Crowdsourcing the Museum

Moving beyond engagement, examining ways that Museums can use technology to get audiences involved, participating and contributing...

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A new game-based project investigating why certain songs and tunes are “catchy” could help future research into dementia and Alzheimer’s.

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Museums are less likely to report positive impacts from digital technologies compared with other arts and cultural organisations in England, particularly in terms of revenue generation and audience development, a report by independent research agency MTM has found.

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Not crowdsourcing as such, but a toolkit developed for digital engagement by a group of US museums...

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Some timely articles?

For those people who are members of the Museums Association, or who have access to the MA website, and to Museum Practice in particular, this month's issue is all about crowdsourcing and digital volunteering.

There are some new discussions and case-studies on there, with these pages being particularly interesting:

http://www.museumsassociation.org/museum-practice/new-approaches-to-volunteers/16092013-digital-volunteers

http://www.museumsassociation.org/museum-practice/new-approaches-to-volunteers/16092013-crowdsourcing

http://www.museumsassociation.org/museum-practice/new-approaches-to-volunteers/16092013-further-resources-crowdsourcing

I have also clipped the articles to my shared Evernote notebook...

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New computer program analyses Twitter to map public sentiment

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What sort of content do museums use for engagement with digital audiences?

Following on from the discussion on the technology and media platforms that are used, I asked about the types of content put out by museums through these channels.

The discussion was interesting, and this is a summary of the content that was described:

Practical Information

Opening hours, directions, etc.

Background to the organisation

Marketing for events, activities and products

Job or volunteering opportunities

Collections sharing

Factsheets

Collections images

Collections debate

Collections catalogues

Mystery objects, asking for assistance identifying items

Archive video footage

Oral histories

Audience curated content

Requests for stories or background information

Fun facts

Events

Tweets or updates in real-time from events or activities

Photography competitions

'Behind the scenes' social posts

Content can take the form of text, images, video, audio or interactive games or presentations.

Are there any other sorts of content used to engage museum audiences?

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Leafsnap Mobile App from the Smithsonian

A project to identify trees for the public, and record data on tree populations for researchers...

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Search over one million objects from the V&A Collections including ceramics, fashion, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, and textiles. Objects featured here include those from recent publications, famous and less well known objects, and those which cannot be permanently on display.

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What sort of digital technology or media to museums use to engage with audiences?

One of the first questions I put to the group in the session was intended to review the platforms that museums are currently using.  I have grouped the responses into a few categories:

On-site technology

Interactive kiosks

QR codes

Internet - general

Museum's own website

Third-party websites, e.g. mylearning.org

Blogs, e.g. Blogger, Tumblr, Wordpress

VLE ('Virtual Learning Environments')

Virtual Tours

Email platforms, e.g. Campaign Monitor, Mail Chimp

Videoconferences, e.g. Skype, Google Hangouts, JVCS

Social networks

Facebook

Facebook groups

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

makewav.es (social network aimed at schools)

Media sharing

YouTube

Vimeo

Soundcloud

AudioBoo

Vine

Instagram

Flickr

Pinterest

Mobile

Apps

Podcasts

'telephone audio' (the ability to dial a number and hear a description or commentary relating to a display or exhibit)

I would love to hear any further thoughts or discussions on this, and would welcome any additions to the lists...

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Monmouth was the first Wikipedia Town, and this is the hub site for the work that was done around that.

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The GLAM-WIKI initiative is seeking to enable galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) to work with Wikipedia.

There are are a variety of means of doing this. Wikipedians-in-residence, QRpedia, becoming a Wikipedia Town, are all ways that communities and cultural organisations have helped improve content on the online encyclopedia, and improve communities' access to information about collections and heritage.

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Engagement, participation, contribution or volunteering?

One of the points in my session today that sparked a great deal of conversation was on the issue of definition of some of the terms.

The terms in question were:

'engagement' > 'participation' > 'contribution' > 'volunteering'

Arranged in this fashion, I propose that each term encompasses the relationship described in the term that precedes it. I also think there is a sort of hierarchy, and that as you go left to right, the relationships that the words describe become more active and with a sense of greater commitment from the audience.

One analogy describes a museum’s presentation of rag-rugging:

Engagement would describe the audience seeing a completed rug, seeing a demonstration, and hearing a description of how the rug was made and used.

Participation would describe the audience having a go at doing some rag-rugging - being given a square of hessian and some strips of felt, being shown how to do it, and experiencing it for themselves.

Contribution would describe individuals doing some small section of rag-rugging as part of a larger communal rag-rug.

Volunteering would describe the act of an individual or group of individuals working together to conserve, restore or produce a replica of an historic example.

There was a great deal of discussion around this in the session, and I would love to hear any further thoughts or alternative models…

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Moving beyond engagement: crowdsourcing the museum

GEM Conference 2013 Breakout Session by Stuart D. Berry

I presented the breakout session at the conference, and thought it went well.  There was some really interesting discussion and feedback, and over the next few days I hope to put some of my notes up here for the conversations to continue. Thanks to everyone that came along, and for all the kind words and feedback at the end.

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Digital participation, engagement and crowdsourcing in museums - London Museums Group

Tips for digital participation, engagement and crowdsourcing in museums | by Mia Ridge Introduction Digital technologies have created exciting new possibilities for museum audiences to engage more widely and more deeply with cultural heritage content and collections. (But I should point out that while I’m a technologist, the Chair of the Museums Computer Group and researching crowdsourcing for my PhD,   Read more ›

A recent summary on the subject of digital participation and crowdsourcing in museums.  There are also links to other blog posts by the author:

Open for engagement: GLAM audiences and digital participation

Designing for Participatory Projects: Emergent Best Practice, Getting Discussion Started

Notes from ‘Crowdsourcing in the Arts and Humanities’

Frequently Asked Questions About Crowdsourcing in Cultural Heritage

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A collective retelling of 9/11 through the eyes of those who experienced it.

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Your Paintings Tagger is a unique project that is helping search online our entire national collection of oil paintings – some 200,000 works in total