participatory web – Page 3

Play with your customer profiles

It's a bit early for a random Friday fun link, but this Forrester 'Build Your Customers' Social Technographics Profile' interactive counts as work too.

Companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here, a podcast there — to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. You can use the tool on this page to get started.

You can pull down menus to change the age group, country and gender of your target audience, and the graph below updates to show you how many are in each 'Social Technographics' group.

The definitions of the 'Social Technographics' groups are given in a slideshow.

Hat tip to Nina Simon. [Update to get Nina's name right, I'm very sorry!]

Notes from geeKyoto

Quick and dirty notes from geeKyoto, held at Conway Hall, Saturday May 17, 2008. These are pretty much as entered on my phone. The theme of the event was vaguely 'we broke the world, how can we fix it?'. This isn't strictly a post about IT, but there were lots of good presentations and discussion about visualisation, data sharing, communication, building online community, IT enabling communication, some excellent websites and examples of APIs in use. There was also something about re-connecting with offline communities with a 'secular sabbath'.

Christian Nold: in-between the individual and the masses is group and community. Lots on mapping emotions as people walk around.

Alex Haw: spatial control and methods for losing it. Surveillance. Run through stuff. Making the surveillance visible with scaffolding. Re-displaying movement, occupancy. Visualising financial transactions database on physical space. Re-scaling. Coding information analysis. Performance.

Simon Downs, Moixa. Modern design is responsible for climate change, so it should also fix it. Universal design so can upgrade chips instead of throwing out computer when operating system upgrades. Change behaviours with low overhead, easy methods e.g. put balloons on monitors that have been left on overnight. Local dc not remote ac power. How can design work to stop people throwing things away? Batteries rechargeable on USB ports. Disposability is unsustainable. When you buy a phone in China the chargers are standardised so you don't need to manufacture/buy all the accessories again. Consumers make changes, not governments, in what they buy. There was a question and discussion re price of the USB-chargeable battery.

Adrian Hon, Naomi Alderman: Secular Sabbath. Changing state of anything electrical isn't allowed, so instead people have meals with friends, read, go for walks, have conversation, sleep, singing. It facilitates relationships. Tested impact on environment, change in usage of devices. A really good point: behavioural changes in environmental energy don't have to be a sacrifice. Take a day off, get over feeling you'll miss something. Recommendations: invite friends over for monthly secular Sabbath. Chat, walk, good food. No TV, phone, computers. Don't travel unless walk. Enjoy a sense of place. Travel can turn into 'work', be stressful. Day of rest is good and the environment benefits, yay. Bikes are ok too. It helps you prioritise your day, because you can't do stuff, only think. [It's a bit like earth hour, which was quite nice not only in terms of participating in something big but also because it meant remembering that conversation is good and doesn't require any additional power. But a secular Sabbath also means friends must be nearby or stay overnight, this might limit it to very good friends unless you somewhere comfortable to put them up. I wish there was a non-religious equivalent for 'sabbath'. That said, I really loved this idea. Even having an offline night sounds like a good idea – I could read or garden instead.]

Avoiding mass extinction: amee.cc "If all the energy data in the world were accessible, what would you build?". Dashboards on energy consumption. API. Aggregates data and metrics. Your energy identity. Fed from lots of data sources. Credit card transactions have calculated carbon footprint! Remit to measure all energy in world. Data owned by providers, they're a neutral platform. 75% of change doesn't require new technology. Action to measure and compare, design new life, innovate. People aren't interested in comparisons with the national average, but they do compare themselves with their neighbours. Look to industry for mass production models for energy devices. Make energy *the* performance metric. Questions/discussion: they publish their methodologies on wiki; question about using the tax system to motivate change. Taxes are currently on good things not bad things.

Vincenzo and Bruno from Central St Martins on sustainable development. Sustainable tourism, consumerism. Bruno: play in a changing public realm. Sustainable communities. Observe behaviour and subtle clues to help discover problems. Swings at bus stops! [Cool in so many ways].

Futurelab, beyond current horizons. Images of the future, how and what we think about the future influences what the future becomes. [I wonder if they could be involved with bathcamp?] Thoughts from public. Name-checked blog called Paleofuture. 'Choose the future you want because it won't happen if you don't'.

