Hi All,
It's also worth bearing in mind that one of the things which Europeana/European Digital Library is going to develop is a bespoke gateway for feeding content out to mobile platforms. Since we will be contributing data into it, we will also get to benefit from the investment they are putting in here.
In terms of 'Showusabetterway', it's a brilliant idea, well-executed but it remains something of a gimmick and the chances of winning with a culture pitch are fairly limited.
What it has done is throw into sharp relief the slightly embarrassing fact that most public sectors can get together and publish a coherent collective dataset, but we can't. Whatever the technical solutions and possibilities, we are going to have to find a way of shifting this discourse out of the tech-world and into the head of managers, politicians and funders.
I know I come back to this point time and again, but what gets measured gets managed. We have to find some way of establishing a national principle at the highest possible level which states that it is a basic responsibility of all museums (and libraries and archives) to make this data publicly available for aggregation and re-use. I would hope that, once Europeana gets fully underway, we will see a significant number of early-adopters in UK museums.
I echo Jeremy's point that it would be really interesting to know more about the human, political and organisational barriers James confronted in putting his project together, and how they were overcome (assuming they were!).
All best,
Nick
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
Collections Trust
www.collectionstrust.org.uk
www.collectionslink.org.uk
www.cuturalpropertyadvice.gov.uk
Tel: 01223 316028
Fax: 01223 364658
Company Registration No: 1300565
Reg. Office: 22 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1JP.
The Collections Trust believes that everybody, everywhere should have the right to access and benefit from cultural collections. Our aim is to develop programmes and standards which help connect people and culture.
The Collections Trust was launched from its predecessor body, the MDA, in March 2008.
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Grimster
Sent: 11 July 2008 16:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Let's crowdsource an idea for Showusabetterway?
>
> Another addition to location/place-based data could include
> details of monuments and sites. There have been various
> talks about making data available (presumably using SMR/HER
> information) to mobile devices using geo-tagging so when
> people enter an area of particular interest, their mobile or
> sat nav alerts them and then allows them to explore further
> information - this would be particularly useful for world
> heritage sites. Museums or visitor centres within sites
> could serve as 'hubs'.
>
> The people's network digi data (especially those 'sense of place'
> ones) could also be included in a place-orientated
> information service. It would make a lot of sense, and make
> more sense of the collections that were described and
> digitised in that way originally.
>
> How mashupable is GIS data? Will OS ever let us use mapping
> freely or will we use other mapping data?
>
> Tehmina
>
SMR/HER is mashupable, but in our experience the data can 'swarm' and
overload mobile interfaces - http://www.discovershropshire2.org.uk is a
_very_ early pilot mashing up HER, museum, local history and tourism data. A
success has been getting a wide range of partners to crosswalk and expose
their data as GeoRSS feeds, of which the site aggregates and displays as
overlays onto GoogleMaps. GeoRSS has been quite a 'quick win' and other
organisations in the county are enthusiastic at providing a feed - mainly
because they have heard of / already have an RSS feed so it's not such a
leap as more complex GIS APIs.
So far, even with clustering, this thing still breaks browsers - so a
warning, this is not anywhere near production stable yet and may do bad (Web
2.0? :-) ) things to your browser / phone, and you'll need to keep clicking
on areas of the map unless you know any Shropshire postcodes.
The plan for this is just as you say Tehmina, mobile users (and access
points around the county) get location specific overlays - still a way to go
yet though ...
James
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