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| MCN 2004 - Sessions
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sessions
THURSDAY
8:30-10:00 - Room1
In Sync: Tying Teams and Technology Together
Session Chair: John R Bedard, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Panelists:
Stephanie Stebich, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Paula Warn, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts launched an enterprise-wide Visitor Activity
System (VAS) to achieve three objectives: 1. Improve visitor service by
providing one point of contact for visitor transactions, onsite, online
and on phone, 2. Resolve internal inefficiencies, 3. Replace inadequate
system. Simultaneously the Institute initiated a major cross-functional
teaming initiative.
This was not just a technical project, but an impetus to change the way
departments work together, and even the change the organizational structure
of the Institute. Although not complete, it already has made significant
progress toward accomplishing all of its objectives.
This session will discuss the technical and organizational elements that
have made this project a success as well as the lessons learned along the
way.
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8:30-10:00 - Room 2
Libraries, Archives, and Museums: Reports from Research and Projects
Session Chair: Howard Besser, Director, Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program, New York
University, Dept. of Cinematic Studies
Panelists:
Tanisha Jones, Irene Taylor, Jeff Martin, Pamela Smith and Margaret Mello: Students, Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program
This session highlights the best research and projects from Howard Besser's
graduate school course comparing libraries, archives, and museums. These
projects and research will make audience members more aware of the commonalities
and differences between different types of cultural repositories. They
will show how the goals and cultures of different memory institutions differ,
and how these differences lead to varied implementations of selection policies
and practices, of collection management and metadata schemes, of exhibition
design, education, and preservation.
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8:30-10:00 - Room 4
The Persistent Archives Testbed Project: Collaborative Management of Digital
Resources
Session Chair: Jason Roy, Minnesota Historical Society
Panelists:
Richard Marciano, SDSC
Rose Sherman, Minnesota Historical Society
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) is collaborating with several
institutions to test implementations of data grid technology and the SDSC's
Storage Resource Broker (SRB), using a variety of digital collections as
samples. The project creates a consortium model for electronic resource
management, with archival and technological functions practically and appropriately
allocated in a distributed network. In this session, Richard Marciano,
of the SDSC, describes the technology and Rose Sherman, of the Minnesota
Historical Society, discusses the practical experiences of implementation.
A presentation of the software will be followed by discussion
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10:00-10:30
- Break
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10:30-12:00 - Rooms (1 - 4 ) - Keynote
Max Anderson to Deliver the Blackaby Keynote at MCN 2004
Connoisseurship in the Wireless Age
The spread of wireless technology, new types of databases, and high definition
television present many new opportunities for museums. In the 2004 Blackaby
Keynote, Maxwell L. Anderson will offer some observations about new directions
in visual arts research and education through networked computing, and
speculate about the ultimate impact of long-heralded technological convergence
on the care and appreciation of public art collections.
About the Speaker
The author of dozens of articles and monographs on art and museums, Max
Anderson graduated from Dartmouth in 1977 and received a Ph.D. in art history
from Harvard in 1981. He was subsequently a curatorial assistant and assistant
curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for six years and over the following
16 years, director of Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, Toronto's
Art Gallery of Ontario, and New York's Whitney Museum of American Art.
He has taught on the faculties of Yale University and the Universitˆ di
Roma. Founding Chairman of the Art Museum Image Consortium, and Executive
Director of the Art Museum Network, he has long sought to promote the use
of high technology in furthering the missions of cultural institutions.
For the 2004-05 academic year, Max is a Visiting Lecturer at the Center
for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of International
and Public Affairs, Princeton University. |
Max Anderson |
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12:00-1:30
- Lunch
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1:30-3:00 - Room 1
Get Your Tickets Here! Selecting and Implementing the Right Ticketing System
for Your Organization
Roundtable Session Panelists:
Ellen Steinman, Visitor Services, Mill City Museum
Steve Jacobson, President, Jacobson Consulting Applications, Inc. (JCA)
The topic of ticketing and admissions is always relevant, but has been
made more so by the current economic challenges facing museums and other
organizations today. As more sources of revenue are needed, the ability
to sell tickets to more events and activities becomes ever more important.
The installation of the right system can also lead to efficiencies and
cost savings. The challenge is to avoid implementing a costly system that
is not the right choice for the institution, costing both dollars and staff
time.
