Mike,
When did I become the 'anti-open' guy? I'm just arguing for common sense, a valid business model and some kind of prior knowledge about consumer demand!
Our vision, with MLA and Culture24 for an Integrated Architecture to be developed over the next 2 years is of a layered set of systems, protocols, aggregators, light-weight standards and APIs which enable the consumption of digital content in 3 broadly-defined ways...
1. Through direct 'value added' services like C24
2. Indirectly through 3rd-party aggregated services like VisitBritain
3. Openly via federated services, APIs etc
It is perfectly possible to publish the same piece of content 'freely' and as part of a packaged (even monetised - horror!) offer without undermining either.
At least one of the drivers behind this is *exactly* the need to expose museum content into the EDL, but also to search services and other mass-market channels. The logic of taking a service-oriented approach is that it distributes the management overhead for the content itself, and also (we hope) allows for a virtuous circle through which content is improved/enriched by users and passed back into the sector.
Not to belittle the technological challenge, but this process is really about marketing. It's about exposing the museum sector to the consumer such that, when Ofcom decide to do their next report, they see a turnaround in the quality, accuracy and overall presentation of digital cultural content. HLF, MLA, DCMS and all the other funding agencies are far more likely to invest when they see a strong and positive commitment from within the community to raising our game.
What is perhaps most exciting about the developments we're undertaking with Culture24 on behalf of museums in the coming months is that, to my knowledge, there won't be a single website built. In fact, there'll be a fair few taken out of commission. I absolutely agree that the second a project decides to build a centralised/controlled point of access (like a portal), it is giving itself a long-term overhead it will never be able to meet.
All best,
Nick (enemy of freedom) Poole
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
Collections Trust
www.collectionstrust.org.uk
www.collectionslink.org.uk
www.cuturalpropertyadvice.gov.uk
Tel: 01223 316028
Fax: 01223 364658
Until the end of April 2008, the Collections Trust's legal trading name is: MDA (Europe) Ltd
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 electronic museum
Sent: 02 May 2008 09:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 21st Century digital curation
All
I've been biting my tongue on this one - as usual got a lot to say, but I'm
going to do a blog post instead rather than going on (too much) here...
Just a couple of quick things ;-)
Lack of foresight about sustainability was (and continues to be) a huge
issue about NOF-digi, but it's absolutely NOT limited to that project. IMHO
this has always been a problem with the funding models that museums are
forced to work with:
- someone comes along and offers you an enormous wad of cash to do X
- X isn't *quite* what your museum wants to do, but because you're short of
money, you do it anyway
- you're forced (usually) by the project schedule to spend the lot in one
go; no phasing, no timed release, no beta period, no feedback mechanism
- cash for sustainability is either not considered or frowned upon by
funders who simply don't recognise that this is an absolute requirement in
any successful (web) project.
Again, in my experience, NOF-digi as a series of individual projects seemed
to deliver to each of those projects as well as it could have done given
these circumstances. It also (as others have pointed out) meant that
hundreds of thousands of digitised objects were created that wouldn't
otherwise have been created. What it didn't do was provide a cohesion
*between* these projects. Given that we spent a monsterous amount of time
putting DC data into our NOFdigi web pages, the end results - the
badly-flawed "search" mechanism at enrichUK (which I now notice is
redirecting to Michael...) - was an utter failure at providing any kind of
cross-collection, cross-institution access. What's frustrating about this is
that it would be pretty trivial to build a search across these projects
which delivered meaningful results.
This brings me neatly back to the theme of my forthcoming blog post. I'll
precis it here: projects which are an aggregate of content *WILL FAIL* (yes,
that was a prediction. Hold me to it) if they only produce a "portal" or
"yet another collections site" as the end result. I'll be saying this to
Bridget @ Flow Associates re x-museum collections searching, I've been
saying it to EDL. If there's anything the Ofcom report (
http://tinyurl.com/4vrkcz) tells us it's that users want content *their*
way, and not ours. One sure way of building in sustainability AND
cross-searchability into all our projects is to embrace both openness (sorry
Nick!) and the "API'd web".
ta
Mike
________________________________________________
electronic museum
..thoughts on museums, the social web, innovation
w: http://www.electronicmuseum.org.uk
f: http://electronicmuseum.wordpress.com/feed
e: [log in to unmask]
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 9:22 AM, Nick Poole <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hi Jerry,
>
> NOF-digi is widely regarded in political and funding circles as having
> broadly failed. There are several reasons for this, but primarily that the
> success criteria were never clearly articulated. There was a loosely-defined
> conception in the minds of funders I spoke to that NOF-digi would both
> 'solve the problem' by enabling large amount of material to be digitised and
> 'engage the public' by putting in on the web. There were also expectations
> that the process would raise both skills and standards in the workforce, and
> help to investigate models for sustainability for cultural content.
>
> Things started to break down very early in the NOF-digi process when it
> became apparent that it was sponsoring the proliferation of very
> small-scale/niche online services with considerable duplication - hence the
> matchmaking exercise which happened about halfway through, and which led to
> the creation of a number of uneasy alliances.
>
> The real chagrin for funders now comes from the relative inaccessibility
> of the content which was funded. Although you are right that there are a
> very few good services extant, a significant majority are dead, or moribund,
> or sitting on discs in curator's drawers.
>
> One issue is that this kind of mass-digitisation (pace Gunther) leads to
> very diffuse impacts - it is difficult for a funder to survey the scene and
> easily recognise the impact they have had on the landscape - as funders
> usually like to do. This, again, is one reason why the Enrich-UK portal was
> created almost as a means of reverse-engineering collective impact for the
> process as a whole.
>
> This view, however, misses some critical points. Our industry could never
> have got so much better at technology had NOF-digi (and the IT Challenge
> Fund before it) not happened. We learnt so much and developed standards like
> the NOF-digi technical standards (now adopted, as David Dawson says,
> throughout Europe as the MINERVA standards). We learnt about copyright and
> licensing, we learnt that creating the content doesn't lead to
> sustainability. It was, in short, a huge and well-funded period of research
> and development for our industry and one which I think enabled us to move to
> the point we're at now.
>
> The real pity of it, to me, is that the reviled Culture Online chose to
> ignore the lessons of NOF-digi and instead went down the commissioning route
> using expertise predominantly from outside the sector. The impact of
> NOF-digi is, at least, still being felt in some ways. Where is Culture
> Online (or its tendril Projects Etc) now?
>
> 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
>
>
> Until the end of April 2008, the Collections Trust's legal trading name
> is: MDA (Europe) Ltd
> 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
> Jerry Weber
> Sent: 02 May 2008 08:43
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: 21st Century digital curation
>
> I also attended the session in London and was quite surprised to hear the
> criticism of NOF-digi. It is fair to say that the funding produced mixed
> results. I felt at the time that there could have been more agreement on
> protocols for standards and perhaps more insistence on robust metadata.
> However, there are some good examples of fully searchable collections that
> came out of NOF-digi - try
> http://www.windowsonwarwickshire.org.uk/default.asp
>
> Best wishes
>
> Jerry
>
>
> Jerry Weber
> [log in to unmask]
> 0796 1594401
>
> **************************************************
> For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the
> website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
> **************************************************
>
> **************************************************
> For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the
> website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
> **************************************************
>
--
**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************
**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************
|
