Urm, the original question was: a) interface or b) no interface - for 
which I would go b, as did Mia?

If it's a case of x) terrible interface or y) delightful interface then 
clearly I vote y...



_____________________________


*Mike Ellis *

Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital 
agency:http://thirty8.co.uk <http://thirty8.co.uk/>

* My book: http://heritageweb.co.uk <http://heritageweb.co.uk/> *



Birchall, Danny wrote:
> Mike, I understood Mia's b) to be:
>
>>> creating an interface that is a delight to use
>
> What's wrong with delightful interfaces?
>
> My GBP0.02: by making repositories whose primary interface is search, you're massively superserving people who already know what they're looking for (probably academics). Museums don't serve the public by organising tours of their stores, they serve audiences by making great exhibitions. Which are in their own way 'delightful interfaces'.
>
> Danny
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike Ellis
> Sent: 04 November 2014 19:02
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [MCG] Consultation over the development of the Culture Grid
>
> I think b) is a terrible idea - and IMO a) is clearly the way to go.
>
> The majority of non-researchery people are likely looking for images and as Nick says they'll start with a Google Images search, not a museum-specific one.
>
> So essentially b) becomes "competing with Google" which is probably not a good idea. Actually - it becomes "competing with Google, Flickr, Photobucket, etc" - an even worse idea.
>
> However...
>
> Without a clear value proposition (shoot me) - in other words, A Thing That People Can See, this becomes a very much tougher game - and by "People" I mean the museums that you want to participate.
>
> So if you've got stats that are tangible, real things that (for
> instance) hit museum KPIs - I dunno - number of visits to collections pages increases X% on average for museums on culture grid - then I'd see these as being the value, and would be an easier "sell".
>
> I know you're doing this with your hack days and stuff - which are excellent I think (although I suppose some would argue that developers aren't necessarily your core audience to convince?) - but maybe a really strong set of calls on the site would help. This - http://www.culturegrid.org.uk/about/benefits/ - forgive me - is pretty waffly. I'd be thinking about this in much stronger benefit terms - say:
>
> "We got our collections online in half a day with the help of the culture grid team"
>
> "We've reduced calls to our enquiry desk by 50% because we've got all our items online now with the help of Culture Grid"
>
> "It was easy, we sent them a DVD and the collections were there!"
>
> ...I'm really going too far, deliberately, but you know - this sort of thing?
>
> cheers
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> ps..
>
>
> I'm interested by the way in pages like this:
>
> http://www.culturegrid.org.uk/search/1799775.html
>
> ..which are clearly well SEOd and visible on Google Images - but you don't get to them from the search results page - is there another route in or are they just for ranking purposes..?
>
> ..also the search results pages are doing something weird - what - loading in some jquery or something to display the results grid? View Source is kind of...sparse...? This could well be doing bad things to SEO too..?
>
>
>
>
>
> _____________________________
>
>
> *Mike Ellis *
>
> Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency:http://thirty8.co.uk<http://thirty8.co.uk/>
>
> * My book: http://heritageweb.co.uk<http://heritageweb.co.uk/>  *
>
>
>
> Mia wrote:
>> I chose this as my postcard:
>> http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/ltm-1984-51-864 (found via CultureGrid).
>>
>> And my 2c worth: in some wonderful future day, collections management
>> systems let people selectively publish collections online via
>> interfaces for humans, machines or both to use. Until then, the sector
>> needs an service for those without APIs or online collections to
>> supply Europeana and other sites. And people should supply other sites
>> with their data so that their collections are discoverable in Google,
>> because that's where everyone starts their search.
>>
>> Designing public-facing interfaces that can deal with the many messy
>> issues that aggregating an enormous range of data from different types
>> of institutions with varying local standards creates, let alone
>> creating an interface that is a delight to use, is a huge undertaking.
>> Do a) and let someone else have the joy of b)...
>>
>> Cheers, Mia
>>
>> --------------------------------------------
>> http://openobjects.org.uk/
>> http://twitter.com/mia_out
>> Check out my book! http://bit.ly/CrowdsourcingCulturalHeritage
>> <http://bit.ly/CrowdsourcingCulturalHeritage>
>> I mostly use this address for list mail so may not see emails here; my
>> open.ac.uk address is checked daily
>>
>> On 4 November 2014 15:16, Nick Poole<[log in to unmask]>   wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Trevor, Mike,
>>>
>>> Thanks very much for your responses about the Culture Grid. I'll
>>> respond more fully once we've had a few more, but I wanted to address the 'why'
>>> question.
>>>
>>> My vision for the Culture Grid has always been as a service not a
>>> destination. It's a cornerstone of the COPE ('Create Once, Publish
>>> Everywhere') strategy that there needs to be middleware that extracts
>>> the collections data, stores it and makes it available to 3rd party
>>> platforms like Europeana, Google Cultural Institute, Digital Public
>>> Space (potentially) and anything else that might come along.
>>>
>>> So the 'why' is that a museum would decide to promote themselves to
>>> online audiences by putting their data into these platforms, but
>>> instead of doing it several times for each separate destination, they
>>> put it into the Culture Grid and then tell us who we can share it
>>> with. In the process, we wanted to take some of the cost and some of
>>> the risk out of collections data-sharing so that it is an easier
>>> decision for a museum to make.
>>>
>>> I always assumed that once everyone had an API, the need for this
