Me here back in grey and rainy Cleveland after a terrific week in Pasadena at MCN. Lots of old faces, lots of new faces. The conference took place in a hotel that was large enough to have all the amenities (except for internet at times boo!) and small enough so that delegates managed to run into everyone they needed to, wanted to, sometimes didn’t want to. Lots of interesting topics on the table. Digital asset management seem to be on the minds of lots of people, copyright always a topic and the giant Google-monster, folksonomy, standards, standards, and more standards (God bless those standards people keeping us all on the straight and narrow), and digital preservation as well.
Seems to be a lot of confusion in people’s minds about what exactly a digital asset management system is and what it can, should, and needs to do for museums. This I think harkens back to too many people buying systems instead of asking the important questions first–folks a DAM is ONLY A TOOL. It can’t solve your problems or provide you with opportunities until you figure out what your problems and opportunities are. Indeed, if your problems involve co-workers very few DAMs can be used as weapons. Just a reminder… new technologies don’t make museum employees go crazy…too much work with too few resources and too little time and support make museum employees go crazy.
Bye for now.
November 15th, 2006 03:22
Thanks for making the point about DAMS – I agree that we think too much in terms of systems, and too little in terms of requirements. What are you really, really trying to get done? As you know, one of my hobby-horses in that arena is to make sure people understand that what you don’t get done with a DAMS is solve the issue of long-term retention of your digital assets, a problem also famous under the moniker “Digital Preservation.” A DAMS may be a first step, but it’s not the final solution. (I’ve written more about this at http://hangingtogether.org/?p=104 for those of you who’d like to know more about the details of my reasoning.) I’ll try to get some posts on the conference up soon, too! Good seeing you in Pasadena, Holly!
November 15th, 2006 06:58
[...] I’m glad Ken has agreed to serve on the RLG Programs Council to lend a museum voice to this discussion and inform our thinking! He certainly managed to cast the decisions museums face in a more strategic framework for MCN attendees, and his talk was widely quoted throughout the rest of the conference. For a whirwind tour of some of the other themes at MCN, check out Holly’s post on Musematic.net. [...]
November 15th, 2006 10:05
Great point Holly! It seems we often forget to plan for technology and end up grabing on to the newest thing without thinking through all the ramifications. Technology planning gets left out of institutional wide and departmental planning. It seems like we should incorporate a session or two about technology plans at next years conference.
November 16th, 2006 09:42
Blog by committee? Yuck. I for one value the spontaneity of the form. I hope you are not raising this question because this is how Musematic is run? Knowing the free-spiritedness of the Musematic posters, I can’t believe they would agree to such a concept anyway. ; )
November 16th, 2006 03:27
Musematic? Edited? You’ve got to be kidding. Spontaneity is our middle name. The reference was, if I recall properly, to a particular museum blog for which the Director reads every post, on the theory that the blog represents the institution. (If I don’t recall properly, somebody set me straight.)
November 16th, 2006 07:05
Of course, Holly, you fail to mention that some of us may just be crazy to begin with…
Seriously, I had a similar reaction to the DAMS sessions. At one time, everyone thought that putting images of their collections on the web would fulfill the demand for public access. Well…. not entirely. Everyone also thought that these huge collection management programs (of which I am a huge fan) would solve all of the problems accrued by years of poor recordkeeping. Again, not entirely….
I am very intrigued by DAMS, but I can’t say that I’m entirely convinced by them. The needs of my museum are modest, but it’s possible that our CMS (of the collection variety) will be able to address those needs, once we learn its full functionality. I know a lot of people don’t agree with that strategy, but for a smaller or mid-sized museum, using a CMS without a DAMS may be very effective.
I’m reminded of Jared Diamond’s point in his book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” He posits that invention is the mother of necessity, not the other way around as is commonly thought. I sort of feel this way about DAMS. Large museums with a bajillion records need them, but do everyone?
November 21st, 2006 02:01
Can you really call something a blog if it’s moderated by an entire group of people before it ever goes live? Edited, moderated, changed, and re-written, is that what a blog is?
Holly, that’s a good question. Spontaneity is just one aspect of blogs and not one that is a requirement to be part of the genre. One of the most important reasons a museum should consider a blog is to connect with the social network called the blogosphere via comments, links, and tags. In doing so, you encourage conversations about your assets while bringing people to your site. Both the Walker and SAAM have over 500 blogs linking to us. For cultural blogs that’s an amazing stat.
Another reason museum blogs make sense is that it can make what we do at museums more transparent to the public. When one blogger spoke about the lighting in our Color Field Gallery at SAAM, our lighting designer wrote about the issues he encountered and considered lighting the art. Useful information (and response) posted in a timely manner. And there is no other place on our Web site for posting info like this.
Spontaneity can be an interesting aspect in a blog post but it’s not necessarily the most important one.