A presentation about how museums are and can use web technologies to foster new modes of interacting with our institutions.

1. Social Networking and
Web-Based Communities for Learning
Bryan Kennedy, bkennedy@smm.org Rose Sherman, rose.sherman@mnhs.org
Senior Exhibit Developer, Dir of Enterprise Technology,
Science Museum of Minnesota Minnesota Historical Society

2. Topics
MN Historical Society
Blogs
✦
MHS Collections
Location no. FM6.183 r2
Flickr
✦
Podcasts
✦
Video
✦
1952
Facebook
✦
Story Sharing
✦
Collaborative Content
✦
Online Exhibits
✦
Virtual Learning
✦
Always Connected
✦
Institutional Voice 2007
✦
Radical Trust
✦
flickr.com/photos/marinacastillo/1865063539
Tools to Help You
✦

3. Science Museum of Minnesota
Topics MHS Collections
Location no. MR2.9 SP8 p72
Blogs
✦ MHS Collections
Location no. MR2.9 SP8 p395
Flickr
✦
Podcasts
✦
Video
✦
1938
Facebook
✦
Story Sharing
✦
Collaborative Content 1978
✦
Online Exhibits
✦
Virtual Learning
✦
Always Connected
✦
Institutional Voice
✦
Radical Trust
✦
Tools to Help You 2005
✦
flickr.com/photos/asp_/74659007/

4. Poll: Who’s Here?
How Comfortable / Familiar With Web 2.0 Are You?
Folksonomy
Tag
Wikis Social
Clouds
Networking
RSS
Geo-
Coded
Podcasts
Blogs

5. Can you do this?
asy rd
ha
e
You create IT creates
✦ ✦
They host You host
✦ ✦
Huh? What’s HTML? <?php echo ‘Hello World’ ?>
✦ ✦
Do you know where your
✦
httpd.conf file is?

6. Blogs
Quickly Post Thoughts & Images;
Interact With the Public
Institutional Information
Smithsonian American Art Museum
eyelevel.si.edu
Museum Content
Minnesota Historical Society
discussions.mnhs.org/collections
Community & Expert
Science Museum of Minnesota
sciencebuzz.org
Personal Voice
Walters Art Museum
thewalters.org/blog

7. Museum blogs on blogs
museumblogs.org
museumtwo.blogspot.com/2007/03/institutional-blogs-different-voices.html

8. Blogs
How can I create one?
easy
Blogger.com
•They host your blog
•Most popular
tumblr.com
•They host your blog
•Super easy
WordPress.com
•They host or you can host your blog
•Much more configurable
hard
Drupal and Plone
•You host
•Lots of setup
•Super configurable

9. Blogs
Science Buzz
Quick and responsive
✦
Personal not institutional voice
✦
Visitors lead us in new
✦
directions
When we are out of our depth
✦
we can invite in experts
sciencebuzz.org

10. Blogs
Science Buzz
Showcase your blog on
your exhibit floor
People feel smart at our
✦
institutions
They can get it online...but will
✦
they?
Allow them to email links home
✦
and to friends
People love to register
✦

11. User generated media
Flickr, YouTube http://youtube.com/results?search_query=hugo+tornado&search_type=
Others...
•blip.tv
•vimeo
•photobucket
http://flickr.com/photos/chadwho1ders/2523836732

12. Why use Flickr? easy
Creative commons search
Images of...
your institutions
✦
your collections
✦
your websites
✦
your exhibits
✦
current
✦
topical
✦
free
✦

13. Why use Flickr?
Showcase your visitor’s images
Visitor
images
easy

14. Why use Flickr?
People enrich your content
Flickr Commons
✦ Reach flickr’s established community
✦ Release history to the people
✦ Enrich collection information
✦ More descriptive info
✦ Geo-tag
✦ Collective Intelligence
http://flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2515741495

15. Why use YouTube? Reach new audiences
✦
✦ Bring them to your site
✦ Share film trailers
✦ Promote upcoming events
✦ Archive events
✦ Video competitions
✦ Do training
MN Historical Society
youtube.com/user/MinnesotaHistory
Ontario Science Centre
eahyrd
sa youtube.com/user/videochick770
Brooklyn Art Museum
youtube.com/user/BrooklynMuseum

16. Social networking
easy
...with Facebook
Positives
✦ Reach new audiences
✦ Promote upcoming events
✦ Feeling of belonging
✦ Your institution can be part
of your visitor’s identity
Questions?
✦ MySpace, Orkut, etc....
✦ What’s next?
✦ Diversity?
Brooklyn Art Museum
Minnesota Historical Society
Science Museum of Minnesota
and many more...

