It has been quite some time since I’ve posted, mostly due to a couple of interesting, and possibly even groundbreaking, projects at the Magnes. One of these projects, with which I was only marginally involved, was keeping me up tonight. (Yes, at 3 AM, I’m thinking about the state of the museum technology field).

A couple of weeks ago, we launched Memory Lab, a quasi-public space into which members of the community may bring their photographs and documents and scan them. Once scanned, these materials are organized and annotated by the visitor using MemoryMiner, a really neat, inexpensive software for digital storytelling of people and places, although we also use it to also connect objects to people and places and time. I don’t think I can do the software justice, so I’ll let John Fox, the creator, explain it:

high quality Quicktime video here

There are a bunch more videos describing the functionality of MemoryMiner here, including how it works with Google Earth KML and GEDCOM files.

In addition to scanned materials, visitors may also record an oral history video, which may then also be embedded into MemoryMiner. Once the visitor has created their story, they receive a copy of it to share with their friends and family, and we request that we retain a copy as part of the Western Jewish History Archives. With permission, we will also publish the story on our website. Members receive a copy of the software as a membership bonus.

At the staff meeting this morning, we heard some feedback about our public program this past weekend, in which John introduced MemoryMiner and Memory Lab to our public. As it turns out, a couple of the visitors found, through experimenting with the software and their materials, and conversing with the group as a whole, that they might be distantly related. That’s exactly the kind of synergy and discovery we would love to see Memory Lab elicit on a regular basis.

Along with Memory Lab, we’ve also begun using MemoryMiner to publish online exhibitions. Two of the really cool things we’re able to do with it is create detailed, comparative virtual exhibitions and export directly into a webpage AND upload directly to Flickr. For example, the first of these exhibitions we created is called Far From Where? Jews and China in Modern Times (many thanks to an intern, Warren Klein, for putting it together for us!). Once the materials were organized, annotated, and the notes and links created, we uploaded it onto our website, here, as well as onto Flickr, here.

Obviously, there’s a very different look and feel, and the options for interaction with the materials are quite different. Regardless, both the slideshow version and the Flickr version have proved themselves to be complimentary tools for presenting the same materials.

As we have grown more comfortable using the software, we have found that the ease of use allows us to think more broadly about how we may use the materials we’ve been digitizing for the past 3 years. The other day, our Judaica curator came up to me, very excited, as she realized that she could use the software to recreate a very popular exhibition which we had decided not to travel. As she has all of the text and labels still at hand, it’s not enormously difficult to recreate that show.

Anyway, back to Memory Lab. One of the threads of conversation over the past few years has been about what to do when people begin bringing us archival documents and photographs in digital form. In a way, Memory Lab embraces that problem. As a more traditional institution, we don’t usually know what to do with born digital materials, and this is an even greater problem for the archives. Yet, if we begin archiving these slideshows and digital oral histories (ok, that’s something of an oxymoron, but you get my drift…), that gives us an opportunity to recognize and deal with the shifting landscape of archival materials. One day soon, a significant percentage of materials offered to us for donation will be on a cd, DVD, or some other medium. But if we can get people in the door and get them to share their own personal stories, we not only overcome our own reticence about collecting history digitally, we, more importantly, harness a new tool to actively collect history from those who are providing the story.

It is one thing to collect a series of papers and photographs and try to connect the dots within them. It is another thing entirely to have the primary source provide the thread for you. I think this is terribly exciting; not just for us, but for any historical institution looking to actively collect and share history.