  The downside to this though is the worry that people will write paragraphs instead of keywords or use keywords that do not fit or inappropriate so it would need to be closely monitored. 

I also really liked the Visual Velcro reading. Audio tours are useful when visiting a museum in another country.  They open up the museum experience allowing tourists to get the most of their visit.  When I visited the Louvre in Paris it would have been almost impossible for me to really see the Museum without the use of an audio tour as I do not speak French.  Using audio tours to guide the eye around a painting is much more useful than a label.   They are distracting and do not really help the untrained eye to really appreciate a piece of art.  Videos showing the curator’s comments and the artist’s thoughts would be extremely useful as well.  It would be helpful to know what the artist was feeling or thinking when they were creating a masterpiece.

Webpages

Cohen talks about the cost of a  website in this week’s readings.  As anyone who has worked in a small museum or historical society knows, funding can be hard to come by and especially hard for a new technology.  Grants are available but competition for these grants is fierce and it is frustrating to see the bigger museums win out. 

A great website that shows all upcoming events and programs and has information that users who have never heard of the museum could use would be an excellent resource in any museum.  However the time and money it would take to implement may outweigh the benefits for some.   Even if the museum went for  one of the cheaper versions through Yahoo or some other website, there is still the problem of additional advertising on the website.  The advertisements detract from the message of the website and may even cause your establishment to lose creditability.  Also what if the advertisements are inappropriate for your target audience?   

In addition to funding issues, museums often find that they need technical assistance as well.  If they do not have a computer savvy person on staff they have to find other ways of dealing with bugs, viruses, and other issues that computers can throw at you.  Technical assistance is usually not great and very expensive.  Advice can be wrong or take a long time to arrive.  These kind of problems may keep a museum from using the technology. 

Museums need to try to keep up with technology as it becomes available but how can they keep it cost effective?

Thoughts on Syllabus Finder and H-Bot

In Dan Cohen’s article From Babel to Knowledge he discusses the Syllabus Finder and H-Bot applications.  I think that these applications are not only useful for professors but also students and others. 

Using the Syllabus Finder application will allow professors to find new resources for classes including reading materials and class exercises.  It will also let students looking to build a bibliography find academic resources easier.  Using Cohen’s example of searching for the American Revolution a student can find a book list that may not match what their research has produced or materials outside of their school’s library just like it may expand a professor’s book list or replace an outdated book or article with a more current one.  This resource is helpful for others outside the traditional academic setting because it allows them to see what professors are using as reading lists and discussion topics.  It allows them to stay current with research.

The H-Bot application is interesting.  The H-Bot will find an answer to a simple question using the Internet.  It may not use reliable websites all the time to find the information but it will most likely give a correct answer.  I know that when I am looking for an answer to a quick question I do not rely on the first answer I find.  I will often check two or three sources to verify the answer.  The H-Bot application does this for me now.  I wonder if as this application becomes more popular will it replace sites like Wikipedia as a popular search tool? 

Cohen’s article points out the benefits of these two applications as well as the flaws.  Both are I think that as these sites improve with time they will be very useful to the public and important tools in research.

Wiki readings

This weeks readings on Wikipedia really interested me.  Like most others I use Wikipedia to look up some quick fact but never as a source for research academically. Wikipedia was intended to be a universal encyclopedia.  It is rapidly attaining the universal part with over 1,000,000,000 articles but as for the encyclopedia part, that is still up for debate.  It still has a high error rate and has limited contributors.  It can easily be revised and edited and even if the correct information is entered, it is just as easily deleted.  The authors of these articles do not have to have any background in the topic they are writing.  It is for these reasons that I would not use Wikipedia academically. 

It is interesting however that both Google and Yahoo are giving Wikipedia freebies in order to use Wikipedia without paying.  Does this mean when I enter a search question in Google I am going to have to compare the answer they give me to the answer Wikipedia would have given me?  I wonder if this will positively or negatively affect the creditability of Google and Yahoo.  Especially now when those search engines are becoming more popular in an academic setting. 

As an interesting side note about a year or two ago a national television show was discussing Wikipedia and how easy it is to edit information.  They instructed viewers to change an important piece of information in an article.  The amount of people who tried to change the information resulted in that article being locked indefinitely.  That makes me wonder what else has been changed that flew under the radar of the monitors at Wikipedia.

Case Study: American Memory

I chose the Library of Congress website, American Memory.

This website started as a project to digitize the LOC’s historical collections.  It grew through private donations into National Digital Library Program and from there grew into American Memory.  Today it has over five million items available online.  American memory fulfills the LOC’s “mission to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.”

The browse tab gives the user several different ways of looking for information on the website.  A user can look by topic (ex: Native American History), by collection (ex: Civil War Images), by time period (ex: 1800-1849), by collections containing specific items (ex: maps), or by collections by place (ex: West US).  Putting the same search criteria can yield different results or provide different insights on the same results. 

Help is available for browsing the website.  This includes tips on searches, FAQ, how to view results, and contact information. 

The home tab has several features.  I particularly enjoyed “today in history” because I have always liked that when it appears anywhere.  It also gives advice to teachers on how to use American Memory in the classroom and the choice to ask a librarian for help. 

Overall I would rate this website as very useful.  The different ways to browse collections can really yield maximum search results as well as give the user different ideas about where to search.  I also liked that it was very user friendly with a lot of different tips and pieces of advice.  The ask a librarian tool allows the user to ask an LOC librarian a question and gives a response in five business days.  That is a very useful tool in navigating any website.  I would definitely use American Memory in future research.

The Google Articles

I found the reading for this week very interesting.  I really enjoyed to Google articles.  It is interesting to see the behind the scenes info on one of the world’s most widely used search engines. 

In “How does Google collect and rank results” I liked how it took us through the step by step way Google finds results.  It’s amazing that they have been able to speed up the process as much as they have and the applications for the technology is amazing.  The PageRank algorithm is very interesting. 

The PageRank algorithm is further discussed in “How does Google Determine Which Web Sites Are The Most Trusted?”  Using a type of voting system to rank pages allows PageRank to account for different factors in picking a trusted website.

The most interesting article to me was “Google Book Search: An Introduction.”  I especially like the idea of trying to put some or all information about all books on the Internet.  This is the kind of information that the Internet was designed for.  I am looking forward to a future where I can type in any book ever written and have it appear on the screen before me in any language and keyword searchable.

Dan Cohen’s Professors, Start Your Blogs

Dan Cohen’s article on blogging in the academic world shows how much blogging has changed since it first started.  It does not have to be the self absorbed, mindless realm it was once considered to be.  Blogging allows professionals as well as students to share information and learn from one another outside a classroom or other traditional academic setting.  It allows professors to talk to others interested in their sometimes very specific fields.  These forums of discussion bring together ideas and views when they are thought of instead of having to wait for a book or article to be published.  Students across the county can learn from the most respected experts in their fields without having to leave their homes. 

Cohen assures professors and other members of the academic community that their ideas and thoughts in a blog have the same copyrights as those in a book or journal.  He also lets them know that blogs do not have to be constantly updated and when they do write something new, RSS feeds will alert their audiences.  This information is helpful to a wary professor who does not want to add more to their workload. 

After reading this article and seeing the potential blogging has for people, I think that professors should consider starting blogs.  It makes sense that as the Internet grows and becomes a place of vast information that those who really know what they are talking about should write about it.  When it comes to citing a website it would be far better to use an accredited professor than a random website with inaccurate information.

Hello

Hello, I’m Jeannine.   I am in my first year of grad school and getting my master’s in public history.  I work at the New Britain Youth Museum as their office manager, stop by and say hi sometime!