DIY Kyoto. Create awareness by empowering the individual. Focus on positive messages. Then offer practical solutions. Tangible visualisation of electricity usage: Wattson. Feedback on your usage. Holmes. Download last 28 days data. [It's expensive for an individual but it would be great for a business, put it somewhere like a reception desk where everyone passes it to encourage people to help reduce electricity usage.]

Africa, communications. ICT4D. Kenya, falling apart within 24 hours of election. People in rural areas were the ones who missed out on information. Government, broadcasters, problematic. People used phones, internet. When the internet meets politics. Erik Hersman, Africa and IT. People reporting problems, putting it on map. Small agile projects are more effective than big slow ones in this environment.

Bryony Worthington, emissions trading. Buy permits back and remove from system, campaign for more caps. Take control, expose issue to public scrutiny, provide potential for mass collaboration and mobilisation. Sandbag.org.uk is new campaign to bring emissions trading into public domain. Bring personal responsibility to companies who are trading, real names and addresses. Compare allowance against emissions.

James Smith. Can software save the planet? Socially responsible software. Carbon diet. Visualise your usage. Do the Green Thing: making being green fun, empowering, gives status. Online community around monthly actions. They had a really good list of simple but clever actions you could do. Building a volunteer community of green geeks. Google group: green-web-uk. Using free software and open standards.

Government/policy guys. They did a bar camp at google. Sliding scale from community of trust to universe of discourse, and the problems this creates in getting the right information to the right people when they need it. People in authority have trouble admitting they don't know everything, asking outside their circles for information is problematic as it can be seized on for political gain (so a bit like some experts in all fields then). They looked to open source for models.

2gether08 – conference later this year. Proposers. Enablers, supporters -> convene -> delivery. Open process. Mapping networks, comparing mapping afterwards to see if event was a success.

[Somewhere along the line I tweeted 'programming at work/home is like a mullet, .Net business in front, OSS party in the back'. Clearly my brain was starting to fade.]

From discussion: Ch 4 have two twitter feeds from news service, exploring possibilities.

Arctic explorer Ben Saunders: think about what you're doing with the tiny amount of time we have in your life. Referenced Bill Bryson on how many hours we have in our lifetime, think about what you're doing with each one. No-one else is the authority on your potential.

We know it's worth doing, but how do we convince others?

Bootstrapping a Niche Social Network poses the question, "How do you bootstrap your social site if you're targeting a group that doesn't yet use software (or doesn't seem interested in using software)? While software designers can often see how useful their tool can be, normal users aren't so prescient. How do you get them to see the value in your software?", and provides some answers:

People don't want to be good at software. They want to be good at fun things like acting, writing, and ultimate frisbee.

…

Once you identify the areas where the software can improve the theatre folks life, you’ll have a much easier time convincing them to give it a shot. So in their mind they won’t be using "social network software", they’ll be using a tool to help them be a better theatre group.

This is an unfortunate side-effect of the social networking craze. We have new words that we're using to communicate among those of us who design the software, but for the vast majority of folks who will actually use the software, the terms don't mean very much. So while you may understand what I mean by "niche social network", the people actually in the niche social network think of themselves as performers, actors, or what-have-you.

See also: Social Media for Social Change Behind the Nonprofit Firewall (and the discussion in the comments).

The issues are a bit different for social networks – if you get it right then your users are your content creators, while you'll probably need others outside of IT to contribute if you want blogs or videos or photos about your organisation.

Finding real world metaphors also seems to help – Andy Powell described the Ning site for the Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2008 as "a virtual delegate list – a place where people could find out who is coming on the day (physically or virtually) and what their interests are". This description has made a lot of sense to people I've discussed it with – everyone knows what a conference delegate list looks like, and everyone has probably also wondered how on earth they'll find the people who sound interesting. A social network meets a need in that context.

Notes from 'User-Generated Content' session at MW2008

These are my notes from the User-generated content session at Museums and the Web, Montreal, 2008. All mistakes are mine, any corrections are welcome, my comments are in [square brackets] below.

