Museum blogging 3 October, 2008
Posted by Kostas in Museum Related Blogs, musings, social media.trackback
It is interesting what is happening at the Manchester Museum. More and more members of staff turn to blogging to talk about collections and exhibitions, reflect upon their own work, offer a glimpse of what happens ‘behind the scenes’ and invite people to voice their views about all these. There are currently seven blogs by members of staff at the Manchester Museum, covering a range of topics and interests: from mummies and the Lindow man to frogs and fossils (full list below). This and the printscreen’s ‘what do you think’ question indicate that curators’ blogging is taking up a more systematic consultation role with the wider community(-ies).
It is also interesting that these blogs are not ‘based’ in the museum’s institutional website, but hosted in popular blogging platforms (such as wordpress and blog.com). In turn, people that arrive to the Manchester Museum’s website are invited to ‘visit’ the blogs, which, when clicked, open up in a new window and a new online environment. In a way, those are the ‘new spaces’ where the Museum takes place; online spaces that escape the ‘digital walls’ of the official website of the Museum.
Manchester Museum Blogs:
Egypt at the Manchester Museum
Lindon Man blog
Myths about Race
Our City blog
En-quire blog
Palaeomanchester
Frog blog
Kostas
helenreesleahy
julianhartley
Robk
[...] Arvanitis ved Centre for Museology, University of Manchester, fortæller om hvordan museum blogs udvikler sig ved Manchester Museum. Flere og flere ansatte ved museet har [...]
Kostas’ comment relates to the question about the relation between individual blogs and institutional communication that I raised in an earlier criticism of Batts, Anthis, and Smith’s paper on bridging the gap between blogs and academia. In other words, the issue here is not ‘blogs vs. website’. It’s not a question of platform. What’s at stake is individual vs. institutional online presence.
Would be interesting to see how other museums have solved the balance. For example, the staff at the National Museum of Health and Medicine run a joint private blog (A Repository for Bottled Monsters) which, as far as I can see, isn’t acknowledged on the museum’s official website. And here at Medical Museion we are currently runnng two joint staff blogs: this one in English and Museionblog in Danish, but maybe some staff members wish to start on their own — in that case I guess we would link to these from the official website.
Thomas, thanks for this. My point about museum blogs being hosted outside the main museum website aimed to highlight how museums go beyond their ‘traditional digital walls’ and infiltrate other web spaces creating in a way ‘museum colonies’ on the Web (although ‘colonies’ may not be the most appropriate word! I am giving a paper about this on this conference: http://www.iosa.it/www/content/digital-heritage-new-knowledge-environment-shared-spaces-open-paths-cultural-content). In this way, museums not only find new channels of dissemination, but also create new entry points to the museums themselves.
In this context, I’d say the institutional presence is usually evident. And, with regards to the Manchester Museum blogs, the statement on the museum’s website ‘visit our blogs’ etc is a clear indication that the link from the museum to the blogs is much more than just a hyperlink. That said, I assume if one arrives to the Manchester Museum blogs from elsewhere, one may have a different perception of them.
I think the language used on a blog, the content of the posts, the way authors present themselves, whether the blog is part of the website or not, whether the blog links to the website or whether the museum website links to the blog, if the author(s) is eponymous or not, all these contribute to the issue of individual/institutional presence.