The focus at this roundtable will be on sharing a framework for system
selection, learning from other organizations that have been through the
process, and sharing experiences with various specific software products.
We will look at how a ticketing system affects the visitor, Visitor Service
or Box office personnel, IS departments, and reporting for Marketing and
Administration.
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1:30-3:00 - Room 2
Achieving Digital Preservation Through Collaboration
Roundtable Session Panelists: Judith Cobb, OCLC Digital Collections and Preservation Services
Sam Quigley, Harvard University Art Museums
Robert Horton, State Archivist, Minnesota Historical Society
Keith Ewing, St. Cloud University Libraries
Eric Celeste, University of Minnesota
Cultural heritage institutions of all varieties are facing the challenge
of sustaining digital resources. This roundtable session will bring together
representatives from the archival, library, historical society, art museum
and history museum communities to discuss developing collaborative digital
preservation policies and programs. Each speaker will be knowledgeable
about digital preservation and will have participated in multi-organizational
collaborative projects and programs.
Each representative will be asked to address the question "What would
a collaborative digital preservation program among archives, libraries,
historical societies, and museums look like? Please include some reference
to policies, procedures, access and preservation requirements, and incentives
for collaboration." Following their responses, the panelists will
take questions from the audience. Some issues expected to be addressed
include:
- What are the opportunities for collaboration among cultural heritage institutions
relating to digital preservation? Are there any existing models of this
kind of collaboration related to digital preservation?
- What kinds of policies need to be put in place to facilitate digital preservation?
How have you implemented them in your organization?
- What are the roadblocks we face in digital preservation? In collaborating?
- What kinds of technical standards exist that can facilitate collaborative
digital preservation? (file formats, metadata standards, etc.)
- How should rights management issues be addressed in a collaborative preservation
environment?
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1:30-3:00 - Room 3
Intellectual Property and New Media Art: Creativity and Collecting in an
Age of Constraints
Sponsored by the MCN Intellectual Property SIG
Session Chair: Diane Zorich
Panelists:
Robert Clarida, IP Attorney, Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, PC
Richard Rinehart, Dept. of Art Practice and Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
Colette Gaiter, new media etc, Columbia College, Chicago
Intellectual property (IP) laws are having an ever greater impact on the
digital environment where new media works are created and reside. This
session will explore the effect of IP issues on new media art by having
panelists from the museum, artistic, and legal communities address the
following questions: What are the legal issues that artists and museums
must consider when creating and acquiring new media works? How are new
media artists responding to IP constraints? How are museums addressing
IP issues when acquiring new media art, and what are their concerns? What
do museums and new media artists think about established legal and social
concepts (such as fair use and the public domain)? And are there measures
that museums and artists can take to make IP constraints less constraining?
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1:30-3:00 - Room 4
Confluence of Trails: The Western Trails Project
Session Chair: Richard Urban, Colorado Digitization Program
Panelist:
Ryntha Johnson, Anthropology Collections Manager, Denver Museum of Nature and Science
The Western Trails Project is a collaboration between the Colorado Digitization
Program, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming State Libraries. Cultural
heritage institutions in all four states contributed digital versions of
photographs, manuscripts, and material culture collection objects from
their collections related to the discovery, settlement and development
of the West. The Western Trails website offers the ability to search over
25,000 online images from these collections. This panel will introduce
attendees to Western Trails collections and the collaborative models that
brought them together, including the development of the Western States
Digital Imaging Best Practices, and Western States Dublin Core Metadata
Best Practices. Representatives from participating Western Trails institutions
will discuss digitization projects on the local level.
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3:00-3:30
- Break
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3:30-5:00 - Room 1
Creating an On-line Community Museum
Session Chair: Larry Burtness, EPLT/Libraries, University of Washington
Panelists:
Anne Graham, Project Coordinator and Senior Computer Specialist, University of Washington
Libraries
Carla Rickerson, Head, Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries
The University of Washington and Northwest Olympic Peninsula communities
and organizations are working together to create a Web-based museum and
related exhibitions and workshops in the community to preserve and share
the culture, history, and traditions of the region and to help residents
of the Peninsula achieve their educational, social, and economic goals.
This project has been funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The goals of the project are:
Cross-cultural Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing - develop a community-driven model for surfacing, preserving, and sharing
culture, history, and traditions and for increasing understanding within
and between differing cultural and age groups.