The papers presented were The Art of Storytelling: Enriching Art Museum Exhibits and Education through visitor narratives by Matthew Fisher, Alexandra Sastre, Beth Twiss-Garrity; The Living Museum: Supporting the Creation of Quality User-Generated Content by Allison Farber, Paul Radensky and Getting 'In Your Face': Strategies for Encouraging Creativity, Engagement and Investment When the Museum is Offline by Martin Lajoie, Gillian McIntyre, Ian Rubenzahl, Colin Wiginton.

The "Art of Storytelling" project at the Delaware Art Museum.
The paper covered visitor-contributed content (VCC), the key factors to success, and the motivations behind allowing visitors to contribute. The paper goes into more of the theoretical foundations.

The key findings of the Art of Storytelling project evaluation:

What's the value to the visitor who contributes? It engages visitors in thinking critically and creatively about and in response to art.
What's the value to the museum? They get feedback and to engage new audiences
What's the value to the other visitors? There is some confusion, but also it can be inspiring, enriching, and encourage others to participate.

It's not appropriate or appealing for all collections, but it's hard to predict which in advance.

[When looking at models of participation:] Allow the motivated to contribute, allow the rest to benefit; don't penalise for non-participation.

Simplicity – remove barriers to entry (engage first, login last if at all).

Promote in traditional and non traditional venues; have a clear invitation to participate.

Motivating factors included curatorial encouragement (have curators there encouraging people), juried selections, stipends for selected storytellers.

What's in it for the audience? They get 15 minutes next to an Andy Warhol. Establish an audience for your visitor-contributors – affiliation with an institution is valued, even if comes with caveats. [Theirs is an art museum – does that work for all audiences, or for all types of content?]

Don't try and create communities beyond the your collections (because others with bigger budgets are after the same eyeballs).

They gave lots of examples from a summary of evaluation of other projects (but the slides were hard to see):
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston – thinking through art. Active looking skills.
The Wolfsonian Institute in Miami – Artful Citizenship Project.
Guggenheim – Learning Through Art.
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum – Round by Halsey Burgund.
Denver Art museum – Frederic Remington exhibit, Hamilton building programming.
Philadelphia area art museums; art, literacy, museums.

They then provided some background information about the Art of Storytelling at the Delaware Art Museum – story telling kiosks in the museum.

Their 'a-ha' moment was realising that the experience was more transformational for the original story tellers (i.e. the adults) than the audience. Transcend traditional ideas re lack of authority.

In conclusion, visitor-contributed content programs are valuable to the original contributors and museums get valuable insight into audiences, but it's an open question as to whether they're valuable for other visitors.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage, supporting the creation of quality user-generated content in the "Living Museum".
The project started as outreach project for Jewish communities without local museum.

The process: students visit a local museum, learn a bit about how museums are structured in terms of display of objects and organisation. The students choose an artefact to represent Jewish heritage at home, then write labels at school. They then organise artefacts into galleries, create gallery title and text panels, then create in-school and online exhibitions. Students research artefacts and tell their own stories. They include measurements because you can't get a sense of scale on the internet. One piece of text tells story of artefact and the other tells significance of artefact to family.

[They aren't promoting it until they feel the site is ready – a familiar story!]

They run seminars with teachers to help them submit quality content, but they still get objects unrelated to Jewish heritage, text with spelling and grammar errors, incomplete labels, unclear photos, factual errors.

The goals included: educational – a connection to Jewish heritage, parental involvements, museology, improve writing and research skills; institutional – high quality images so people can see what they're looking at; privacy of students; motivation of students.

Teachers say students are motivated to get stuff right because it's going online.

Unlike other user-generated content sites, the content is pre-reviewed, as the project has very specific educational goals. They control who creates content on the website (anyone can use but only teachers from Jewish schools can post content) and check that kids can't be identified. They are trying not to expose the kids and their personal stories to comment or modification by other users.

They are going to implement a spell checker.

How can they help users to contribute quality content? Convey expectations, consider needs of both kinds of users, offer support, concentrate on process and product of exhibition creation, review submitted content and offer recommendations.