>>> kind of middleware service would evaporate. In practice, one of the
>>> key outcomes of this consultation so far is that this is far from
>>> being the case - people want the Culture Grid to build out the use
>>> case, demonstrate value and actively broker cultural data into things
>>> like hacks and new platforms.
>>>
>>> Which brings me to one of the big challenges with the Culture Grid.
>>> The Culture Grid is a free-to-use service (to answer Mike's
>>> question), but to get funding for it, we had to build a search
>>> front-end (the website at http://www.culturegrid.org.uk). Because
>>> this was a secondary aim for us, it's never been promoted as a
>>> public-facing destination. However, as soon as you put up a
>>> front-end, everyone wants you to make it something the public would
>>> really want to use. This is one of the challenges that's faced
>>> Europeana all along, and one of the reasons why they're now focusing on improving the end-user experience of their main website.
>>>
>>> It's a critical question in terms of our future strategy - do we:
>>>
>>> a) Stick to the vision that the Culture Grid is an enabling service,
>>> not a destination in its own right (which makes it hard to pay for),
>>> or
>>>
>>> b) Focus on developing it as an end-user destination (which would
>>> involve us getting a lot more involved in quality, standards, rights
>>> and metadata enrichment, or
>>>
>>> c) Both, or
>>>
>>> d) Neither
>>>
>>> Answers on a postcard!
>>>
>>> All best,
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick Poole
>>> Chief Executive Officer
>>> Collections Trust
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Join Collections Trust's Collections Management Group Follow us on
>>> Twitter Like us on Facebook
>>>
>>> www.collectionstrust.org.uk. Company Registration No: 1300565
>>> Registered Charity No: 273984 Registered Office: Collections Trust,
>>> WC 209, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>>> Reynolds, Trevor
>>> Sent: 03 November 2014 20:15
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: [MCG] Consultation over the development of the Culture
>>> Grid
>>>
>>> Hi Nick
>>>
>>> Some first thoughts.
>>>
>>> Lack of participation by museums:
>>>
>>> (I may be wrong) but when I have looked at participation in Culture
>>> Grid it appears to require you to have your collection on-line somewhere
>>> before you can participate.   I suspect this is still a barrier to many.
>>> (For various reasons, we still don't have our collections on-line).
>>> Many museums have no IT expertise in house and without a button in
>>> whatever they use to catalogue their collection they will struggle to
>>> participate.  What does this mean? In order to increase participation
>>> Culture Grid will need to get suppliers to include "export to culture
>>> grid" as a function of their collections software and will need to be
>>> prepared to host data or find ways of facilitating data hosting
>>> (Ideally the UK could do with something like the New Zealand project
>>> that resulted in ehive).
>>>
>>> What is culture grid for
>>>
>>> I have never really seen Culture Grid as a destination in itself and
>>> I am not sure that this should be a focus.  For me its focus should
>>> be on being the definitive, up to date, source of information about
>>> museum objects in the UK.  I don't want (or have the time or
>>> resources) to provide data to PCF or Europeana or all the other very
>>> worthwhile projects that are out there.
>>>
>>> Trevor Reynolds, Registrar
>>> English Heritage, 37 Tanner Row, York, YO1 6WP
>>> +44 (0) 1904 601905
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: Museums Computer Group [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick
>>> Poole [[log in to unmask]]
>>> Sent: 03 November 2014 15:00
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: [MCG] Consultation over the development of the Culture Grid
>>>
>>> Dear MCG'ers,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Some of you may have spotted that we've launched a consultation about
>>> the future development of the Culture Grid (www.culturegrid.org.uk),
>>> the aggregator which currently provides access to 3m+ records from UK
>>> museums, archives and libraries. We have been running the Culture
>>> Grid with the good people at Knowledge Integration for nearly 8 years
>>> now (and its origins predate this considerably in the form of the
>>> Peoples Network Discover Service) and it is time to step back and
>>> develop a clear plan for the way forward.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I hope you won't mind if I shamelessly use you as a focus group for
>>> this, but as the nation's hive mind on all things digital and
>>> cultural, I would like to ask you to share your thoughts and opinions
>>> about the value of the Culture Grid, its strengths and weaknesses and
>>> your ideas both about aggregation in general and the Culture Grid in particular.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I've posted on our blog about our thinking about the Culture Grid  -
>>> see http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/blog/culturegrid and we are
>>> also receiving comments directly via this email address or on twitter
>>> using the hashtag #cgfuture.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I would be especially grateful for any views you are able to share
>>> on-list - we are keen for this to be as open and constructive a
>>> consultation as possible, and to ensure that whatever happens next
>>> with the Culture Grid it delivers genuine value for the people who
>>> expend time and effort participating in it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> With many thanks in advance for your ideas and comments!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> All best,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick Poole
>>> Chief Executive Officer
>>> Collections Trust
>>>
>>>
>>> <http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/copyright-seminar/copyright-semin
>>> ar-
>>> 2015>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     <http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/>
>>>
>>>
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