Accessibility - develop a model for providing access to comprehensive cultural information
to groups that have historically been deprived of such access.
Sustainability and Adaptability - create a cost-effective, workable model that promotes sustainable and
self-motivated lifelong learning by other communities.
This session will examine how the partnerships were formed and how the
substantive issues regarding intellectual property are being resolved.
The exhibitions prepared to date will be shown and the ways in which these
exhibitions have helped all partners achieve their preservation, access,
and education goals will be discussed.
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3:30-5:00 - Room 2
IMLS funding for technology projects
Session Chair: Dan Lukash, IMLS
Panelists:
Christine Henry, IMLS
Lynne Spichiger, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Memorial Hall Museum
IMLS will present a session to provide attendees with information on grant
programs that fund technology projects. This session will be a follow up
to the Las Vegas session in 2003 where attendance indicated a great interest
in this topic. The session will be hosted by IMLS staff who will discuss
the specifics about the funding opportunities and the application process.
Building on last years information, current grantees will provide first
hand information about developing, submitting, and implementation an IMLS
project. Grantees presenting at the session will also demonstrate and describe
the new technology or a new adaptation of technology they have developed
as part of the grant.
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3:30-5:00 - Room 3
Content reuse for multiple output devices
Session Chair: Brent Gustafson, New Media, Walker Art Center
Panelists:
Eric Williams, Walker Art Center
Nate Schroeder, Walker Art Center
For the past year, the Walker Art Center has been redesigning its Web site
and implementing a technical infrastructure that changes the way we work
and think about our data and its output. The new site is database driven
and generated using an XML application server called AxKit. The XML can
be translated to display on numerous devices, and is being used by the
Walker for various output such as XHTML on walkerart.org, interactive Flash
pieces, RSS news feeds, e-mail newsletters, dynamic signage in galleries,
interactive telephony applications, and preformatted and edited texts for
print. All data is administered through a centralized custom-built admin
system accessed via the Web. This discussion will involve the thoughts
and ideas behind this process.
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3:30-5:00 - Room 4
CCO Practicum: Implementing Vocabularies, Authorities into Cataloging Practice
Sponsored by the MCN Standards & Controlled Vocabulary SIG
Session Chair: Layna White, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Panelists:
Patricia Harpring, Getty Research Institute
Elisa Lanzi, Smith College
VRA Presents Cataloguing Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural
Works and their Images (CCO). In addition to describing how to use the
guide to select, describe, and format cultural heritage data, this session
will focus primarily on Authority Files and Controlled Vocabularies. How
authorities are constructed and how they interact with each other and with
work and image records are critical issues that must be decided by the
cataloguing institution. What do you want your controlled vocabulary to
do? Is it for cataloguing or retrieval, or will the same vocabulary be
used for both? This session will elaborate on how CCO helps with issues
regarding creating and maintaining local thesauri, using existing vocabularies,
and constructing authority records to fit your collections and institutional
needs.
sessions
FRIDAY
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8:30-10:00 - Room 1
South Dakota History Text and Curriculum Online
Session Chair: Jay D. Vogt, South Dakota State Historical Society
Historical organizations are looking to the Web as a way to expand educational
programming. In 2001 the South Dakota State Historical Society created
The Weekly South Dakotan (www.sd4history.com), a Web-based history text
and curriculum, to provide educators with the material to teach state history.
This session will feature a demonstration of the site. Participants should
leave the session understanding the challenges and rewards in producing
an online history text and curriculum to meet the needs of both teachers
and students. This site is an excellent case study in producing a Web site
to meet academic standards, researching and writing a history text to a
specific grade level, and compiling additional resources for teachers.
The Council of State Governments selected The Weekly South Dakotan as one
of the recipients of the 2002 Innovations Award.
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8:30-10:00 - Room 2
Integration in Real Time
Session Chair: Leah Prescott, Collections Information Technology Coordinator, Mystic Seaport
Panelists:
Andrew Reinhardt, Willoughby Associates, Limited
Sara Randall, Endeavor Information Systems Representative
Mystic Seaport has been moving steadily towards integrated access to all
of its collections (library, curatorial, manuscript) for the past decade.
