As I said to Gail this morning, when I thanked her for her constructive and considered post: I am very keen for the MCG list to be a supportive and fair forum for practitioners to share ideas and to help each other in a positive and professional way. Having a contribution like this was indeed very welcome.
For over 25 years the MCG has been a community of practice, compromising a 'broad church' of practitioners, representing a wide range of approaches and views. It's always been (and continues to be) characterised by its honest exchanges, but also - I hope - ultimately its collegial, empathetic, respectful and mutually supportive conduct.
That's why so many of us are proud to be part of it, and do so much work within it.
Thanks for everyone for contributing to this thread on 'Every Object' and the issue of legacy material and sustainability of public-facing digital resources. Perhaps we have together identified here an interesting topic to pick up at our autumn meeting.
Looking forward to seeing many of you in Bath next week for our spring meeting:
http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk/meetings/1-2009.shtml
Ross Parry
MCG Chair
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Walk
Sent: 12 May 2009 16:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Every Object Tells a Story'
Gail,
Of late this mailing list has had more than a few ill-considered posts
so it's nice to see someone providing an informed and balanced view.
Cheers!
Paul
On 11 May 2009, at 15:52, Gail Durbin wrote:
> I have just returned from holiday to see the long correspondence about
> 'Every object ....'
>
> I do not subscribe to the either/or arguments about digitisation and
> projects. To me it is vital to put enormous resources into digitising
> the collections because they are then the core of any other web
> activity
> and the foundation of online user engagement with the content and
> ideas
> of museums. But it is equally important to find ways of developing
> functionality that allow visitors to contribute their knowledge,
> ideas,
> and creativity, in order to create faceted sites that appeal to all
> sorts of people and meet their individual needs and aspirations.
>
> I agree with all the comments that Frankie Roberto and Janet Davis
> make
> about the value of 'Every object...'. The V&A has not abandoned the
> site and we are working on getting it back online. When the project
> ended two or three years ago the site had a collection of really good
> content contributed by museums and the public where people talked in
> various of ways about the significance of objects to them. The site
> had
> weaknesses in its administrative system and its filters could not
> withstand increasingly sophisticated attacks by spammers. Its
> technical
> architecture proved difficult for us to patch up and it started to
> fill
> with deeply inappropriate material. We could not leave the site
> online.
>
> We considered rebuilding it as a stand alone facility but wanted to
> use
> a more sustainable environment. We have employed a developer to
> rebuild
> the site in Drupal, which is the framework we will use in future for
> all
> our user generated content, and we are about to receive a Drupal theme
> to recreate the appearance of the site. We will then go through a
> process of testing and will relaunch the site later in the year.
>
> One of the group also mentioned PeoplePlay. The site functioned for
> longer that the JISC agreement required but was then taken over by a
> malicious spammer sending out comments to blogs and forums
> purporting to
> come from the PeoplePlay server. Rather than struggle with old
> technology we decided to take it down and migrate the valuable content
> to our main site which we are doing as time allows.
>
> The speed with which we have dealt with these issues has not been good
> but it reflects the constant pressures in large and ambitious
> institutions where exhibitions and new galleries with real deadlines
> or
> the administrative problems related to the collapse of a stats package
> (not to mention the urgent need for an overall redesign) take
> precedence
> over projects that no longer have immovable deadlines.
>
> The conclusions I draw are many. I do not dismiss these large funded
> projects: JISC has enabled valuable digitisation, Culture-On-Line made
> new types of site possible. We need to resolve the conflict between
> content and technology within the criteria for projects. In our case
> outsourcing the technical elements of a project rather than building
> on
> what we have has not always been helpful although for small museums
> outsourcing is often vital. We need to find ways to make advice and
> small sums available to deal with issues that arise after project
> funding has ended. We should perhaps also accept that some of the
> problems raised are inevitable within new technology projects. What we
> know now was not what we knew four or five years ago: APIs were not
> widely seen as a solution, frameworks like Drupal have only recently
> become mature and copyright and licensing issues were not and have
> still
> not been resolved. I agree that a meeting of people who have been
> involved in previous projects to discuss what has been learnt about
> sustainability and issues of legacy would be helpful.
>
> Yours
> Gail Durbin
> Head of V&A Online
>
>
>
>>>> Danny Hope <[log in to unmask]> 09 May 2009 >>>
> 2009/5/8 Dan Zambonini <[log in to unmask]>:
>> To me, these feel like perfect examples to illustrate the 'central
>> repository' vs 'open APIs' debate.
>>
>> Had these projects exposed full, rich, obvious APIs (perhaps they
> did, in
>> which case this argument is invalid!), then the valuable content may
> - and
>> probably would - now be in multiple other locations, sustained
> forever more
>> (of course this would also rely on the content having the relevant
>> licensing: Creative Commons, etc).
>
> Digitisation projects generate value in data rather than functionality
> so, in terms of an APIs, what's needed, could be provided simply by
> authoring sites with POSH, Microformats and a RESTful site
> architecture.
>
> --
> Danny Hope
> User Experience Consultant, Brighton (UK)
> 07595 226 792
> @yandle
>
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Paul Walk
Technical Manager
UKOLN (University of Bath)
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
[log in to unmask]
+44(0)1225383933
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