"In Your Face", Art Gallery of Ontario
In Your Face: The People's Portrait Project.
While the Art Gallery of Ontario building was under construction, they were interested in rethinking the way the organisation worked, and how to keep people connected to the institution.

They got the idea from UK's National Portrait Gallery BP prize, but they didn't want a contest.

They advertised on back of the national paper for a few weeks as they had free space. They wrote a copyright statement that people had to sign, specified a size, and said they would hang every piece that came in. They received 17,000 portraits.

First they got lots of entries from rural areas, then the rest of Canada and the world. There was an extraordinary variety in portraits, and also in the parcels. They also arrived with stories.

It was a one way thing – people knew they weren't going to get the portraits back. It mattered to them to get them exhibited in the AGO.

There was more diversity in portraits and in the people who came to see them than usually seen in the gallery. People paid money to see the portraits as they were 'after the gate'. It was lots of work for staff on top of their normal job cos it turned out to be huge, but gave them (the staff) energy. It also made their audiences real for the staff and helped make the institution inclusive.

Contemporary artists from their collection also sent in portraits, but their names weren't shown so it was all egalitarian.

They also created a Flickr group (but weren't able to get that projected in the gallery). It now has 10,000 portraits in it.

They had a parallel project – Collection X. It was an online project where visitors could make their own exhibition. Collect, connect and create. 'Open source museum' [- the online paper goes into more detail, including the use of RSS.]

Partly [?] as a result of the project, guiding principles developed for institution include relevance, responsiveness, creativity, transparency, diversity and forum.

Questions asked:
How do you balance museum's agenda with visitor expectations? Is it possible to assert control and foster programming that is open-ended? How do we think about expertise, quality and standards? How do we integrate and manage creativity in ways that are dynamic and long-term? Is curatorial expertise or audience experience paramount? Some things curators are uneasy about. Dynamism also means some volatility – how does that work?

Lessons learned:
Take risks, experiment and be willing to make mistakes
Museums can function as catalysts for creativity [my emphasis, this was the meme that ran through the whole session, for me]
A critical mass of creativity asserts its own kind of aesthetic
There is value in integrating user-generated content that is actual as well as virtual
Museum and the public can function as producers and consumers of culture to create a shared sense of ownership
The public will be invested if programming is authentic and they feel respected.

Notes from 'Object-Orientated Democracies: Contradictions, Challenges And Opportunities' in 'Theoretical Frameworks' session, MW2008

These are my notes from the first paper, 'Object-Orientated Democracies: Contradictions, Challenges And Opportunities' in the Theoretical Frameworks session chaired by Darren Peacock at Museums and the Web 2008. I'll post the others later because the 'real world' is calling me to a 30th now.

I didn't blog these at the time because I wanted to read the papers properly before talking about them. I probably still need a bit longer to digest them, but the longer I leave it the more vague my memory will get and the less likely I am to revisit the papers, so please excuse (and contact me to correct!) any mistakes or misinterpretations. I'm not going to summarise the papers because you can go read them for yourself at the links below (one of the truly fantastic things about the Museums and the Web conferences, IMO), I'm just pulling out the bits that pinged in my brain for whatever reason. My comments on what was said are in [square brackets] below.

The papers were Object-centred democracies: contradictions, challenges and opportunities by Fiona Cameron, Who has the responsibility for saying what we see? mashing up Museum and Visitor voices, on-site and online by Peter Samis and The API as Curator by Aaron Straup Cope.

Darren introduced the session theme as 'the interplay between theory and practice'.

Fiona Cameron, Object-orientated democracies.

Museums use currently collections to produce stable, ordered, certain meanings. Curators are the gateway to a qualified interpretation of the object. [Classification and ordering as a wish-fulfilment exercise in 'objective', scientific recording, regardless of social or cultural context?]

However, the 'networked' (online, digital?) object overturns hierarchical museum classifications and closed museum-specific interpretive paradigms.

Online objects taking 'active role in social networks and political agendas'. [Objects re-appropriated in role as cultural signifiers by the communities they came from – cool!]

'Heritage significance is where the museum meets pop culture.'

Collection information becomes fluid when released into network, flow, subject to interactions with other resources and ideas.

