That was my husband’s comment on my last blog.  He seldom reads them.   But, I trust his judgement so I’ve been thinking about how to proceed. 

The great thing about this blog, it has always seemed, is the variety of the voices. Amalyah’s searching out of the most important and up-to-the-minute information on copyright and intellectual property, Perian’s fresh and thoughtful takes on so many issues, Richard’s reflections on trends–particularly trends in Second Life, and Nik’s uncanny ability to keep on top of what is new in technology and to shed a bright spotlight on how we might manage ourselves and our technologies better…sorry not to mention the excellent qualities of all the bloggers, but you get my drift. I’m not a technologist.  My stream-of-consciouness ramblings (only allowable because we have a category called random musings) often don’t feel right or, as the ants in The Once and Future King might say, “they are undone.” 

Blogging has lately become complicated by the fact that my job at my own institution has changed radically in the past couple of months.  Now, the great thing about this is no matter what job I have ever had in my life it has always been the best job I could imagine–sometimes it just takes me awhile to see the opportunities.  For the past seven years I’ve been able to work with extremely bright people (curators, educators, developers, and designers) to help project manage really interesting multi-media projects, exhibitions, and web features.   Now I’m faced with less flash, but ultimately challenging tasks, to work with teams of employees at the museum to consider what information management, interpretation, and accessibility mean for the large museum of today and, equally as important, what kinds of tools and skill sets and people might we need to insure success in the future.

Now…I know this is something that all of us think about, on some level, or on many levels–but now it’s part of my job to think about these issues on a daily basis and to encourage the creation of a climate of understanding about what the big ideas are and how we make them happen.  At some level the job of almost all museum professionals involves an element of knowledge working (sorry to use this trite business speak)–we deal with objects, information, and ideas.  What has been hard for me the past couple of months is to transition out of the immediate-deadline driven mindset that characterized my employment as the head of New Media (reporting to CIO) and to transition into thinking more deeply about internal assets and infrastructures (people, collections, tools, workflows, processes, physical plants) as the head of Interpretation Technologies (reporting jointly to Chief Curator and Head of Education).  

In October 2006 I wrote a blog entitled: What are we doing for Erin and Adam? (http://musematic.net/?p=89) I should have known then to “be careful what I asked for.”  Now, less than a year later, I’ve been presented with the opportunity to do exactly what I called for in the closing paragraph of that blog.

It’s time for the cultural heritage industry to be self-reflective. To take a good hard look at what we do, what we want to do in the short term, and what we want to be able to do in the future.  As we redefine ourselves we will learn how to staff accordingly.  Erin and Adam can see the promise of the future–let’s not squander the opportunity to view, through their eyes, what the museum of the future can be.  What we do today for Erin and Adam, we are doing for ourselves and future generations.

I’m sharing these thoughts with you because when my husband pronounced my last blog “saccherine” I started trying to come up with ways to make my entries here more concrete and useful to you all.  I guess I’m optimistic that with time my entries will become more concrete and less “random musings.” Until that time I appreciate the opportunity to continue to think outloud and look forward to guidance from those of you who are farther along the road less traveled by.