Museum Informatics Project Ideas
From GSLISWiki
Suggest ideas for possible projects. If you are interested in a particular idea, create it, or elaborate on it and put your initials against it. If you are just throwing it out for someone else to try, that's fine. These ideas are not exclusive. Projects can be combinations of these and other ideas.
[edit] Second Life Spurlock
Thinking about more concrete assignments after yesterday's class, I'm considering a proposal to explore modeling the Spurlock Museum in Second Life. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Second Life is a Massively Multiplayer virtual world that is free to join and is receiving some attention from educators for use in distance education. This project could cover several areas, such as Cyberdocents, creating a "digitized" collection in a 3D environment, rapid prototyping for more advanced 3D modelling for collections, possibilities for virtual field trips, adding value to collections, etc.
The obsticle to undertaking this project is that for things to last in 2nd Life, you need to purchase "land." Currently Guy Garnet and the Cultural Computing center at UIUC have purchased an island in 2nd Life for their students use. I'd need to see if they would be willing to give us a corner, or whether there is interest from GSLIS in kicking in some money to have a space for students to play in.
2L has fairly robust protection for copyrighted objects, we would need Spurlock's permission to create a Second Life gallery, based on existing digitized collections.
-Richard
[edit] Better websites
I'm very intersted in virtual tours of museums online. Questions that I would like to address include whether or not the ability to view collections online will discourage people from visiting the museum in person and whether or not should museums charge internet users for viewing their collections. I would also like to research the potential value of opening up collections online to people who cannot physically visit the museums. It might also be intersting to look at museums that are purly online such as the WebMuseum that offers images and information of/on public domain art. Bobbi P.
The idea that people will stop going to museums seems to have an incredible hold on the community, despite a few studies that have indicated otherwise. See: Website Availability and Visitor Motivation: An Evaluation Study for the Colorado Digitization Project
A summary of the above report also appeared in Museums & the Web 2005: Actual/Virtual Visits: What Are The Links?
-Richard
[edit] More remote participation
Ways that people accessing a website can in some way be more involved
[edit] Creating a small digitized collection
I definitely want to create a small collection: it would be even more interesting to do it in conjunction with the "better websites" project. Perhaps someone who is good at webpage design would be interested in a collaborative project? The collection could be shown on the webpage... -Jenn Shaw
I think the goal needs to be clarified. Are you interested in digitizing a collection for inclusion in an online exhibit (e.g. with an organized narrative theme?) or digitizing a collection with just associated metadata (which would lead to a very different solution, i.e using Greenstone or a collection management system.) -Richard
The former - digitizing a collection for inclusion in an online exhibit. The problem I face with this is that I simply don't know the computer code for such a design project. -Jenn
I'm hoping to combine this project with my cataloging project. I want to create a small digitized exhibit of my grandfather's bird carvings. ~Jenny F.
If we digitize a collection of some sort, can we digitize anything we want to? Or do we have to digitize a collection of things that we feel a large audience would be interested in? For example, different pairs of shoes, or something like that (ONLY AN EXAMPLE!!). -Karla
I would like to make an organized online exhibit of some art installations that reside in the catacombs and other underground passages of Paris. There are many pictures of them online, but the people who put them there don't generally advertize themselves or bother with (meta)data because the artists and photographers are technically trespassers, although in actuality the authorities are aware of them and they're tolerated. I would also be able to find location information for many of the works, and since they're under Paris they should be pretty easy to map. So thus far I plan to have a tripartite project: a user-friendly exhibit with pictures and easy-to-read information about the works; a more structured set of data about the works; and some sort of map image showing their distribution. If I can figure it out I will also have the map be the main navigation of the exhibit (I'm competent with HTML but not a wiz). --Maren
[edit] Adding value to a digitized collection
Once it has been digitized, what can you do with it? Options for teachers, for experts, for general interest, etc.
[edit] Podcasting
Creating tours, many different tours, selecting different tours
[edit] Using Mashups
A current trend on the web. A way of innovating new applications by mashing together two or more existing applications. To the best of my knowledge thaere are no museum-related mashups - yet... Background: http://www.programmableweb.com/
[edit] Educational applications
I am very interested in a project on seamlessly integrating different art museums' collections. A scenario will be when an user wants to do a research on the theme of John the Baptiste : what are the works of the same theme, artists, art critiques written on this theme and works, where they are currently located, and etc. Another sceanrio will be to develop a webpage (similar to creating a small collection) that puts together cathedrals built during the Gothic period.
