A wonderful friend and colleague. Gone but not forgotten.

Check out the new Jim Blackaby Memorial Scholarship which includes conference registration, hotel, and stipend and, for those of you who don’t know, the scholarship is named for a pioneer in the museum technology field who left us way too young.

Miss you still Jim.

Here’s the link to more information.
http://www.mcn.edu/mcn-2012-scholarship-program

Choose Your Own Arrangement: Using Large-scale Digitization Efforts to Process Image and Audiovisual Collections

Commemorating the Civil War: Transforming the Historical Record Through Digitization

To the Community and Beyond: Engaging Users to Interact with Participatory Archives

Crowdsourcing Our Collections: Three Case Studies of User Participation in Metadata Creation and Enhancement

Linking Data Across Libraries, Archives, and Museums (disclaimer: this is my own session)

80,000 Volunteers Can’t Be Wrong: The Case for Greater Collaboration with Wikipedia

Solving Our Problem with Authority and Sharing: Current Developments and Prospects

etc.

Really, this isn’t surprising. Once you get past processing and into raw data, the challenges and opportunities are almost the same. Makes me wonder if I’ve been doing an archivist’s job all along. And it enforces my perception that the walls separating the disciplines are becoming thinner and thinner.

The problem that the “Semantic Web” attempts to solve is that of context. Putting information on the web is important, but each web page exists in isolation. There is nothing beyond proximity to help put pages in context: a page on the Jewish Women’s Archive website in our section, “Encyclopedia” is probably a biography, or an article about a general Jewish women’s subject. If the article is on our “My Bat Mitzvah Story” website, then it is probably addressed to tweens, girls between 11 and 13. None of this is necessarily apparent to web spiders, or, for that matter, to casual visitors to our site.

So, the Jewish Women’s Archive has embarked on a new project to add extensive metadata, and to standardize metadata, in its various exhibits, biographies, and features. The core of the Semantic Web relies on “metadata;” the background information about the biographies and accompanying media on our site. “Metadata” is the term used to describe the criticial information about who created the article or media, what rights we have to use the item, when it was last updated, with whom we can share it, who owns the item, what the article covers or how it is categorized, how it fits in with other articles, etc.

Search engines such as Google and Bing frequently deliver people to our pages about Lillian Wald or Bobbie Rosenfeld or Gertrude Elion. We are prime resources for those subjects and the search engines know it. But you have to know to ask. If you are researching public health, or sports, or scientists, there is no easy way for a search engine to make a connection between the women I just mentioned and those subjects, except to the degree that those terms appear somewhere in the web pages, and to the extent that someone searching for information uses exactly those terms.

The Semantic Web addresses “context” by providing behind-the-scenes mark-up to note “relationship” information in a form that search engines like Google and Bing are increasingly paying attention to. We can record information such as “Gertrude Elion was a scientist” and “Gertrude Elion won the Nobel Prize” in ways that the search engines and other Semantic Web tools (when they appear) will be able to understand and combine with other semantic information around the web in order to answer search queries more subtly and more completely.

Think of how much this changes the way that people can understand the world. Instead of directing a query about sports, for instance, to whoever has the most widely-read page on sports in general, Google can now answer a question about “women in sports” to include the Jewish Women’s Archive pages on Bobbie Rosenfeld and other women. “Jewish Olympians” likewise returns information beginning with Rosenfeld, Lillian Copeland, Charlotte Epstein, on up to more recent Olympians such as Dara Torres.

In essense, the Semantic Web means that we don’t have to wait for someone to use the information we provide to write women into history; once that information is properly coded and on the web, and as browsers and search engines take better advantage of this technology, we are writing women directly into search results.

The Semantic Web, as originally described, is complex and cumbersome. It would take such significant resources to encode that small organizations such as jwa.org might be left out simply because we lack the programming and archival resources. We’re not along. For everyone, big and small, in an age when archives are looking to “lighten up” some traditional proceses, the idea of moving backwards to record more information in more detail flies in the face of reality.

This has incredible implications, not just for the Jewish Women’s Archive, but for all cultural heritage organizations on the web. The Semantic Web as made real with lightweight means such as LOD and Microforms means that an inclusive, broad knowledge of who we are may finally be at hand.

Cross-posted with the Jewish Women’s Archive

It’s obvious that Facebook has changed how we communicate. (We use status updates and blurbs and other people’s voices a lot more now, and it’s faster), but has it changed, in any fundamental way, WHAT we do?

And if so, how?

So what do you guys think?

Thought I’d jump back in here folks because I’ve just returned from a wonderful, engaging, enlightening, and highly entertaining AAM 2012. As always the MUSE Awards, ably kicked off by that man-about-town Jack Ludden, was a highlight. You can find all the MUSE Award winners here.

But the real reason I thought I’d post today is I had several opportunities to listen to comments and constructive criticisms of the 20122 Horizon Report>Museum Edition. And it occurred to me that some of you out there might have some comments too, or a project that you want to share, or you might be interested in participating as part of this year’s advisory board.