From the paper: "Clearly, the more technology facilitates a networked social structure and individual cultural expression, as seen most recently with Web 2.0, the more difficult it becomes for museums to produce universal or consensual meanings for their collections."

[Why would museums want to (claim to) produce universal meanings anyway? One of the exciting possibilities of linking from each of our online objects to its instance in various museum projects is the potential to expose the multiplicity of interpretations and narrative contexts produced around any single object, even within the same museum. Also, projects like 'Reassessing What We Collect' are an acknowledgement that a 'universal' reading is in fact problematic.]

Bruno La Tour: object-orientated democracies. "For too long, objects have been wrongly portrayed as matters of fact."

Objects as mediators in assertion of associations, not just cultural symbols. How are competing readings inscribed in collections documentation context?

Collections wikis – how interactions between museum and public culture might inform new collection spaces.

Test cases for 'Reconceptualising Heritage Collections' – politically charged objects – coin and wedding dress. Wiki and real time discussion with curators, Palestinian Australians, Jewish readings of the same objects – many different readings.

Placing objects in open/public wiki was seen as problematic – assault on Palestinian culture. Role of museums in this… protection, 'apolitical gatekeeper', governance?

Collections as complex systems. [Complexity as problem to be smoothed out in recording.]

Objects derive meaning and significance from a large number of elements, multi/inter/disciplinary or from outside the museum walls. [Too much on that slide to read!]

Curators as expert groups within proposed systems; group boundaries are permeable. Static museum categories become more ambiguous as objects are interpreted in unexpected, interesting ways. Role in mapping social world around a collections item. Equilibrium vs chaos?

"Objects are able to perform at a higher level of complexity."

Issues re: museum authority and expertise, tensions between hierarchical structures and flexible networks, sustainable documentation practice, manage complexity.

[I think one of the reasons I liked this so much on a personal level is that it has a lot of parallels to the thinking I had to do about recording structures for post-processual archaeology at Çatalhöyük Archaeological Project – relational archaeological databases as traditionally conceived don't support the recording of ambiguity, uncertainty, plurality, multiplicity or of interpretative context.

I also like the sense of possibilities in a system that at first might seem to undermine curatorial or organisational authority – "Objects are able to perform at a higher level of complexity". The role of museums, and the ways curators work, might change, but both museums and curators are still valued.]

Move your FAQ to Wikipedia?

Mal Booth from the Australian War Memorial (AWM) makes the fascinating suggestion: they should move their entire Encyclopaedia to Wikipedia. Their encyclopaedia seems to function as a fully researched and referenced FAQ with content creation driven by public enquiries, and would probably sit well in Wikipedia.

In Wikipedia and "produsers", Mal says:

"Putting the content up on Wikipedia.org gives it MUCH wider exposure than our website ever can and it therefore has the potential to bring new users to our website that may not even know we exist (via links in to our own web content). With a wikipedia.org user account, we can maintain an appropriate amount of control over the content (more than we have at present over wikipedia content that started as ours, already put up there by others).

Another point is that putting it up on Wikipedia allows us to engage the assistance of various volunteers who'd like to help us, but don't live locally."

He also presents some good suggestions from their web developer, Adam: they should understand and participate in the Wikipedia community, and identify themselves as AWM professionals before importing content. I think they've taken the first step by assessing the suitability of their content for Wikipedia.

It's also an interesting example of an organisation that is willing to 'let go' of their content and allow it to be used and edited outside their institution. Mal's blog is a real find (and I'm not just saying that because it has 'Melbin' (Melbourne) in the title), and I'll be following the progress of their project with interest.

I wonder how issues of trust and authority will play out on their entries: by linking to the relevant Wikipedia entries, the AWM is giving those entries a level of authority they might not otherwise have. They're also placing a great deal of trust in Wikipedia authors.

Mal links to a post by Alex Bruns, Beyond Public Service Broadcasting: Produsage at the ABC and summarises the four preconditions for good user-generated content:

the replacement of a hierarchy with a more open participatory structure;
recognising the power of the COMMUNITY to distinguish between constructive and destructive contributions;
allowing for random (granular, simple) acts of participation (like ratings); and
the development of shared rather than owned content that is able to be re-used, re-mixed or mashed up.

