Lecture Week 9: Digitisation and the Museum

Dr Bex Lewis

Where are we going today?

Is it “all about the technology?” Defining Digital

Think What have you seen/experienced? What can you see as the possibilities?

Examples Digital Projects Digitisation in Museums Interactive apps

Research Opportunities

Technological Determinism

“Technological determinists interpret technology in general and communications technologies in particular as the basis of society in the past, present and even the future. They say that technologies such as writing or print or television or the computer 'changed society'. In its most extreme form, the entire form of society is seen as being determined by technology: new technologies transform society at every level, including institutions, social interaction and individuals. At the least a wide range of social and cultural phenomena are seen as shaped by technology.”

Daniel Chandler http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tdet02.html

Marshall McLuhan (1964)

“we become what we behold that we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”

1967

Technological Determinism

Other Factors Economic Political

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj1ztPl9vZI

Legal Social Cultural

http://a3.vox.com/6a011015e3ef48860b0123f16762a3860f-500pi

Parry, p.2

“… today – and for many years to come – our expectations of automated cataloguing must be in tune with practical constraints imposed by the limited resources and technology available to museum collections. Further, there is the welter of problems that must be solved with respect to data standards, preparing collections for cataloguing, and training adequate personnel for the task of computer cataloguing.”

Quoting Humphrey & Clausen, 1976

Gertrude Himmelfarb

“Like postmodernism, the Internet does not distinguish between the true and the false, the important and the trivial, the enduring and the ephemeral. … Every source appearing on screen has the same weight and credibility as any other; no authority is ‘privileged’ over any other.”

November 1996

Some Key Texts

Jones-Garmil, K., The Wired Museum: Emerging Technology and Changing Paradigms, 1997

Cohen, D.J., & Rosenzweig, R., Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, 2006 http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/

Cameron, F. & Kenderdine, S. (eds), Theorising Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse, 2007

Parry, R. Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change, 2007

Conference: “Museums and the Web 2010”: http://www.archimuse.com./mw2010/online/index.html

MuseWeb 2010: Some Paper Titles “On Being Social” “NaturePlus – Developing a Personalised Visitor Experience

Across the Museum’s Virtual and Physical Environments” “Delivering Gallery Interactives Using Web Technologies:

Multimedia and Web Delivery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in 2009”

“Van Gogh’s Letters: Or How to Make the Results of 15 y Years of Research Widely Accessible for Various Audiences and How to Involve Them”

“The iPhone Effect? Comparing Visitors’ and Museum Professionals’ Evolving Expectations of Mobile Interpretation Tools”

“The Impact of Blogs and Other Social Media on the Life of a Curator”

Symbiotic Relationship

Digital Technology Activate Engage Transform

Museums/Heritage Organisations Institutionalised

Authority Custodians of the

Past ‘Intellectual Capital’

Cultural Heritage: Appropriate Adapt Incorporate Transform

The digital technologies that they adopt.

UNESCO

The UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, 2008 (first adopted October 2003)

“The digital heritage consists of unique resources of human knowledge and expression. It embrace cultural, educational, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other kinds of information created digitally, or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources. Where resources are “born digital”, there is no other format but the digital object.”

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/13367/10700115911Charter_en.pdf/Charter_en.pdf

Historical Research

http://ww2poster.co.uk

http://www.twitter.com/ww2poster

What defines digital?

Digital technology are implicated with historical transformations in language, society, and culture, and with shifting definitions of the museum.

The Digital Age Virtual simulacra Instantaneous communication Ubiquitous media Global interconnectivity

Qualities of Digital Information

Capacity Accessibility Flexibility Diversity Manipulability Interactivity Hypertextuality

Quality Durability Readability Passivity Inaccessibility

Dan Cohen, 2006

Benefits Dangers

Dan Cohen, p18

“Writing history requires that you first immerse yourself in the styles, conventions, and methods of historical writing and that you understand the different genres of history books, whether scholarly monograph, popular narrative textbook, or reference work. The same holds true for those who want to create history museum exhibits, make history films, and teach history classes.” … and of course history websites.

Exhibits Online? (Cohen, p.35) “Most digital interpretative historical

materials simply translate analogue materials like museums exhibits, scholarly articles, and popular essays to the new medium.”

“Online museum exhibits, for example, transcend the barriers of time… distance … and space … that have often frustrated museum curators.”

Cameron/Kenderdine, p.4

“The idea that ‘real’ objects and works of art are under threat, exacerbated by theories of mechanical reproduction and simulation by proponents such as Walter Benjamin and more recently Jean Baudrillard, has had a persuasive effect on the way museum collections and digital objects have been viewed, used, and assigned meaning.”

Cameron/Kenderdine, p.6

“Cameron illustrates how digital historical collections have been bounded by an object-centred museum culture and material culture paradigms. The author argues that the roles and uses of the digital object must also be understood as part of the broader heritage complex – an institutionalised culture of practices and ideas that is inherently political, socially and culturally circumscribed.”

Virtual Museums

Uses & Interpretations?

Hallmark of authenticity Accurate 3D

replication Qualities

Real-time Immersive Interactive

•What have you seen in museums that may fit into the descriptor “digital”?