Here at NMC/MIDEA We welcome your input and here are a couple of ways you can connect with us:

Two ways to Tag Resources hzk11
http://delicious.com/tag/hzk11
http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/Tagging

Or you can nominate yourself for the 2012 Advisory Board

There’s also a MIDEA facebook page–friends us and share comments–or leave us a comment using twitter #NMChz #MIDEA

Oh…and one last item. A shout out to Nik Honeysett’s recent post “How To Pitch Technology To Your Board” using Present Me, his current favorite presentation technology.

So here’s my top 10 list of failed technology initiatives. I’m not going to discuss specific failed projects, but those technologies we, as a community, thought were worth pursuing and, for some reason or another, just didn’t end up becoming an integral part of our musetech landscape. I also want to stress that this list in no way is intended to dismiss the very real value of these technologies, or diminish the efforts of those who saw that value and tried to get programs off the ground. And sometimes, it takes a while for technology to come around again. 10-15 years ago, ebooks were the laughingstock of the failed technology Top Ten lists. But who’s laughing now??

#10 – Bump for iPhone

Phone sex?

Bump is an an iPhone app that was supposed to streamline the way we shared information ourselves, like swapping electronic business cards. Two iPhone users (Android wasn’t really around at the time) with the app installed could gently “bump” their phones and the app would input your Bump partner’s information into your contact list. Bump had a lot of hype, and every lucky bastard with an iPhone was trying to Bump their phone with everyone else. There would be meetups and professional gatherings at museum openings, with rampant Bumping. But Bump at the time turned out to be premature technology – it rarely worked, and not everyone had an iPhone. And if you were at an event and someone was impatiently waiting to Bump you, the wifi or 3G connection would invariably fail. Moral – implementing technology while someone is waiting is embarrassing.

#9 – foursquare

Huh? Why is foursquare on this list? It has like 10 20 million users! And 3 million people around the world use their service per day! In 2010, it experienced growth of 3400%! In the past 5 months, it grew by 5 million users. CRAY-ZEE. And location-based interactions and check-ins aren’t going away anytime soon. So… why is it on the list?

Museums followed the hype crest for a while, then made the mistake of assuming that the public would do our work for us. In 2010 and 2011, there was a brief flurry of chatter and excitement about our new Foursquare marketing efforts, with prizes and benefits for check-ins at our events and exhibitions. So… why’d we stop doing that? Seriously – when was the last time you saw a museum website with a foursquare badge, or marketing materials with foursquare promotions? Moral – removing technology from the rotation too early is like wearing zeitgeist blinders.

#8 – Prezi

I’ll admit it right off the top: I hate Prezi. Done well, it’s a beautiful alternative to the expected, stale, familiar PowerPoint. It enjoyed a two-year period in 2010-2011 where museum professionals were Prezi-fying their conference presentations. Then it stopped. Why?

First of all, there’s a learning curve to Prezi. Unlike the linear PowerPoint, it takes time to learn how to use effectively, and a good Prezi will also have some thought about the design in advance. And how many presenters start working on their presentations a month in advance? I think I see about five hands in the back of the room…

Second, well, the above is considered a good example of a well-produced Prezi. Here’s an example of a bad Prezi:

Moral: don’t make your audience seasick

#7 – Laserdiscs

Way back in the 1970s, Laserdiscs were considered to be the NEW new media. They were about the size of a medium pizza (12″, thin crust, hold the cheese), and were considered to be a superior medium for art media and sound. They were also believed to be “archival” – unlike magnetic tape media, Laserdiscs were optical, like DVDs and BluRay disks today, and therefore considered to be less-vulnerable to the elements. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and, like compact disks, suffered from bit rot. Their size also meant there was more surface area to get damaged. And you could only fit 30 minutes of material on early Laserdiscs, so the user would have to eject it from the player and flip it over to view or interact with more content. Think of it like a cross between an LP and a CD.

Bit Rot: The Phantom Menace

Unlike magnetic mediums, Laserdiscs enjoyed the advantage of being interactive, which made it an attractive option for early gallery interactives. Due to their perceived durability, they were also used to share collection catalogs with other organizations, and as backup storage for media art and collection databases. Laserdiscs never really gained traction in the United States, though, and other playback and storage formats quickly overtook it as the media of choice. Moral: size matters.

#6 – RFID tracking, CueCat, and QR codes

RFID tags, barcode readers (such as CueCat), and QR codes are examples of attempts to bridge visitors of physical exhibits to expanded information in our websites or databases. The philosophy’s a good one: there’s too much information to put on a wall label, so let’s direct the visitor to a virtual resource where they can followup and learn more. Or, let’s use the physical-virtual bridge as a way to continue our impact after the visitor has left the museum.

RFID tags suffered from negative media hype and public perception. In the case of The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, visitors would be handed an RFID-embedded strip that they would wave over an exhibit and they could be emailed with more information, or results and scores from gallery games. Unfortunately, RFID tags also suffered from some recent media scares that they enabled spying and identity theft. RFID = creepy.

and who wants to wear an awkward paper tag anyway?