Adam's post lists key principles that anyone "looking to develop successful and sustainable participatory media environments" should take into account. These points are defined and expanded on in the original post, which is well worth reading:

Open Participation, Communal Evaluation
Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy
Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process
Common Property, Individual Rewards

Museums as social spaces – the good, the bad, and the (ugly) conversations of others

I've linked to two articles about museums as social spaces or the behaviour of the public in museums; one refers to virtual and the other to physical space but the issues are related.

In museums, social situations, control and trust, Jennifer Trant says:

as soon as you put museum collections in a public place, the public will do what they do …. search logs show us that many look for 'nude' … and if you let people comment, they will: they will tell you about your typos; they will tell you that their child could have made that painting; and they will argue about the significance of works. they will also tell you things that you might never have known, and you can learn from that. but what happens when two branches of a family choose your museum's site as the venue for a dispute about what was 'true' family history?

She also makes the point that museums "can't demand control" and have to trust that users will respect their content when they allow users to use their collections in the users' personal space.

This is one issue that probably causes a lot of anxiety within museums at the moment. We'll only really find out whether users will respect our content when we let them respond to it. What kind of visitors have the means and self-motivation to comment on, link to pages or display images, or otherwise respond to cultural heritage content?

On another note, is it worse to be disrespected or ignored?

I'm just quoting one more bit from her post before I go on, because I thought it was worth repeating:

"there are a number of different value propositions for distribution of reproductions of works of in their collections. there may still be some great icons that will sell. but in many cases the value of having a collection known may outweighs worries about lost revenue, particularly when the images being released on the public web really aren't large enough to do that much with."

So from visitors respecting content, to visitors respecting other visitors, and perhaps to whether museums respect the visitor experience…

Giles Waterfield relates his experience of the crowded New York MoMA in The crowds swamping museums must be tackled – soon and makes some good points about "the over-population and over-use of the museum space":

"the predominance and ready availability in our society of visual images can mean that apart from the (sometimes over-exposed) icon, works in a gallery risk becoming another form of rapidly-absorbed consumer fodder. … visitors at many contemporary art museums now often behave similarly, pausing only to take pictures of celebrity works"

This matters because:

"looking at art is a difficult experience, one that has to be learnt and that requires concentration. Little art was created specifically for the museum or gallery, at least until recently, and the museum is not necessarily the best place to appreciate it. If the museum experience becomes one in which the visitor is regularly concerned with negotiating a way through the crowds and avoiding noise, the status of the museum as a vehicle for displaying art becomes highly questionable.

…the series of subtle, intense and inter-linked experiences that are created require an appropriate environment. The Demoiselles may just about survive, but quieter works of art drown and the carefully considered relationships between them disappear when the pressure of visitors means it is hardly possible to concentrate or to view more than one work at a time, if that."

His article is specific to art galleries, and the types of attention, learning and reflection may well be different for art works and social history objects; but the effect of interactions between the space in which the object is seen and of encounters with other visitors is interesting.

In my own experience, I have to force myself to go see blockbuster exhibitions because I dread the crowds – not only can is be really difficult to have a decent look at the art or objects; the sheer number of people means that tempers are shorter and the atmosphere is slightly more 'Oxford Street on a Saturday' than 'quiet temple of contemplation'.

If you give up waiting for a chance to read the captions or panel text over someone else's shoulder, it's easy for objects to appear only as visual entertainment.

Where does Web 2.0 live in your organisation?

Last night Lynda Kelly left a comment that pointed me to her audience research blog and to an interesting discussion on fresh + new back in June last year; which in turn lead me to Organizational Barriers to Using Web 2.0 Tools. This post quoted a 'nonprofit user' who:

…pointed out to me that while she sees that social media tools make it easier for non-technical types to integrate technology into their workflow, at the same time there's an ongoing organizational message that says "Leave the technology stuff to the IT department."