• What worked well?• What needed improvement?• What other ideas do you have for possible uses?• What qualities could you add to Dan Cohen’s list?

•10 minutes to discuss/write ideas on flip-chart paper

TIME TO TALK:

A couple of minutes to feedback a few ideas that were particularly interesting…

OK, So what did you think?

OK, LET’S PLAY….

PhD Thesis: Database

A database is simply a collection of related data, a device for holding structured, machine-readable information together. It is an electronic version of the ‘card box’ system, using a ‘relational database management system’, with relationships defined by the author as the database builder. It saves on the use of repetitive information, as it is difficult to store such information on card indexes without overlapping. It allows for easier multiple access points to the data, which card catalogues can allow in more complex ways. For this project, only a single entry point, by slogan, had been allowed to paper files.

There are two types of historical database; source-oriented and model-based databases. In the source-oriented database, the source is central and all information related to it is collected. Such information can then be questioned to provide results. The information cannot be regarded as fully relevant until all data has been entered. In many ways the database constructed for this project is a source-orientated database, but it also fulfils the criteria of a model-based database, as questions were formulated first, and the database designed in order to answer those questions.

The amount of data that can be collected is finite for this project, unlike ‘real world’ data, but due to the difficulties in obtaining information, the database has been designed so that data can be entered by others as and when further information is discovered in the future.

Lewis, R.M. ‘The Planning, Design and Reception of British Home Front Propaganda Posters of the Second World War’, Unpublished PhD: University of Winchester, 2004, Vol 2, p103

Word 2007 Document

Overall Category Category Why? Identifying?

Is there something related to war/anti-war? Armaments Wartime bullets, etc.

Civilian Non-military/war

Damage Damage from bombing/carelessness/crashing, etc.

Military Wartime occupation, etc.

Money Savings, etc., particularly needed in wartime

Peace non-war

Time Indicates passing of time, particularly precious in wartime

Unity Indicates coming together, particularly important in wartime.

War Indicates event/object associated with war

What activity is happening? Action Someone/something doing something

Animated Cartoon in action

Leisure non-working (action)

What emotions are evident in the poster? Emotion Guesstimate of emotion.

What events are occurring? Event Obvious events

Wedding Event happening

What graphic styles are identifiable? Design Style Particular artistic style

Graphic Shape e.g. square/sphere

Text Used as part of/main graphic, a design style

The National Archives: The Art of War

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/

Posters of Conflict

http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/IWMPC.html

http://twitter.com/mrssewandsew

http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/

http://www.winchester.ac.uk/?page=4179

http://www.dcc.ac.uk/

http://www.ahds.ac.uk/

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/services/ahds.aspx

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/

“Digital History is committed to providing high-quality historical resources for teachers and students for free and without advertising. We have been fortunate to develop partnerships with a number of archives and museums that share this vision and have granted us permission to draw upon their resources.”

http://www.amdigital.co.uk/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHK7XLBhsdM&feature=related

http://www.proquest.co.uk/en-UK/

http://parlipapers.chadwyck.co.uk/marketing/index.jsp

http://www.dpconline.org/

http://www.gale.cengage.com/DigitalCollections/

http://www.gale.cengage.com/DigitalCollections/products/StatePapers/

Tourism…

Geolocation

#iPad: Days Out in Hampshire (app)

Parry, p114

QR Codes

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/documents/briefing-61/html/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDg7Ko_nye4

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/musee-du-louvre/id337339103?mt=8

Graphic Design Museum, Netherlands

Some other trialled iPhone apps (1)

Some other trialled iPhone apps (2)

http://www.way2goguides.com/

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=656235160#!/pages/London-United-Kingdom/Imperial-War-Museum-London/97951440478?ref=ts

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=656235160#!/pages/Winchester-United-Kingdom/Winchester-Museums/204676755114?ref=ts

http://www.flickr.com/photos/winchestercitycouncil/

Curators: What do you think is the biggest impact of social media? (April 2010)

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2010/papers/dicker/dicker.html

Research Opportunities

How has the process of historical research changed in response to digitisation? Time Money Access

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/apr/22/wanttofindaseatatthebri

Archives: Pre-Digitisation

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/default.asp?j=1

Crowdsourcing

A Problem? Too complex, time-consuming or diverse to allow you or a small group of colleagues to successfully answer it by yourselves?

Crowdsourcing is the term used when this problem is broadcast to a wide audience or community that could solve the problem collectively.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2010/communitycollections.aspx

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/events/2010/04/presentations/communitycollections3.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

MuseWeb Debate

April 2010 “Wikimedia@MW2010” Physical: “Invitation

Only” Virtual: “Crowd-sourcing”

Wikipedia How can museums work

more effectively together WITH Wikipedia to provide better information?

Everyone’s first stop, can’t ignore it…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_And_Carry_On

Conclusions

It’s not “all about the technology?” Digital can be defined in a number of ways

and is constantly changing You’ve had experience of digital

museology, and have developed a more critical approach to it, and may have ideas of future developments.

You’ve seen a number of new examples, and ways in which historians are using the opportunities available to them.

If so, grab & tag before you go…

Are you happy that I may take photos of the flipcharts & place on my history blog…

Do you want to add anything to the flipchart lists?