Graeme,

Thanks for this. I spent a day last week at a MCG conference and came away
with lots to think about. Your mail has given me yet more to think about!

Lots of food for thought... Computers are certainly not the be all and end
all! I think the important thing is that use of this technology is not (or
should not be) intended as a replacement for the real experience, but should
complement it.

In everyday life i now use the internet as my first port of call when
searching for any information, and i think this is probably fairly common
place - and will become more so. Granted not everyone does this, or has
access, but the stats suggest that a fair proportion of the population uses
a computer, both at work and at home. I don't look for what is there, i look
for what i need to know. Any limitations appear to be the fault of potential
providers of information  - for not putting their information up there! Much
of the time i follow up what i've found on the internet in other forms.

For instance, if we had details of our collections on web accessible
database then students could use the internet to source things that were
relevant to their studies (and museum staff would surely find a database
useful too?). I would hope that they would follow that up with a visit (or
at least be more likely to visit than before). This example is based on
students telling me "if only i'd known that you had textiles in your
collection"!!! If it became widely known that we had information about our
collections available online then perhaps the internet would become widely
used to source that information. If more people know that we have something
to offer them, then perhaps more people will use our service.

I'm also keen to see more museums 'get out there', do more community
projects and outreach work, work in combined spaces perhaps, reach out to
the community rather than expecting them to come to us all the time. If the
web is one way to achieve this then i'd like to follow that up. I'm not
suggesting any of this replace the traditional museum service, but that we
should aim to grow, to evolve into a multi-faceted service.

My main problem with it all is that it's just not achievable for many
museums at the moment! As you said, resources are limited. Should we be
aiming to offer other services? Or would we be better using our resources to
improve what we currently offer? Ideally it would be nice to think that,
eventually, we could do both.

Computers and the internet cannot and should not replace the real
experience, but i do think that they can complement our service. This
technology may not be the answer to all our prayers, but i don't think we
should be deliberately setting out to work in the opposite direction!!
Having said that, i'm a Youth Worker who is new to the museum sector and i'm
very interested to explore these issues and hear opinions of those with more
experience.

I'd be grateful if you would send me the draft.

Many thanks,

Julie Ellis
Youth & Museums Development Officer, Surrey Museums Consultative Committee


