As many of you know because you were there making it happen, the Museum Computer Network (MCN) held its 36th annual conference in Washington, DC, from November 12 through 15. MCN provides continuing opportunities to explore and disseminate new technologies and best practices in museum information work. This year’s conference theme was “Let’s Do I.T. Right!”
MCN 2008 featured current and emerging practice in technology and information work in all kinds of museums. Leading experts in metadata standards, data curation, new media development, copyright, digital imaging, social tagging, collections information sharing, information technology, and related areas spoke to, and with, the 356 people in attendance from nine countries and from 31 states in the United States.
Among the attendees were five scholarship recipients, who have shared some of their thoughts on the conference in recent Musematic posts. A rousing silent auction in DC raised record funds for next year’s scholarships. We also had a great reception at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, with some of us narrowly dodging G20 motorcades on the way there…. But back to the serious stuff, just a few of the topics addressed in this year’s sessions were:
- Semantic Web work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Technologies in Small Museums
- Change Management and Diffusion of Innovation
- The Smithsonian’s Digital Strategy
- Social Tagging
- Innovative Applications and Innovative Evaluations
- Logistics of Extensive Data Standardization Projects–including comments on the crucial, and often less-analyzed, social processes that can enable or hobble such projects (what I might gloss here as “interpersonal logistics”)
Responding to enthusiasm about last year’s Case Study Showcases, MCN 2008 offered three such sessions, each of which started off one day of the conference. All told, these comprised a total of fifteen brief presentations, followed by small breakout discussions in a wide range of areas including Rapid Imaging, Digital Asset Management, Collections Information on the Web, Open Source projects, and many, many others. These case studies often present invaluable, sneak-preview windows into exciting projects still in their formative stages, as well as expert practitioners’ informal reflections on longer-standing programs of work. Responses to this year’s attendee survey indicate that for many participants these sessions were, once again, a real highlight of the conference.
MCN Taiwan, MCN’s first international chapter, hosted a luncheon and poster session as well as a panel presentation. Special Interest Group meetings were held by MCN’s Digital Media, Information Technology, Intellectual Property, Metrics and Evaluation, Small Museum, Standards, and California SIGs. Special coffee-break sessions provided a close look at allied work in our professional communities. These included projects recently funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, offering delegates the opportunity to speak directly with project managers and IMLS program officers, and winners of the AAM Media & Technology Committee‘s MUSE Awards for 2008.
A rich variety of behind-the-scenes meetings took place during the conference. The ImageMuse working group of imaging experts in museums, the CDWA Lite and museumdat Working Group, the Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) Advisory Committee, and the steve social tagging project all held meetings to coincide with MCN 2008.
The full conference program, with session descriptions and information about sponsors and exhibitors, may be downloaded from the MCN website’s main conference page. As they are received from speakers, presentation slides and other materials will become available on the site’s conference program pages. And Richard Urban’s recent Musematic post notes some remote-sensing traces of the conference.
P.S.: Mark your calendars for MCN 2009 from November 11 through 14 in Portland, Oregon! Believe me, we’re really working on that wireless thing….
