Hi Susan,
We've had a presence on GCI for just over 2 years now. As an experience it's been mostly good. It's allowed us to create online exhibitions of particular topics and events (like the Great Train Robbery) or to showcase specific areas of our collections. We haven't gone down the route of simply showing off the entire visual collection - GCI's biggest strength is in providing a structure on which an exhibition can be framed.
It took us a while to get used to the uploading of data (which involved image uploads and transfer of metadata via CSV) and I still feel this can be improved, but it enabled us to construct a visually interesting online exhibition, with little expense (only time) and may be ideal for organisations with limited technical expertise and/or resources.
We've done very little to promote our GCI galleries and our visitor stats (which are available via Google Analytics) are not stratospheric, but we could do more to push them. I think Google could do more to publicise their efforts also.
The agreement with Google allows us to control what we put up on the site and take it away when we choose - as far as I can recall the contract isn't particularly onerous or overly biased in Google's favour and we retain the rights to what we display.
Martin Devereux
Head of Digital
The British Postal Museum & Archive | Freeling House | Phoenix Place | London | WC1X 0DL
T: +44 (0)20 7239 5174
M: +44 (0) 7976 732448
…delivering The Postal Museum
Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask]
For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra
|