Transcript
Page 1: Happy developers + happy museums = happy punters

Happy developers, happy museums

JISC #dev8dMia Ridge, Science Museum

Page 2: Happy developers + happy museums = happy punters

Who?

• I’m Mia• I work for the Science Museum

• Yes, I have an accent (fading after several years away)

• http://twitter.com/mia_out - @ me with comments. I’ll post URLs there too.

• http://openobjects.org.uk – my blog on digital heritage, blah blah blah

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IMHO• I think museums can change lives

– "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. “

– "No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be." Isaac Asimov

• Museums should be about delight, serendipity and answers that provoke more questions

• Museums should also be committed to accessibility, transparency, curation, respecting and enabling expertise

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Why am I here today?

• Museums have lots of information

• We like sharing it

• We could guess what’s useful for researchers, educators and developers - but we’d rather go to the source. How we can work with you?

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Some challenges

• Technical – The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed

• Data – We have a lot of it. A lot of what we have is rubbish

• Institutional– Challenges to curatorial authority, fear of loss of control, loss of

trust, fear that we’ll get the IT wrong• Funding, metrics

– How do you propose agile projects to funding committees? How do you measure visitors to a mashup?

• Copyright – We don’t always have image or IP rights for our objects or

content

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Dealing with the challenges

• We can’t afford to build interfaces to meet every need. – But we don’t need to if we make it possible for others to build

things• Inspiring examples, real success stories from users,

sharing technical solutions help sector evangelisers• ‘Fail faster, succeed sooner’ – reward intelligent failure• Suggestions?

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What are museums known for?

• Buildings full of stuff • Being experts• Making visitors come to us

• Being fun. Yay! 8D• Being boring. Boo :(

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What are museum websites known for?

• Helping you plan a visit

• Most people use museum websites to find out when a museum is open, how much it costs, and what's on.

• Which is nice... but... we can do more

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Pretty ‘exhibition microsites’

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Collections online

• (not always as pretty)

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What do we have?

• Lots of objects, lots of images• Lots of metadata about objects• Also interrelated records on people,

places, dates, historical periods, events, subjects (topics, themes)– Who designed, invented, made, used, bought,

owned, donated an object? When and where was it made, used, found? What’s related?

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What are museums doing at the moment?

• One way or another, we're opening up access to our collections. – Read access is easy, write access is harder.

• APIs large and small• Aiming to produce re-usable, interoperable data

with clear re-use statements• Cool examples: IMA dashboard, Powerhouse

Museum OPAC, Brooklyn Museum• http://dashboard.imamuseum.org/,

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/menu.php, http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/collections/, http://objectwiki.sciencemuseum.org.uk/

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We’re taking our content to where people hang out

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What would we like to be known for?

• An end to silos• User-centred, not institution-centred• Helping researchers help themselves• Helping developers help others• Being a source of content for lecturers and

teachers• Not just history, biography or art – also

science, natural history, archaeology

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What can we do for you?• Who are you? University users (students, researchers,

teachers and administrators), hobbyists, specialists, developers; direct or indirect uses

• Enquiry-based learning; mashups; linked data, semantic web technologies, cross-collections searches; faceted browsing to make complex searches easy; museums as a place where stuff lives – a happy home for metadata mapped around objects and authority records?

• What else? You tell me! What do you want to provide for your users, and how can museums help?

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Happy developers + happy museums = happy punters

• “The coolest thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else”– [http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/

index/CRIG]

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Image credits• http://flickr.com/photos/ncindc/2746241750/ Museum

building• http://flickr.com/photos/phploveme/2679669420/ Instrument

case• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

File:LondonScienceMuseumsReplicaDifferenceEngine.jpg Replica Difference Engine

• http://flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/3083455553/ Happy face

• http://flickr.com/photos/dsevilla/129592677/ Curiosity• http://flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/537762948/ Crowd

control barriers• http://flickr.com/photos/zoomzoom/304135268/ Silos• If not in the list, http://flickr.com/photos/_mia/


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