In collaboration with Endeavor Information Systems and Willoughby Associates,
we are now developing an XML gateway into MultiMimsy that will work within
the context of our Encompass system. When this is completed this summer,
visitors to Mystic Seaport, both onsite and online, will be able to search
live data across all three areas with a single search. In addition, through
Encompass they will also have search and browse access to digital collections
that have been assembled by museum staff. Members of the panel will discuss
the technicalities involved in getting to this point, as well as human
issues such as communication and compromise.
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8:30-10:00 - Room 3
Digitizing the Video Archives at KET
Session Chair: Lisa Carter, Audio-Visual Archives, University of Kentucky / Kentucky Educational
Television, 103B King Library
Panelists:
John Walko, Scene Savers
Susan Neiwahner, Scene Savers
Kentucky Educational Television is working with Scene Savers from Cincinnati
to implement an ingestion and metadata gathering process to create digital
surrogates of over 6500 (35 years) of programs originally stored on 1"
and 3/4" videotape. The KET archivist will discuss the goals of the
project, the archival issues that had to be addressed in planning the project
and the challenges and compromises that had to be made between the ideal
of preservation and the reality of time and budget. The Scene Savers project
leaders will provide insights about handling large scale digitization projects,
the challenges faced putting a project of this size together and the questions
that need to be answered before starting this project. Throughout the session
and in the discussion afterwards, considerations about metadata, file formats,
storage, project planning, videotape preservation and access issues will
be discussed.
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8:30-10:00 - Room 4
Museums and the OAI Protocol
Session Chair: Timothy W. Cole, University of Illinois at UC Mathematics Library
Panelists:
Richard Rinehart, Dept. of Art Practice and Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
Martin Halbert, Emory University
John Perkins, Mus*Info Consulting
The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting(OAI-PMH)
claims promise as a means of sharing information about cultural repository
holdings. This panel will feature presentations detailing how OAI-PMH is
being implemented by museums in real-world settings to make holdings better
known to interested communities of researchers. Projects featured will
include the Music of Social Change Project (Emory University), MOAC (Univ.
of California), and the University of Illinois IMLS Digital Collections
and Content Project. Presentations will address the promise and the pitfalls
of museums sharing their content via standards like OAI-PMH and will emphasize
practical lessons learned about OAI-PMH implementations in museum context.
Perspectives of both metadata providers and harvesters will be explored.
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10:00-10:30
- Break
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10:30-12:00 - Room 1
Using RFID for Collections Management and Visitor Interaction
Session Chair and Panelist: Steven G. Jacobson, President and CEO, Jacobson Consulting Applications, Inc.
Panelist: Gwen Bitz, Registrar, Walker Art Center
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is emerging as one of the hottest
technologies in decades to impact manufacturing and the retail supply chain.
But what does RFID portend for museums? In this session, we will present
a pioneering case study from the Walker Art Center on how and why they
have used RFID technology to catalog their collection of drawings and prints.
Has the technology matured enough to transform the way museums will identify
and track their entire collections? We will also present an overview of
the technology and how other institutions are utilizing RFID to enhance
the visitorâs museum experience. Learn about the benefits ö and potential
pitfalls ö of employing this exciting new technology.
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10:30-12:00 - Room 2
All the News That's Fit to Digitize: Approaches to Historic Newspaper Digitization
Session Chair: Gregory Crane, Classics Department, Tufts University
Panelists:
Richard Urban, Colorado Digitization Project
Kenning Arlitsch, J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah
Susan Benz, Brooklyn Public Library
New technology provides increased access to the wealth of information found
in historic newspapers. Our panel discussion will focus specifically on
three historic newspaper digitization projects that, though based on unique
approaches, can serve as models for future efforts. Two of the most current
software solutions which can be applied to historic newspapers are OCLC's
CONTENTdm and Olive Software's ActivePaper Archive (tm). Representatives
from the Utah Digital Newspapers Program, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online
project, and Colorado's Historic Newspapers Collection will discuss different
approaches along with a comparison of the scope and focus of each project,
types of institutions, and the technical issues such as quality control,
OCR accuracy, software functionality, development of interfaces, metadata
aggregation schemes, and scanning from hard copy vs. microfilm.
