Hi Kathy
What a fascinating and topical enquiry! Sadly there's no immediate remedy,
but it raises lots of questions about how we in the museum/culture sector
best interact effectively with major information providers like Google. And
it's currently something MCG members have been posting about, in threads
about the Digital Britain report, and also Dan Zambonini's challenge to
nominate functions and scope for museum API's. Dan asked - if you could have
an API in your museum, what would it do, or be for?
I see these strands as closely related. Google Maps, and more recently
Google Earth, have not been using any sort of 'official' data source for
museum, library, archive and gallery venue info and location data. Most
people can see it would be good for Google to be able to deal with one
trusted, checked source of info for these useful types of information. I
typed 'Malvern Museum' into Google Earth and got five different answers
about where my local museum is, all info from different sources. Plainly
useless. Agreed, one or two 'reviews' popped up too, and they were useful in
a sense, but the reports were old, uncheckable, and ephemeral in a
publishing sense. At the moment, I don't think web users find this sort of
info in any way useable.
So wouldn't it be great if the Digital Britain report began to sketch out
ways that centralised knowledge management could be delegated to one or
national museum body, so it could take responsibility for co-ordinating
collection of basic data about museums - things like venue info and
location. Then Google just talks to one agency and gets the data in one live
channel. [Of course - we already have the possible technical means to do
this in the form of Culture24 - and that's no accident, it's been something
the team in Brighton have been keen on for a long, long time...]
Why is centralised knowledge management (in some form or another) important?
Everything needs to be paid for, infrastructure needs putting in place and
it needs to be comprehensive. The place where info 'pivots' is the place to
gather it. There's not a lot of point in the data being generated
regionally, one area at a time; a big player like Google wants national
coverage, straight away, and it needs to be up to date, live and covered by
some sort of service level agreement.
I know we all are keen on museums being participative and socially
responsive, but the Google Earth example clearly shows why, when factual,
unshakeable, reliable location data and core venue info is concerned, a more
systematic approach would work best. So I'd suggest the best placed core
aggregators of culture venue data should be funders or govt agencies (or
their partners like MLA or agencies like Collections Trust). How do we get
people to play ball and use the system? I think it should be a rock solid
funding requirement for projects and venues that payment only comes after
core info is entered into the uber-database.
A large culture agency that I have worked with in the past still has no
central database of projects, or funded venues, or collection objects
aquired; I think a Digital Britain strategy needs to get to grips with this
stuff urgently and make cultural data acquisition a strong organisational
priority. Just imagine 25,000 journalists turning up in London in 2012 and
there being no trustworthy info on hand about our culture and [sporting]
heritage...
All the best
Jon
Jon Pratty
Journalism: arts, heritage, technology and society
Digital publishing consultant to the cultural sector
[log in to unmask]
http://machineculture.wordpress.com
Terrestrial: 01273 277396
Mobile: 07739 287392
Twitter: @jon_pratty
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kathy
Harman
Sent: 11 March 2009 14:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Problem with Google Earth
> Hi everyone, I hoping that someone can advise me on an issue we're
> experiencing with Google Earth.
> I've been asked to check that our Museums (and Country Parks etc.)
> appear on Google Earth and noticed that, for example, Bosworth
> Battlefield has about 8 different entries - only one of which is in
> the correct geographical place and only one of which has the correct
> name "Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and Country Park".
> I think the problem stems from the Google Earth entries being fed from
> various different websites, each using User Generated Content (UGC),
> so perhaps mistakes are inevitable?
> Has anyone else noticed this problem and how have they dealt with it?
> Thanks in advance!
> Adele Beeby
> Community Services Web Developer
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> Kathy Harman
> Information Management and ICT Manager Community Services Department
> Leicestershire County Council Room 409, County Hall, Glenfield
> Leicester LE3 8TD Tel +44 116 305 6941 (direct line)
> Email [log in to unmask]
>
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