CueCat was the early 2000s version of QR codes. Visitors could use the cute little barcode reader to scan a code next to an artifact, then when they plugged it into their computer, it would bring up the urls it had read from the barcodes. It was, however, bulky to carry around, and many museums simply didn’t have the time, funding, or infrastructure to develop content that would sufficiently entice visitors to use it.

Cue Cat in the Computer History Museum

It’s really too early to predict its demise, but QR codes may follow the same path. Content needs to be there before adopting the technology, or incorporated as the project is being developed. For some organizations, they’ve already got some fantastic content on their websites, optimized for mobile devices, that works well for QR code use in galleries (and they have solid wifi and a tech-savvy visitor base). Just as crucially, QR codes suffer frommarketing abuse and dubious uses of QR codes that leads to the public believing that the codes are stupid.

Moral: Sean Cummings -

People will not adopt a technical solution that serves to replace a manual task, if that solution is less efficient than the manual task it replaces.

Stay tuned for Part II, in which I take a look at websites, VR, and learning communities, amongst others…

It’s too bad the findings aren’t able to break this down into the devices people have. Fortunately, it does shed light on the people most using them: ages 30 to 49, college educated, and makes more than $75,000 a year. How does that compare to the visitors and program participants at your museum?

Pew Research Center: “Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period”

“Armchair activists now have a tool that can transport their SOPA protestations into the real world: Boycott SOPA, an Android app that scans barcodes and tells you whether an object’s manufacturer/publisher is a supporter of the much maligned Stop Online Piracy Act.

…You could even take it one step further and make Boycott the one-stop-shop for all of your political needs. Imagine if you could scan a cereal box and find out that the company’s CEO likes to hunt rhinos, ride elephants, and eat shark fin soup — at the same time. Imagine if you could scan a video game box and immediately see all of the active legislation, the Representative sponsors and supporters, and how much money they’ve received from industry lobbying. You could even go as far as equipping the app with facial recognition, so that you can point your phone at a Senator’s face on the TV and quickly find out whether what he’s saying actually jibes with his real world behavior and voting record. This isn’t a futuristic concept; we could do this right now with the tech we have.

As I’ve returned to being primarily an art historian I don’t have a whole lot that’s relevant to say in the Musematic arena anymore. What prompted me to write this post in the first place is I currently find myself in a situation where technology cannot help me–and I’m not talking about computers, Ipads, or GPS. For the first time in years I’m stuck and can’t think of a technology to save me–and mind you I’ve been in some tight places before.

There was the time I was in Egypt, traveling as resident art historian for Eastern Michigan University’s European Cultural History Program. Half the group had gone to the pyramids where, after viewing the monuments, they would jump on camels and meet us at the Step-Pyramids of Djoser. My group had headed for the Step-Pyramids and was caught in a sudden sandstorm and would have been completely lost had it not been for compass.

And then there was the time a group of us decided to spend the night in one of the caves near the cave monasteries in Cappadocia, Turkey. What saved us that evening was a technology that has been around for eons–a piece of flint and some metal to strike a spark.

The phones at the Post in Rome enabled me to complete my dissertation. The monks at the Church of the Aracoeli in Rome refused to let a woman into the Bufalini Chapel in the 1980s and so you might say that a large pocketful of gettoni enabled me to reach a friend with connections at the Cleveland diocese, who made connections in Rome, who got me an audience with the Pope’s Confessor, who made a phone call to the Fransicans at the Aracoeli and told them to let me in to see the painting cycle I needed to see. And, six months later, I was on top of the world because I had my very own dot matrix printer to print out my completed dissertation–of course it took several hours and was loud and annoying but what an improvement over carbon paper and white out.

But tomorrow folks I’m invited to a Debutante Ball! As the mother of her “Escort,” the “Deb’s” parents have kindly invited me to sit at their table. My son will be resplendent in his tuxedo, head and shoulders better looking than any handsome prince I’ve ever seen. I’ve got a dress and a carriage (okay so it’s a used Audi but let’s not quibble over the details). So what’s the problem? This event lasts for 8 hours and the grand total of my experience with balls comes from Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer novels–and I’m pretty sure things have changed since the Regency period. E-how offered me the following suggestions when I typed in “How to behave at a Debutante Ball.”

I’m off the grid tomorrow night and to tell you the truth, I’m scared. E-how offers this particularly frightening piece of advice:

The simplest way to remember how to behave at a debutante ball is to make sure that you don’t do or say anything that you wouldn’t do or say in front of your grandmother, your first grade teacher and your minister.

Wish me luck. It’s a brave new world. And, in the words of the immortal Douglas Adams “So long and thanks for all the fish!”

“Not only has the net left its Wild West days; it’s entered the era of the gated suburban subdivision. As part of this trend, the open, html-based website is being replaced, or at least supplemented, by the proprietary app. In app stores, the already blurry line between software and media disappears altogether. Apps are as much content-delivery services as they are conventional software programs. Newspapers, magazines, books, games, music albums, TV shows: All are being reimagined as apps. Appified, if you will.”