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10:30-12:00 - Room 3
Going Beyond Google: Constructing Innovative Access to Collections on the
Web
Session Chair: Diana Folsom, LACMA
Panelists:
Brad Johnson, Second Story Interactive
Tim Hart, Senior Web Analyst, J. Paul Getty Museum
David Schaller, EduWeb adventures
Dana Mitroff, Senior Web Manager, SFMOMA
Award-winning panelists give visual tours through their development processes
as they explore new interfaces created for online collections. Going beyond
traditional inquiry-retrieval models, these investigative interfaces facilitate
unsolicited discovery and meaningful browsing, to serve the spectrum of
audiences from novice to expert. Real world examples will illustrate these
approaches, with behind-the-scenes assessments of relative costs and efforts
for different features, contrasted with audience feedback and focus groups,
which show the fallout of these techniques.
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10:30-12:00 - Room 4
Integrated Access and Meta-search (Digital Library)
Session Chair: Murtha Baca, Getty Research Institute
Panelists:
Karim Boughida, Getty Research Institute
Charles Lockwood, Loyola/Notre Dame Library
Sara Randall, Endeavor Information Systems
This session will give an overview of the issues associated with cross-repository
or distributed searching in order to provide integrated access to diverse
information resources. Some practical implementations of cross-collection
searching currently in progress will be discussed, and a report on the
Search-Retrieve Task Group of the NISO Metasearch Initiative will be presented.
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12:00-1:30
- Lunch
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1:30-3:00 - Room 1
Implementing Metadata: Practical
Issues
Session Chair: Rob Lancefield, Registrar of Collections / Manager of Museum Information Services, Davison
Art Center, Wesleyan University
Panelists:
Mary W. Elings, Archivist for Digital Collections, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
GŸnter Waibel, Program Officer, RLG
Kurt Bollacker, Digital Research Director, The LongNow Foundation
It has been established (some may say beaten into us) that metadata standards
are good for maintaining, sharing and preserving our collections information.
We know why we should use metadata standards and now need to know how to
implement them. This panel will come down from the theoretical soapbox
and discuss some practical issues involved in implementing metadata in
your institution. Specifically, the panel will focus on descriptive, technical
and preservation metadata, and how systems, tools and initiatives currently
in the works can make doing the right thing easier.
Topics to be covered include a webtool for gathering descriptive metadata
for digital objects, an initiative promoting the automatic capture of technical
metadata for digital images ("Automatic Exposure"), and preservation
metadata structuring and entry software tools that will assist in archiving
digital files.
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1:30-3:00 - Room 3
Contemporary art and History Museums?
Session Chair: Kenneth C. Turino, Exhibitions Manager, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities
Panelists:
Carole Anne Meehan, Director, ICA Artists-In-Residence/Vita Brevis, Institute of Contemporary
Art, Boston
Since Mining the Museum, Fred Wilson's ground-breaking exhibition at the
Maryland Historical Society, historical museums have been more open to
exploring partnerships with artists and art museums. In this session, participants
will weigh the pros and cons of a collaboration between artists, contemporary
art museums, and history museums. Case studies to be examined include:
Yankee Remix: Eight Artists and a Museum, in which international artists
created new works of art using the SPNEA collection to explore issues of
New England life over the past three hundred years.
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1:30-3:00 - Room 4
National Digital Archives Program of Taiwan: A national effort on digital
preservation, creation and utilization
Part 1
Session Chair: Der-Tsai Lee, Director, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica,
Panelists:
Hwang, Ming-chorng, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of History & Philology, Academia
Sinica
James Quo-ping Lin, Director, Information Management Center, National Palace Museum
Yu-yun Lin, Chinese Archaeology Collection Manager, Institute of History and Philology,
Academia Sinica
Gwo-Chuen Wu, Associate Research Fellow, National Museum of History, Taiwan
Tien-Yu Hsu, Associate Research Fellow, National Museum of Natural Science
In this and subsequent sessions we would like to introduce the development
of Taiwan's National Digital Archives Program (NDAP), a government sponsored
research and technology program in the Division of Humanities and Social
Sciences, National Science Council from 2002 to 2006. It is a national
effort to preserve our cultural heritage and natural resources, in which
an annual budget of over 10 million USD is spent among eight major content
holders. And it is a unique and collaborative effort, integrating information
technology with humanities and social sciences in Taiwan.
The moderator, Dr. Lee who serves in the capacity as the Chief Executive
Officer of NDAP, will give an overview of the organization and development
of the national program. The 5 participants representing different digitization
projects of major content holders including palace museum, museum of natural
science, museum of history, and other research-oriented institutions will
each give an introduction of their respective projects. Topics range from
creation of digital objects, organization and management of databases,
metadata and e-learning.
