Dear all,
Well it was rather nice to check my e-mail after the conference last Friday to find half a dozen new responses on this topic. Thank you all. And just in case anyone was confused, I am not the same Jeremy as considered some of the discussion to be “gobbledygook”. I am with Bridget, this is all very stimulating. I’m going to keep my responses relatively brief, for once, coz I always talk too much.
Thank you to Iain for the pointer to the Demos paper; that and another on their site look like valuable research material for me.
Nick, if I could choose to cite one line from your e-mail it would probably be “the extent to which we can balance the value chain with intangible public benefit depends on how well-disposed the incumbent administration is to this kind of argument”. Nicely to the point! It looks like I need to read up on ILFA, though, as it sounds like there is a useful parallel there to what we might (maybe should?) be doing in museums – and obviously not just in terms of our digital stuff.
Your last paragraph is tantalising. On Friday there was some discussion of alternatives to the current model of this “meta-sector”, with Jane Finnis mooting some provocative possibilities - she seemed to suggest that some museums shouldn't try to make their own "stuff" but leave it to someone else. I wonder who that might be! Food for thought, anyway.
Tehmina, what you wrote seems to complement the debate with Nick, dealing as it does with the perception of value in a [digital delivery] service (the perception in this case must *be* the value) and using that as a means of persuading the “holders of the purse strings”. As you say, projects seem to stagnate because there is no core funding for them, and this reflects the funding model that agencies seem quite happy to have subscribed to. It’s hard to believe that they did this completely blindly, they just seem happy that the services they fund will last for a year, or two or three at most. They usually make a stab at specifying some vaguely sustainability-enhancing features, but it’s pretty lame – or if you see things differently it’s just a reflection of giving institutions a reasonable degree of freedom and responsibility.
On the question of co-operation, I’m sure you’re right, that there are countless examples of missed chances and unnecessary inefficiency and incompatibility due to such territoriality, or simply ignorance. If you know of any concrete examples I’d be extremely interested to hear of them, on or off-list. As for a solution, well if there’s a general feeling that leadership is needed and that organisations are willing to give up a degree of freedom in exchange for the power that comes from working together with, hallelujah!, some explicit shared objectives, well that’d be grand. All we need is to find someone willing to do the job, and a few names were proposed at Fast Forward, both to fulfil an advocacy role and to help shape some overall digital strategy for UK museums.
Once again, thanks for your input.
Jeremy
Don't forget the Autumn meeting: 16 November, Natural History Museum, London
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