Interestingly, (and this is in part based on my experience in different organisations over the years) sometimes the IT department are given the message "leave the web to the marketing department" or the education department, or to the curators…

Given that social technologies are not, by definition, traditional publications like official 'brand' and venue messages or rigorous academic research, and may not yet have a place in the organisational publication program, what is the practical effect of the ownership of web projects in a cultural heritage organisation?

And what happens if the 'participatory web' falls in an organisational limbo, with no-one able to commission or approve applications or content? More importantly, how can we work around it?

I think this is where some of the frustrations Frankie Roberto expressed come in – different departments have different priorities and working practices and are more or less risk-averse (and have different definitions of 'risk).

(However, I don't think you can underestimate the urge to archive and curate that many museum people feel. That archival urge possibly just goes along with the kinds of personalities that are drawn to work in museums. I have it myself so maybe I'm too sympathetic to it.)

More on cultural heritage and resistance to the participatory web

I've realised that in my post on 'Resistance to the participatory web from within the cultural heritage sector?', I should have made it clear that I wasn't thinking specifically of people within my current organisation. I've been lucky enough to meet a range of people from different institutions at various events or conferences, and when I get a chance I keep up with various cultural heritage email discussion lists and blogs. One way or another I've been quietly observing discussions about the participatory web from a wide range of perspectives within the cultural heritage and IT sectors for some time.

Ok, that said, the responses have been interesting.

Thomas at Medical Museion said:

This are interesting observations, and I wonder: Can this resistance perhaps be understood in terms of an opposition among curators against a perceived profanation of the sacred character of the museum? In the same way as Wikipedia and other user-generated content websites have been viewed with skepticism from the side of many academics — not just because they may contain errors (which encyclopedia doesn’t?), but also because it is a preceived profanation of Academia. (For earlier posts about profanation of the museum as a sacred institution, see here and here.). Any ideas?

I'm still thinking about this. I guess I don't regard museums as sacred institutions, but then as I don't produce interpretative or collection-based content that could be challenged from outside the institution, I haven't had a vested interest in retaining or reinforcing authority.

Tom Goskar at Past Thinking provided an interesting example of the visibility and usefulness of user-generated content compared to official content and concluded:

People like to talk about ancient sites, they like to share their photos and experiences. These websites are all great examples of the vibrancy of feeling about our ancient past.

For me that's one of the great joys of working in the cultural heritage sector – nearly everyone I meet (which may be a biased sample) has some sense of connection to museums and the history they represent.

The growth of internet forums on every topic conceivable shows that people enjoy and/or find value in sharing their observations, opinions or information on a range of subjects, including cultural heritage objects or sites. Does cultural heritage elicit a particular response that is motivated by a sense of ownership, not necessarily of the objects themselves, but rather of the experience of, or access to, the objects?

It seems clear that we should try and hook into established spaces and existing conversations about our objects or collections, and perhaps create appropriate spaces to host those conversations if they aren't already happening. We could also consider participating in those conversations, whether as interested individuals or as representatives of our institutions.

However institutional involvement with and exposure to user-generated content could have quite different implications. It not only changes the context in which the content is assessed but it also lends a greater air of authority to the dialogues. This seems to be where some of the anxiety or resistance to the participatory web resides. Institutions or disciplines that have adapted to the idea of using new technologies like blogs or podcasts to disseminate information may baulk at the idea that they should actually read, let alone engage with any user-generated content created in response to their content or collections.

Alun wrote at Vidi:

Interesting thoughts on how Web 2.0 is or isn’t used. I think one issue is a question of marking authorship, which is why Flickr may be more acceptable than a Wiki.

I think that's a good observation. Sites like Amazon also effectively differentiate between official content from publishers/authors and user reviews (in addition to 'recommendation'-type content based on the viewing habits of other users).

Another difference between Flickr and a wiki is that the external user cannot edit the original content of the institutional author. User-generated content sites like the National Archives wiki can capture the valuable knowledge generated when external people access collections and archives, but when this user-generated content is intermingled with, and might edit or correct, 'official' content it may prove a difficult challenge for institutions.

The issue of whether (and how) museums respond to user-generated content, and how user-generated content could be evaluated and integrated with museum-generated content is still unresolved across the cultural heritage sector and may ultimately vary by institution or discipline.