We aim to share our experience in coordinating this large-scale effort
across different institutions and in creating a union catalog of digital
collections created among eight participating institutions. Besides, we
would like to pursue the possibilities of international collaborations
furthering information/knowledge sharing; utilization, and cross-cultural
exchange, working toward bridging the digital divide in the global cultural
development.
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3:00-3:30
- Break
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3:30-5:00 - Room 1
National Digital Archives Program of Taiwan: A national effort on digital
preservation, creation and utilization.
Part 2
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3:30-5:00 - Room 2
Take a Good Look: Evaluating Digitized Content
Session Chair: Layna White, Collections Information and Access, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Panelists:
James Ockuly, Minneapolis Institute of Arts
David T. Schaller, Educational Web Adventures
Museums are increasingly accustomed to putting digitized content to use
for short and long-term purposes such as sharing and exchanging in galleries,
websites, and in collaboration with libraries and archives. How often do
we evaluate the effectiveness of what we are doing with digitized content?
In this session, panelists will discuss three projects investigating delivery
and use of digitized content: one project is assessing audience awareness,
usage, and satisfaction with a museum's interactive and Web resources;
another project is looking at user motivations and expectations for museum/education
Web sites; and the third project is investigating the usefulness of integrated
museum, library, and archive collections in a digital library. Museums
(and libraries and archives) planning or engaged in production, sharing,
and exchanging of content may be interested in the evaluation processes
and findings discussed in this session.
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3:30-5:00 - Room 3
Creating Confluence in our Communities: The Visionary Collection Database
Administrator
Session Chair: Molly Hutton Marder, Asst. Registrar and Collections Database Manager, Chrysler Museum of
Art
Panelists:
Ruth Bryant Power, Database Administrator, University of Pennsylvania, Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology
Marla Misunas, Collections Information Manager, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Amy Noel, CIS Applications Manager, J. Paul Getty Museum
Ella Rothgangel, Collections Database Administrator, Saint Louis Art Museum
This panel will demystify the often-misunderstood role of the collection
database administrator through a candid discussion of the responsibilities,
challenges, training, and recruitment for the job. See how the visionary
database administrator opens new avenues of discovery as she/he stalks
heretofore-unidentified data access points, traverses the jungles of muddled
data conversion legacies, and captures the heart and imagination of computer
phobic museum staff. Discover how the visionary database administrator
defends data integrity, pursues new technologies, aggressively finds creative
solutions to staff challenges, and seeks ways to make your organization's
database relevant to other users. The collections database administrator
is the conduit to creating confluence in the museum and public community
by breathing life into collections database technologies.
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3:30-5:00 - Room 4
Data Management: A Strategic Concern with Practical Solutions
Session Chair: Holly Witchey, New Media Initiatives, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Panelists: Erin Coburn, Data Standards Administrator, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Chuck Patch, Director of Systems, The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans,
LA
For many institutions, work with collection databases is not yet a part
of museums' core mission. Management of digital information does not just
happen by redeployment of existing staff and redirection of existing budgets.
It requires the development of new skills, operating budgets and new resources.
This session is cross-disciplinary in its approach to registration as it
covers data standards, strategic planning for decision makers, and how
to implement good data management to promote communication and effective
workflow within the museum.
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sessions
SATURDAY |
8:30-10:00 - Room 2
Process & Design for Evaluating Mobile Handheld Devices in Museums
Session Chair: John Perkins, Handscape Project, CIMI
Panelists:
Geri Gay, HCI Group, Cornell University
Claire Larkin, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Cathy Rosa Klimaszewski, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
The CIMI Handscape Project ran for three years ending in June 2004 investigating
mobile computing experiences in museums through scenario testing and the
development of new evaluation tools, designs and processes in collaboration
between museums, university researchers and technology designers. This
panel will feature presentations describing how museum applications incorporating
mobile device technologies were developed, implemented and evaluated in
two museums collaborating with a university research team.Ê Projects featured will include a detailed study of reflective design for
a mobile application at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery,Ê the development of a dynamic feedback tool - a new feature for wireless
applications that employs both information delivery and evaluation instrument-Ê by the Human Computer Interface Group (HCI) at Cornell University, and
the generation and presentation of evaluation information directly from
usage patterns at the Johnson Museum, Ithaca, New York.
