Gaëlle Crenn gave a talk on the potential of Web2.0 on museums, primarily in cultural institutions in France. They examined how this new multimedia will transform the interaction between users and institutions. Several US museums were seen as exemplars eg: Brooklyn Museum website (see museum blog, community, digital (and real) graffiti walls, personalised comments and access). This takes significant work from the museum – quite a lot of comments (etc) are quite brief.
Another exemplar: San Francisco, self generated galleries built with keywords selected by users.
A second level is through exchange of content through RSS feeds and blogs. This, however, is limited in France where the primary use is work-in-progress blogs of institutions that are closed for renovation eg musee de l’homme has a blog for what is happening in the museum, with integration of youtube information. But, all this material comes from the museum itself.
In some cases the creator has new authority. She tells an example of an artist who put links on a museum blog to his own myspace material. This devolves the curatorial responsibility (which may of may not be a good thing).
Another example is the new website of the Musee du Quai Branly. It asks you to express your opinion on particular exhibitions – to the extent of encouraging contributions linked from other sites.
Conclusion: challenge in extent to which user generated material will be embraced by museum, both in terms of functionality and to which it becomes integrated to core business.
Q: How are French museums different? Single representation of national community, difficulty perhaps in recognising subgroups of communities.
Computing for Sustainability 
Posted on October 25, 2007
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