Shaw-J. C-Wang
[edit] In-museum interactives
Not an idea that I'd be able to implement, but a really neat example of a really interactive game (Dance Dance Revolution plus genetic sequences) within a musuem space (at Scripps Aquarium, to be precise). Good use of current technology!--jdm 17:31, 31 Jan 2006 (MST)
Last semester for LIS490 Game Culture and Technology I explored current practices within the museum community for including games and other interactives in their activites. The final paper mostly focused on games on museum websites, but includes a bibliography of game-related articles (much from Museums and the Web conerences). It is currently locked in the class wiki, but I need to pull it out and will share it here. The most interesting project I encountered was Discover Babylon which is using 3d game engines to develop a virtual environment to learn about , you guessed it, ancient Babylon. Another interesting project sponsored by the MIT Games to Teach project and Colonial Williamsburg is called Revolution and adopts MMPOG (massively multi-player online games) to teach about the American Revolution.
Stay tuned, more to come... -Richard
[edit] Merging the local and the remote
Can virtual visits and virtual visitors be connected with real visitors? How? When? Why?
- Galani, G. & Chalmers, M. (2003) Close at hand but far away: Shared mixed reality museum experiences for local and remote museum companions Proc. International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM), Paris.
[edit] Constructing an annotated Bibliography of Museum Informatics
I've started tagging MI related sites/articles in del.icio.us.
Here's a really messy pile of stuff to get you started Museum Informatics Bibliography
Constructing a webpage resource? -Karla
I've created a new user called museInfo at CiteULike, an online bibliography tool. CiteULike doesn't allow multiple users to share the same space (like a collaborative blog) so you'll need to e-mail me for login/password if you'd like to contribute. The advantage of this is that we can work together to create the bibliography, and it can be exported as a BibTex or EndNote database. I'm using the open source JabRef software to manage my personal BibTex database. My personal database at CiteULike -Richard
Doing the complete bibliography all on your own is too much. So it can help to focus in on subtopics within Museum Informatics:
- Technologies used by visitors in museums (PDAs, cellphones, ipods, tablets, etc.)
- Digitization of museum artifacts
- Issues in data federation
- Handling errors in databases
- Educational Technologies
Obviously topic areas overlap With a smaller focus you can create an annotated bibliography (a couple of sentences with each main reference telling the reader what it is about)
[edit] Handheld Devices
examples:
[edit] The CyberDocent
Try out some of the ideas from this conceptualization work. http://people.lis.uiuc.edu/~twidale/research/docents/ It was looking at the potential of devices like handheld PDAs
[edit] The Socio-Technical Life of Museum Informatics
I am interested in extending earlier research exploring how museum professionals have shaped the technology they use according to professional values and cultures. My LIS390 paper was a first stab and covers the development of museum systems in the 1960s/70s (and clearly needs work!). -Richard
[edit] Better Artifact Databases
What to record, better fields, better metadata, why things go wrong, issues of federation, etc. Mostly considering 'back office' issues or ways to enable people get access to more stuff. Different from constructing an exhibit or visitor learning experience.
I'm interested in looking at this area--especially in regards to art objects. I wrote a paper on cataloging 2D works of art for a cataloging II and think it would be interesting to compare that method to what art museums are (or could be) doing. Perhaps exploring different options through a research paper, along with organizing and recording a small art collection. -kara
Similar idea as Kara's. Kind of exploring database researchers' behaviors in the world of art images, needs and challenges. ---- Shaw
[edit] Improving access to or use of federated collections
There are various projects on federating digitized collections. Some are based here at UIUC. For example: http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/about.htm and http://cicharvest.grainger.uiuc.edu/
- What are some innovative ways in which they can be used?
- What are some ways of improving its use, usefulness or usability?
I'm interested in repatriation through these federated search engines - what do the countries of origination think of this? How many museums/federations are using their online collections in this way? How does/did the funding work to bring the countries up to technological speed to make use of the federations? {Erin}
[edit] Personalization Technologies
Ways to help visitors tailor their experience.
Several museums have an online 'my museum' or 'my collection' feature on their website
something inspired by: Bowen, JP & S. Filippini-Fantoni (2004). Personalization and the Web from a museum perspective. In D. Bearman & J. Trant (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2004 http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/papers/bowen/bowen.html
Link back to main Museum Informatics page.
