It has been fun being a guest blogger. I would like to thank the scholarship recipients for taking the time to write such thoughtful responses about their experiences at the MCN 2007 conference. If you are new to the profession, a student, or new to MCN, think about applying for a scholarship for the upcoming conference.

This post is from Dr. Florian Schweizer, Curator at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. http://www.dickens2012.org/

I travelled to the Museum Computer Network conference 2007 in Chicago with a view to hear about recent developments in and approaches to attracting new audiences. In addition to my duties as Curator of the Charles Dickens Museum in London, I had also recently been appointed as Project Coordinator for the global bicentennial celebrations around Charles Dickens’s birthday in 2012. This project is all about improving access to Dickens’s works for present and future generations.

The MCN conference was a great opportunity to get involved in the rapidly transforming world of user-content interaction. The range of topics discussed on the panels was extraordinary, inviting the audience to join discussions about diverse topics such as the difficulties of implementing simple software tools in small museums and the successes of introducing cutting-edge applications to a new generation of visitors.

I am pleased to report that the MCN conference has had a great impact on the way we will present the Dickens 2012 bicentenary on our new website. Previously, I had no clear view as to what contents and interfaces we ought to offer in the run up to the events in 2012. During the conference, however, I was inspired to design our new website as a portal for the community, incorporating designs, tools and applications that most users are familiar with. The new website, about to be published at the end of February, has been created to engage different audiences on an interactive platform. A social networking forum for anyone interested in Charles Dickens, this website offers authoritative services for a wide range of users: teachers who want their students to read Dickens, parents trying to get their children to read ‘classic’ narratives, enthusiasts who want to go to Dickens festivals as well as scholars wishing to discuss the latest ideas on his works. In order to cater for ‘future’ generations, we recruited a young team of web designers to create an environment that is not condescending but encouraging. We aim for a website that appeals to an audience more familiar with instant messaging than the slow experience reading of a novel such as Bleak House or David Copperfield.

At a different level the conference was very useful for me to appreciate some of the differences between the issues museum professionals encounter in the UK (and, to some extent, in other European countries) and the issues for professionals in other parts of the world. In particular, I was surprised to hear about the great divide between the curatorial and IT departments that seem to be an issue in many museums. I know that such divisions exist here as well, but certainly not to the extent that I have witnessed during the conference. I was fascinated by the presentations on the case studies and the award-winning applications that were presented throughout the conference.

Attending the conference has been extremely useful for me and my project, and I do hope that I have been able to implement some of the ideas into our new website (www.dickens2012.org) for the benefit of our users. I will definitely come back and, to use Dickens’s words, ‘ask for more’.

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