Presentations will address the promise and the problems of new evaluation
methodologies for museums, strategies and tools for reflective design,
the use of mobile devices to gather evaluation information on the usage
patterns and social experiences of mobile device users in museums. The
panel will emphasize practical lessons learned about these implementations
in museum context, directions for further research, and the collaborative
relationship between museums and researchers.
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8:30-10:00 - Room 1
Deliver the Museum Experience Anytime, Anywhere
Session Chair: Chris Bostick, Oregon Historical Society
Panelists:
George Ross, ISite Design
Nick Hippe, Macromedia
Technology now makes it possible to bring the specific knowledge and expertise
of your organization to the world in real-time. The corporate world has
quickly embraced the concept of live meetings, classes and events via the
Internet, now it is time for museums and their related projects to leverage
these tools. Suddenly a workshop or class attended by a few dozen people
can be enjoyed by a worldwide audience, anyplace, anytime. Museums can
leverage this technology to expand the reach of its programs and more fully
meet their mandate to educate. Communication capabilities include audio,
video and virtual reality media.
Our panel will discuss the specific opportunities for museums to leverage
this technology.
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8:30-10:00 - Room 3
Art and Tech - How to Master Media in the Museum Space
Session Chair: Jacky Comforty, Comforty Media Concepts
Panelist: Ezra Schwartz, Art and Tech
Award-winning film and video director Jacky Comforty will discuss "Art
and Tech" - how to master video and multimedia in the museum space.
The presenters will demonstrate that a move from a more traditional technological
orientation to a video-as-art sensibility can infuse life, excitement and
inspiration into information technology in museums. There will be
a screening of excerpts from successful museum projects, including the
AAM First Prize Muse Award video, Through a Glass Lightly.
Room 4
What Clicks? A Trans-Atlantic Perspective on Electronic Access to Museum
Resources and e-Learning
Session Chair: Jim Devine, Head of Multimedia, Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
Panelists:
Nancy Allen, Director of Museum Relations, ARTstor
Holly Witchey, New Media Initiatives, The Cleveland Museum of Art
Presenters will look at three different projects and their approaches to
delivering museum content for educational use. Jim Devine will present
the "What Clicks" project from Scotland which examines ways in
which the world wide web and other digital means (e.g. CDROM) offer Scottish
museums the opportunity to increase access for a wide range of new audiences
and to promote new learning styles. In particular, opportunities
are created for study by those physically remote from museum collections
- from primary and secondary schools through to community and special needs
groups, to self-directed lifelong learners.
Nancy Allen will discuss ARTstor, a non-profit initiative founded by The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. ARTstor's mission is to use digital technology
to enhance scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and associated
fields. This presentation will provide a brief overview of ARTstor's origins,
where we are today, and how we are working with museums as potential content
providers and users of the ARTstor digital library.
Holly Witchey will introduce "Dig In", a project from The Cleveland
Museum of Art. Working in collaboration with students from the Cleveland
Institute of Art's Technology and Integrated Media Environment, the museum
is developing an online, multi-user, scalable, Egyptian gaming experience
for students to use in connection with curriculum units on the study of
ancient Egyptian history, art and culture.
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10:00-10:30
- Break
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10:30-12:00 - Room 1
When Worlds Collide: Merging Collections Databases
Session Chair: Julie Beamer, Virginia Historical Society
Panelists:
Elizabeth O'Keefe, Director of Collection Information Systems, The Morgan Library
Karen Lovaas, Collection Management System Manager, Minnesota Historical Society
Julie Beamer, Virginia Historical Society
Libraries have been automating their collection records for over twenty
years and museums have just begun in large numbers to follow suit. However,
very few institutions with both museums and libraries have attempted to
put their collections on a single automation system. Although some believe
this to be an impossible task, the Virginia Historical Society, (using
Cuadra/STAR) and the Morgan Library (using Endeavor) have made that leap,
while the Minnesota Historical Society (using KE EMu and PALS) is using
a hybrid approach. These three institutions will discuss why they chose
to bring their "worlds" together, compromises that were made,
added benefits of automating processes, and the overall joys and pitfalls
of library and museum collections colliding in the automated world.
