Digital Heritage

Hello fellow bloggers!

This week ive mostly been….

Week 5 on the Digital Heritage course saw us conclude ‘The Online Museum’ section with a discusion on ‘Curating Museums on the Web’. In week 4 Malcolm Chapman had enlightened us towards Manchester Museums humble beginnings on the web. A key concept of that talk was how quickly ideas and technology surrounding the web, change and become outdated within in a number of years. This was highlighted early on in week 5 as we examined some of the terms used to to describe Museums on the Web, including Virtual, Hyper, Cyber, Digital and Museum Online. The most common of these in use right now is Museum Online (eg. Tate Online), but I thought it was both interesting and important to know about the previous terms and how museums have evolved their websites to fit these models according to popular trends of the time. We used Google Fight to confirm the current champion of terms! Conclusive proof, more reliable than an 8 Ball! 

After canvassing opinion from our group following the seminar, we all seemed to have enjoyed this session the most so far. As well as an improved table layout, this was probably down to the fact that we are now beginning to feel more confident with the subject matter after three weeks of studying online museums.

Towards the end of the seminar we split into smaller groups to consider the relationship between the onsite/online museum and the local/remote visitor, for the museums we had looked at as part of our fieldwork. Alex and I looked at the Powerhouse museum online collection, and for the purpose of the exercise we were suppposed to ignore the links between the local visitor and the onsite museum. However, with this particular example we found it difficult as the links between the the onsite/online and local/remote appeared to be so fluid. A good example of A. Barry’s ‘Virtuous Circle’ – the notion that the digital website should not be remote from the physical museum.

I am now looking forward to next weeks session and the beginning of a new topic.

See you all soon,

Regards,

Jordan

Malcolm Chapman, the Head of Collections Management at The Manchester Museum spoke in our seminar today.

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The history of the Manchester Museum website although not a-typical, serves as a case study for the pathway of progression that the majoirty of museum websites take. Linking closely with Piaget’s theory of development (which paralleled week three’s reading) where digital learning was concerned, Malcolm spoke to the difficulties as well as the triumphs of the website and the website-building process.

Discussions:

1. Issues of uniformity were raised concerning the museum’s identity which is reflected in the now permanent pink visual of the museum’s logo (shown above).

2. Issues of continuity where outside web company program capabilities and in-house producers of content were concerned. Outside companies tend to have more sophisticated programs and when content is updated in-house, the same stylistic effects may not be produced.

3. Issues of translation and access. In its early stages, the website was aimed at scholars. Language was highly academic and because researchers were closely affiliated with the museum, staff contact details were not posted. Now with the changing museum website user, language has changed (as indicated in the parenthetical asides of the dropdown menu).

2007 will be a year of even further site improvement. WIth the addition of a New Media department, staff members may be given training to generate their own web content. Visitors can expect increased viewer-to-web interaction, a clearer understanding of voice in web-generated content, and content that is more up-to-speed with the museum’s current happenings.

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 Thank you, Malcolm for taking the time to speak with us.