17. Social networking hard
...with Facebook Applications
Development platform
Social tagging
✦
Collections and identity
✦
Let people interact with
✦
your content in Facebook
But, maybe they never visit
✦
your site?
Proprietary platform
✦
Steve.museum
Art Share

18. User generated content
Storytelling Story submitted by the
public is incorporated into
interpretative website.
people.mnhs.org/mgg/story.cfm?storyid=385
stories.mnhs.org/stories/mgg/story.do?id=5

19. User generated content
Storytelling
Hurricane Digital
Memory Bank
hurricanearchive.org/object/2797

20. Collaborative content
Placeography
A wiki about any
place anywhere that
anyone can edit.
Geo-coded data
✦
✦Architectural info
✦History
✦Chronology
✦Memories &
Stories
✦Citations
✦Related Content
✦Photos
placeography.org

21. Collaborative content
Crowdsourcing the
MN150 Exhibit
What person, place, or thing
originating in MN has had a
lasting impact in MN, the
country, or the world?
Exhibit was curated by the public
✦
3700+ nominations submitted
✦
All nominations presented
✦
Each topic has a history section, on
✦
which the public can collaborate
mnhs.org/mn150wiki

22. Collaborative content
Community created object labels
Museums don’t know everything
✦
Harness micro-experts
✦
Poems, stories, feelings
✦
Visitors can share
✦
their personal
expertise on
cultural objects

23. Online exhibit tools
ha
easy rd
An open source museum movement
Omeka
Focused on historical collections
and telling stories
Open Collection
Manage media collections
Art interpretation
Use templates to build multimedia
kiosks for the museum floor

24. Virtual Exhibits
Virtual reality with collections and interpretation
Rome Reborn 1.0
Monticello Explorer
Fort Snelling Perspectives
Digital model of Rome in 320 AD
University of Virginia IATH
Goal: Expand to Bronze Age and
Medieval Period using data from
community of archeologists.
http://romereborn.virginia.edu

25. Virtual Exhibits Population of...
eahyrd
sa
> 5 mil. residents
Second Life
✦
✦ > 1.5 mil. logged-in the
last 60 days
✦ 40k users in world at any
time
Demographics
everyone over 18 *
✦
✦ average age 33
✦ 43% female users
✦ active users: 44%EU; 26% USA
http://www.slideshare.net/ialja/virtual-worlds-introduction-second-life-and-beyond?src=related_normal&rel=80946

26. Changes on the horizon
Guide by Cell
Audio over your phone
Walker Art Center
Art on Call
Science Buzz
Voice XML
Museum 411
ha
easy rd

27. Changes on the horizon
Web over the phone
Mobile devices make
content/interaction
ubiquitous
ha
easy rd

28. A philosophy shift?
These technologies suggest a radical trust
“We can only build emergent systems if we have
radical trust. With an emergent system, we build
something without setting in stone what it will be
or trying to control all that it will be. We allow and
encourage participants to shape and sculpt and
be co-creators of the system. We don't have a
million customers/users/patrons ... we have a
million participants and co-creators.“
Darlene Fichter
University of Saskatchewan Libraries, 2 April 2006, “Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Radical Trust: A First
Take”

30. Tools for you
Web 2.0 can help you do your job better
Get more out of Find the cream of Free images
conferences the content
Follow trends
Google, Yahoo, Netvibes, etc.
Super read the news with RSS

31. Still bewildered?
Simple, plain-english
videos explain
Web 2.0 concepts
commoncraft.com

32. Thank you
Please get in touch with questions and ideas:
Bryan Kennedy Rose Sherman
bkennedy@smm.org rose.sherman@mnhs.mnhs.org
This presentation is available online:
tinyurl.com/4jjexs