Dear Nick et al,
It's taken a while to respond to Nick's very thought-provoking (and
let's be honest, generally provocative) piece because as I went through
it I found I was annotating pretty much every paragraph. But there have
now been a couple of thoughtful replies and so there's even more to say.
There's plenty I agree with you on, Nick, not least the emphasis on
moving on from experimentation and getting on with understanding and
justifying the resources required and the benefits derived from our
outputs. I also think that sometimes you're being rather pessimistic
about what can be achieved and indeed what is achieved by projects big
and small. In your discussion, at least, sustainability seems to extend
as far as business models and "market-competitiveness". This obscures
the fact that we operate for different end-goals to others in the
markets in which we're presumably operating - our ultimate aim is public
good, not profit. And if it's hard to measure the full economic impact
of what we do (not only because it's tiny but because it's diffuse and
may be feeding back into our institutions in ways we aren't aware of)
it's still more difficult to measure public good. This is of course one
reason why it's attractive to try to put financial proxies in place for
success measures, but to focus on these and ignore the strategic aims
we're proxying is a mistake.
There is a related issue in the fact that many of the expensive projects
that you criticise are not purely about building websites. Many are
firstly about digitisation and improving the standards of our records
(which I know you'll be fully behind!) and the pay-off comes in large
measure from these, not from the websites; and the pay-off for improved
documentation can take an awfully long time - it's not the sort of
investment that accountants would generally be that happy dealing with,
but it's normal for museums.
I must say that I'm rather with Bridget WRT audiences, too, although I
recognise the general sentiment: that in putting a lot of effort into
collections databases we're making quite strong assumptions about what
our audiences want. Now you'd be wise to be sceptical of my views, since
a lot of what I've done at MoL has involved getting collections online,
but it strikes me that (a) again, this has often gone hand in hand with
improving our collections database records and it would have been silly
to miss the opportunity do both at once, and (b) if an off-line museum
is not much of a museum without collections, likewise its online
extension.
"Ask the majority of people about the information they want from a
museum and they are likely to want to know things like where it is, when
it's open, and whether there's somewhere for them to have a picnic with
the kids. So why is it that we have spent so much time and effort
delivering complex searchable databases of catalogue records?"
It's a fair question, but (a) if our aims are limited to telling them
basic visitor information then we're pretty much done, at least most
museums are, so let's go home, eh? (b) they may come up with this
shopping list if asked what they want from a site, but in use things may
be different. They may come to the site for one thing then use our other
stuff too; or find our content being used or referred to elsewhere
(though this is vastly underexploited right now, which may be one reason
for investing in technological solutions, and why the SWTT is exciting);
or use us because they are required to do something, for example get
some material for a school project or lesson plan, and that's where they
end up.
I think you have missed out a third broad category of stuff we make:
aside from building demonstrators and other standalone projects or just
doing stuff we like, we also build services that support real-world
activities and have therefore at least a logical justification, if not
an empirical one. Perhaps this is because that's not the sort of project
that gets centralised funding, which is understandably the focus of the
piece, but let's not forget that sites that complement exhibitions or
outreach or community projects run by the physical museum have got a
pretty strong business case and hopefully a synergy that helps get value
for money.
"One of the most important lessons to learn from our previous experience
is that we should leave the cutting-edge to other, better-funded
industries that are better able to support fledgling solutions through
to maturity"
Sort of, but sometimes these give us quick cheap wins and let us to the
easy bit whilst others do the hard labour. What comes under the category
of cutting edge anyway? How established is Google Maps? Not very by most
standards - isn't it still a beta, like the rest of Google? So that
probably qualifies. But although we at MoL have experience of getting
maps on the web using more complex, in-house solutions (ESRI ArcIMS),
it's Google Maps we will probably use for a number of our future mapping
services online, and why not? It's easy, free, quick, no server load or
software licenses, and yes, there's a learning curve to do fancy stuff
but it's not beyond people who can find a little time - which may be
easier to find than the money for an ESRI suite and a set of map layers.
What else is "Web 2" and cutting edge? I'm not sure, really. Blogs,
wikis, folksonomies... they're collaborative, they're still a relatively
thin strand in the thinking of many web users, but they're not exactly
cutting edge. Only the last is tricky to implement, and that depends on
your aims and approach, but they're worth exploring and it's worth, as
Bridget points out, making use of the free stuff that's out there. The
shift of more and more services onto the web has led to all sorts of low
cost and low-barrier-to-entry spin-offs. This easy entry is one huge
advantage that folksonomies (as seen in the Steve project pictured in
your piece) possess over systems based on more complex data structures,
quite aside from the debates over who is better at cataloguing stuff for
a mixed audience.
I'm with the others in thinking that the Web 2.0 thing, irritating as it
is, will leave its mark long after the phrase dies out. Particular
technological solutions characteristic of this phase will surely pass,
and that may be more problematic for the longevity of the solutions we
build, but part of the problem of debate that surrounds W2.0 is the
conflation and confusion of changes to networks, power relations etc.
with technical trends.
"Unless we are able successfully to differentiate our offer on the basis
of quality and depth of service, we are always going to struggle to be
competitive in a world dominated by the aggregation of lots of bits of
information into single services."
This is a world we can participate in, not necessarily on the
aggregation side (although this may be a role fitting to your suggestion
#4) but on the content provision side. OK, content is uncool now, it's
all services services services in the commercial side of things - they
get suckers to make the content that fills up those services. But why
can't we be the suckers - especially if we can find out how to measure
our impact. Anyway, we already provide services that stand out. We have
the advantage of museum authority, of unique content, of physical venues
complemented by our online presence etc. And aggregating services aren't
the only game in town, nor will they ever be, although I believe that
some of what we should be doing in museums and that the sector could
work together on is feeding such services.
You suggestion that we build capacity strikes a chord. I suspect that
this might be more about infrastructure than training. A radical
expansion of the hosting that MLA/24HM can provide to small museums,
with tools for managing museum-specific content would give a great
boost, provide network benefits, permit the development of a large body
of content in unified format and any number of fancy services under one
roof but many banners. A service for DOIs or PURLs. A registry for
museum IDs and a standard way of addressing key data. Collaboration
perhaps with a commercial partner to develop sector-specific search...
None of these are just my idea, some are yours, Nick, and I think that
building these sorts of services could help many museums leap a few
rungs of the ladder and would start to provide some standardisation. I'm
not sure that building a few big sites (your #4) is the key, though, but
there are some services that might suit that model. Generally I don't
think we need a few big destination sites, we need departure sites. 24HM
does this and is moving towards doing it even better, but although Chris
is right that there are some scenarios where it's advantageous to
dispense with institutional barriers, there are plenty of others where
those barriers have meaning, where they define and give character to the
collection and context to its contents. But certainly it makes sense to
design infrastructure and create content with the objective of deploying
it in multiple contexts.
And for your point 6, I'm a bit scared of this one. Perhaps it's a good
idea, although if you ask me it's good just to have museums online and
it would be a shame to scare any off by getting all heavy on the quality
of what they've put up. But then again if there was a great central CMS
available that any size museum could build a site with, we might not
even need to check up on them, and we'd have lots of that content
standardised and in one place already.
So thanks, Nick, for a very stimulating piece.
Cheers, Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
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