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.