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10:30-12:00 - Room 2
The Next Generation of Virtual Museums
Session Chair: Kati Geber, Manager, Applications Interface Design, Canadian Heritage Information
Network
Panelists:
Namir Anani, Director General, Canadian Heritage Information Network
Kim L. Gauvin, VMC Investment Officer, Canadian Heritage Information Network
Howard Besser, Director, Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program, New York
University, Dept. of Cinematic Studies
Concepts of digital libraries and virtual museums ten years after the advent
of the first Web browsers is the subject of exploration in the recent study
paper, The Next Generation of the Virtual Museum of Canada, written by Steve Dietz (Carleton College, USA), Howard Besser (New York
University, USA), Kati Geber (Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN),
Canada) and Ann Borda (UK). The study paper was commissioned by CHIN to
provide strategic direction for the next generation of the Virtual Museum
of Canada, however, the concepts and issues discussed are equally applicable
to other on-line heritage content, no matter the scale.
This panel will discuss how the concepts and orientations proposed in the
study paper are being developed into a roadmap for the redevelopment of
the Virtual Museum of Canada. Concrete applications of the ideas put forward
in the study paper will be presented. The discussion will be divided into
three sections, a summary of the key concepts covered in The Next Generation of the Virtual Museum of Canada study paper; collaborative framework and infrastructure; and, the role
of research and evaluation.
Howard Besser and Kati Geber were co-authors (along with Steve Dietz and
Ann Borda) of The Next Generation of the Virtual Museum of Canada study paper.
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10:30-12:00 - Room 3
Direct Digital Image Capture of Cultural Heritage in American Institutions
Session Chair: Dr. Franziska Frey, Assistant Professor, School of Print Media, Rochester Institute of Technology
Panelist:
Dr. Mitchell R. Rosen, Munsell Color Science Laboratory and the Visual Perception Laboratory
for Imaging Science at RIT
Many museums, archives, and libraries are engaged in the direct-digital-image
capture of cultural heritage. Many more are considering the move from conventional
to digital imaging. Through experience and standards organizations, conventional
chemical based photography developed a set of ãbest practices,ä that is,
methodologies and expectations concerning the quality of photographic reproductions.
Best practices in digital imaging are still evolving, particularly for
cultural heritage.
Since July of 2003, a research program has been underway at RIT to help
understand direct-digital-imaging practices in American museums, evaluate
standard procedures to define color and spatial image quality, and to help
develop a roadmap to defining best practices and future needs.
The research has four components. The first was a survey compiling current
imaging practices. Over 40 institutions have participated. The second component
consisted of compiling standard practices of quantifying quality and developing
a set of targets, procedures, and analytical methods to measure the quality
of digital archives. The third component was to perform case studies at
four representative institutions. Each institution was visited, their practices
observed and interviews conducted. Several months later the case study
sites were revisited, and analytical experiments to quantify their quality
were performed. The fourth component consisted in compiling and disseminating
the results of the survey, case studies, and methods for measuring quality.
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10:30-12:00 - Room 4
Websites and Exhibits Together: Getting Your Message Out
Session Chair: Steve Boyd-Smith, *I Tell Stories.
Panelists:
Willy Lee, Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Kimberly Louagie, Outagamie County Historical Society
David Schaller, Educational Web Adventures
Exhibits and the Internet are different mediums and should be treated as
such. Nevertheless, they can reinforce each other if planned together.
In this lively discussion, the chair will list some advantages and disadvantages
of the two media for museums then turn it over to the presenters who will
show off their example projects (Willy Lee speaking from the perspective
of the webmaster at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, David Schaller speaking
as a web educator for a women in art project, and Kim Louagie speaking
from the perspective of a curator at a county history museum).
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1:30-3:00
Reproduction Charging Models & Rights Policy for Digital Resources
- A Mellon Study
Session Chair: Simon Tanner, Director of King's Digital Consultancy Services, King's College, London
This session will detail the results of a survey and in-depth interviews
of USA art museums regarding their policy and practice on rights and reproduction
for digital assets. The project, funded by the Mellon Foundation, explores
the cost and policy models adopted in arriving at pricing structures for
delivering surrogates of unique or rare items as digital objects. With
over 100 survey responses and 25 museum interviews the results provide
a unique examination of the way that digital assets are created and marketed
with a strong commentary upon the reasons behind pricing structures for
rights and reproduction fees. The study was carried out by Simon Tanner,
Director of King's Digital Consultancy Services on behalf of the Mellon
Foundation.
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