> Btw: I'm still unclear - Nick, we need those pints - why we would consider a repository infrastructure of any kind for museum (or for anyone for that matter) given Google is THE repository which everyone else uses. We'd just be building another expensive silo, non? Shouldn't we all just club together (and I'm only half joking - no, maybe a quarter joking) and buy a Google Search Appliance instead? Seriously.
Just to get our terminology straight... Google isn't a repository because it's not a store of content. It's an index - an aggregator of stuff for discovery purposes and, yes, it's the *only* index/aggregator that really matters.
So the question becomes, "does it matter if I put my open data on my own museum website (a silo in your terms), or in Nick's national large-scale repository (another silo in my terms) or in Wikipedia or in Flickr or wherever, provided that it can be found by Google?". And the answer is yes, it does matter. It matters because so much social stuff happens (needs to happen!) around that open data. Search/discovery is part of the picture but only a small part.
And for many use-cases the social stuff will really only happen in globally-centric socially-oriented services like Wikipedia, Flickr, etc. It ain't going to happen in Europeana, it ain't going to happen in your museum website (except in some rather specific local-heritage cases) and it ain't going to happen in Nick's national repository.
The *only* point in opening up data from museums is to encourage 'social' activity around that data (be that learning, or research, or something else) - so we need to pay attention to how that social activity can best be nurtured.
(Note: I'm not arguing that Wikipedia and Flickr are the only ways of encouraging social activity... just that they are good examples of services where social activity has a driver towards successful adoption).
Andy
--
Andy Powell
Research Programme Director
Eduserv
t: 01225 474319
m: 07989 476710
twitter: @andypowe11
blog: efoundations.typepad.com
www.eduserv.org.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike Ellis
Sent: 26 November 2010 11:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Open data / content
Great thread, thanks everyone.
I guess I'm trying to get away from the detail a bit (although please, keep having the conversation...) and understand where the resistance is, and why.
My initial point in writing the wiki page that Mia sent round (I _think_ I wrote it, anyway..) was that the benefits of programmatic access are well understood by developers, which is great, but that we need to up our game into management and beyond in order to sell these benefits and get real take-up across the community.
Seems to me that if we can articulate some real, tangible business benefits of working in more open ways (cheaper dev costs, more traffic, higher revenues, more engaged users..) then we stand a chance of breaking down the barriers like those mentioned by Trevor. We need case studies where open (data) approaches have led to more visits, more sales, more innovation, more whatever...
I've always banged on about how value shifts around once the data is open - it tends to increase, but maybe in a holistic way rather than in a measurable one at your institution. Take Wikipedia as an example. If we all spent time putting our collections on there rather than concentrating on our own sites, the social/network/viral/etc value would - probably without argument - be higher than a "put them in a silo where nobody will find them" approach.
The problem is, of course, that funders and stakeholders don't get to see this value - as long as we continue dumbly measuring VIRTUAL VISITS TO OUR SITE as an indicator of value - and ignore the wider potential.
Btw: I'm still unclear - Nick, we need those pints - why we would consider a repository infrastructure of any kind for museum (or for anyone for that matter) given Google is THE repository which everyone else uses. We'd just be building another expensive silo, non? Shouldn't we all just club together (and I'm only half joking - no, maybe a quarter joking) and buy a Google Search Appliance instead? Seriously.
Random thoughts...
Mike
Mike Ellis
Research & Innovation Group
eduserv
t: 01225 470522
m: 07017 031 522
twitter: @m1ke_ellis
calendar: http://mikeellis.youcanbook.me
www.eduserv.org.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andy Powell
Sent: 26 November 2010 11:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Open data / content
Richard,
I'm interested in your comment:
> As soon as you want "assets that are more richly described and contextualised with narrative" you are asking for something other than triples.
because I'm struggling to see why context and narrative can't be provided with a triple-based approach. It strikes me as a perfect approach for both.
What am I missing?
Andy
--
Andy Powell
Research Programme Director
Eduserv
t: 01225 474319
m: 07989 476710
twitter: @andypowe11
blog: efoundations.typepad.com
www.eduserv.org.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Light
Sent: 25 November 2010 18:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Open data / content
In message
<646294065-1290706226-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1694084977
[log in to unmask]>, Nick Poole <[log in to unmask]> writes
>From the Collections Trust's perspective:
>The Culture Grid and Europeana are both essentially ad servers. They
>aggregate just enough metadata to perform the function of advertising
>the existence of a digital resource, with the main aim of leading the
>punter back to source via a URI.
Though of course the "punter" is a human, and the URI points to a web page, so the "source" they arrive at isn't machine-processible.
We have also seen the beginnings of a backlash against critical mass of data in favour of creating fewer assets that are more richly described and cotextualised with narrative. This is not the European model, which still favours quantity, but over here, I think we have learned that breadth is relatively pointless without depth and reach. We are likely to see in the coming years a strengthening of the 'digitise less, describe better, share with web-scale partners' argument, replacing the research-led priority to pursue breadth of coverage of collections.
Interestingly this also goes beyond the Linked Data paradigm, which is primarily concerned with surfacing data as EAV (entity-attribute-value) graphs. As soon as you want "assets that are more richly described and cotextualised with narrative" you are asking for something other than triples. If you also want these assets to be machine-processible, then you're looking at something like XML. Possibly _very_ like XML ... ;-)
But then XML, like RDF, is a generic meta-framework, so that brings with it the prospect of agreeing on standard approaches to the creation of such rich resources, or allowing the creation of a Babel of incompatibly-marked-up material. A whole new game beckons.
Richard
--
Richard Light
****************************************************************
For mcg information visit the mcg website at http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
To manage your subscription to this email list visit http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
****************************************************************
For mcg information visit the mcg website at http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
To manage your subscription to this email list visit http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
****************************************************************
For mcg information visit the mcg website at
http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
To manage your subscription to this email list visit
http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
****************************************************************
For mcg information visit the mcg website at
http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
To manage your subscription to this email list visit
http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
|