> From: Graeme K Talboys <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Graeme K Talboys <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 16:13:58 -0000
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Computer mediated access - part 2
>
>
> Thanks for the response.
>
> I shall reply to points as they came so the following will be a bit
> disjointed.
>
> The problem with the technology is that it is an expensive way of delivering
> things that can be delivered in other ways.  Certainly, text and pictures are
> better in books than on a screen which relies on expensive machinery and a
> power supply.
>
> With computers, it doesn't matter how many links there are within a given
> piece of text or graphic, they constitute an index.  You still follow a
> text-based linear path no matter how convoluted.  And it is a path limited by
> the choices made available to you.  In cyber space the world is still flat and
> although you cannot fall off the edge, there is an edge.
>
> The same is true of 'personalisation'.  You do not personalise the data
> stream, you choose from what others have made available in the form in which
> they have made it available - text and pictures, perhaps sound.
>
> As for remote/mobile engagement.  Why?  And engagement with what?  A computer
> screen embedded in a piece of technology that relies increasingly on microwave
> radiation?  The experience, especially for children, is a computer experience
> - content, as studies have shown, is largely irrelevant.  The important thing
> is that a coputer is being used because their use has been made to validate
> the process.  Not intrinsically, but through aggressive promotion by computer
> companies that use models of education that were outdated fifty years ago.
>
> Computers in galleries are the most absurd extension of this.  Why waste money
> and space on a piece of technology when you could display a few more artefacts
> or devise simple ways of non-mediated access to the artefacts that are already
> on display.  Computers in galleries are like worksheets, they draw the focus
> away from what is unique about museums and away from the experience of the
> museum.  They close down any chance of open enquiry which does not necessarily
> require a specific, fact-based answer or feedback, but which requires,
> instead, that the querent has the skills to question in ways relevant to their
> own situation and the confidence to accept that their own answers and
> responses are valid.
>
> You cannot teach this approach via a computer.  They can dispense information
> very well, they can pass on the facts.  But facts are often the least
> interesting things about artefacts.  It is not what you learn about them that
> is important, it is what you learn from them.  And for that you have to work
> directly with the artefact, be in its presence, experience an emotional and
> psychological connection, learn also from the response of others to the same
> artefact and explore that with those people.
>
> Children especially need to connect on a concrete level and need to be exposed
> to other aspects of museum work, the hidden curriculum, if you like, of the
> social lessons they learn.  No matter how glorious and technically accurate a
> digitally reproduction of an artefact might be, calling it up on a screen
> omits 98% of the experience.  Even if we had smell-o-vision, it would still be
> a synthetic scent (as at Jorvik).  And, as at Jorvik, much of what students
> learned had nothing to do with daily life in the Danish settlement.
>
> Communication and collaboration work well at a professional level with people
> who have a background outside the realm of the Internet, whose education and
> experience has been grounded in the real world.  The skills we use to make
> that communication possible come from elsewhere and the content of the
> communication is - largely - about physical reality.  But it is letter writing
> - mostly paid for by the people we/you work for.  And think.  What is most of
> it about?  Requests for snippets of information.  If the Internet was that
> good, why don't those people just log on and find what they want by surfing
> the Net?  Instead, they use a quick form of communication to ask other people.
>
> The medium itself is not driven by users any more than the content is driven
> by users.  Users of the Internet are passive.  They look for what is there.
> They do not demand that information they need is provided simply because the
> mechanism does not exist for that.  We must not confuse the ability to put a
> search term into an engine with the ability to get people to provide the
> information we want.  To quote - 'the medium is the message'.  And the medium
> s highly exclusive.  It is exclusive in terms of who has access to it and who
> are inclined to use it - which is, by and large, the same sort of people who
> constructed the system in the first place (and remember, the Internet was
> largely a by-product of the military and a need to keep a military system in
> communication and thus in power in time of social collapse).  This tends to
> reinforce the metaphysic on which it is based.  The vast majority of people on
> the planet don't have access to computer technology - they are too busy doing
> all the things that computer technology cannot do for them.  But it also
> excludes those who do have or do not want access.  These are people
> (especially children in Western society) who are fast becoming classed as
> stupid and as losers.  It also excludes those for whom computers are an
> irrelevance to their way of thinking.  And all these are people who are
> usually socially excluded from museums.  Social inclusion was supposed to be
> the big goal of museums.  That will not and cannot be achieved with computers.
>
> I quite agree that computers and the Internet are not going to go away - too
> many people have too much money invested in them for that to happen.  But we
> cannot alter the very way in which they work and the values that gave rise to
> them (that everything can be reduced to material terms capable of electronic
> transport) simply by tinkering with different ways of using programmes -
> themselves based on logical flows of language.  But wouldn't it be good for
> there to be somewhere in society where you can get away from computers and
> communicate without any mediation with the material culture bequeathed us by
> our ancestors?
>
> The charge that many museums are ignoring the new technology or using it
> unimaginitively is unfair.  Many have studied it closely and come to the
> decision that is simply has nothing to offer that cannot be done better in
> other ways - especially ones that involve unmediated access and face-to-face
> meetings with people.  Many other museums know that they cannot afford it.
> Equipment and expertise, maintenance and renewal do not come cheaply and they
> take up inordinate amounts of time.  All of which could be better spent
> eslewhere.  And as for those that have only put up their openeing times and
> opened access to their records, have probably done as much as they can afford
> and as much as most people actually want of them.
>
> As for disabled access...  I am disabled and I refuse to be tidied away and
> drip-fed a watery version of 'culture' through my computer screen.  It is
> patronising in the extreme.  Before I became disabled, and indeed before I
> even worked in museums, I was involved with disabled people and issues of
> access.  What the majority of disabled people want is to be able to go out and
> be part of the world - not ever more isolated from it.  Yes, computers might
> help, but all too often that is taken to mean that the problem is solved.
> Besides which, disabled people are amongst the poorest in the country.  What
> money they do manage to prise out of the grasp of the government isn't enough
> to cover the cost of computers and Internet access (and, no, it isn't cheap if
> your only income consists of disability benefits and your outgoings are higher
> than an able bodied person).
>
> There is a wider issue of access, be you disabled or just living in a remote
> area (and I have the happy chance of both).  And it is not going to be solved
> by computers.  Culture involves people and their interaction and the
> manifestation of their beliefs and philosophies in terms of the material and
> non-material.  Access to this cannot be left in the hands of whoever controls
> the computer network.
>
> An exchange of views via the Internet is all well and good, but where does it
> take us?  It is a talking shop restricted to those who have access.  How many
> museums have such a facility open to the general public?  How often do the
> staff of those museums engage in conversation with the public?  What are the
> topics?  Have changes resulted from them in the museums involved or to their
> websites?  These are things I would be interested to know.
>
> Far all that, the GEM list is not actually representative of what the Internet
> is or what it could be.  Discussions are e-mails and could exist independently
> of the rest of the content of the Net.  Once computers are used to mediate
> access to museums we still have the fundamental problems of the cultural
> hegemony on which computers are based to deal with, as well as the reduction
> of education to the mere passing on of information.  Museums should, I
> believe, actually be working in the opposite direction to this reductionism.
>
> I am exploring some of these arguments in greater depth.  If anyone wants to
> see a copy of the first draft, let me know your e-address and I'll send it as
> an attachment.
>
> Graeme K Talboys
>
>
>