New voices

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Blogging and podcasting are two relatively easy ways to embrace web 2.0. But museums need to be prepared to allow for different views and voices

Web 2.0 technologies enable people to contribute all sorts of ideas and material to museums’ online activities, yet it is the museum’s own content and expertise that remain the main appeal and focus of an institution.

So before considering how actual visitors, and potential ones, might contribute their own material, it is worth asking how the museum’s activities might be usefully translated, or perhaps expanded, into the online world.

What content do you have that is already suited to the web? How might new content be developed that would bring in new audiences, both online and to the museum itself? And how might your processes have to change to manage these new channels?

Perhaps a more apposite question is why publish online at all. When asked whether blogs, podcasts, videos and so on are produced for marketing, interpretation, education or a form of exhibiting, most museums say it is a combination of the lot.

“It is for all of these in a sense,” says Mark Hook, a web content manager at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), in London. “They are communicating the creative work that goes on in the museum to inform and enlighten the site’s users.”

RAISE YOUR PROFILE

In the first instance, a blog or podcast may function primarily to raise the museum’s profile and allow it to communicate farther and wider to interested parties. It is also a way of forming a record of activities for people inside, as well as outside, the museum, and it can allow staff who may not otherwise write about their roles to do so - itself an empowering opportunity.

Once established, a blog might instigate a dialogue with readers, much as the Tate Modern’s Great Tate Mod Blog was used to garner ideas for the interior design of its proposed extension.

A blog may be written for the general visitor, or, as in the case of some of the V&A’s blogs, it might offer a more specialist and focused view than would be appropriate for the main website.

Glenn Adamson and Tristan Webber’s V&A blog, From Sketch to Product, for example, is a detailed examination of the processes of creation in craft and design. Ultimately, blogs will be more successful if they are more about interpretation than marketing.

If you are considering starting a blog, an internal “evangelist” will help convince other, possibly sceptical, members of staff of the benefits. Fiona Romeo, the head of digital media at the National Maritime Museum (NMM), London, says that blogging is still seen by some people as an exercise in the banal.

“It takes a while for some people to realise that [it] is not about what you had for breakfast, but something where you can talk about serious museum things. The blog of Jonathan Betts [the senior specialist in horology at NMM] offers a very personal account of fixing the Harrison H1 clock, for example,” she says.

MAKE IT PERSONAL

The “personal” is at the heart of the idea of blogging and sometimes this can clash with a museum’s traditional authoritative voice.

Museums embracing web 2.0 channels need to make a cultural change in how they approach communications. Distributive content with a more individually authored tone is to be encouraged, even if this does mean relinquishing some “control”.

Viewing content creation and publishing in this way also necessitates certain practical and operational changes. Staff who previously did not produce any written material may need to be briefed on the suitability of different kinds of content.

Guidelines may be useful, but remember that blogs are individually authored: even if the press office did have time to sign everything off, it would run counter to the ethos of blogging.

“We’re looking at more blogs for the [Science Museum’s] centenary celebrations, but how can we bring them into the institution without making them un-blog-like? Previously, some early blogs had ridiculous sign-off processes,” says Mia Ridge, the head of web development at the Science Museum in London.

On the other hand, there will be instances when press and marketing need control of communication over and above a staff member who is publishing a blog, as Fiona Romeo says: “Once, someone made a blog post before the press office had issued information on what was a fairly formal and slightly sensitive issue.

But to issue a press release or draft a formal letter can take days, so which is the better way? People have different views on this, but we have realised there’s a need to build better planning and coordination into our processes, especially with press and marketing.”

Such cultural and operational adjustments are probably more challenging than any practical obstacles when it comes to publishing blogs. According to Mark Hook, the V&A’s blogs seldom need editing and the web team receives them and uploads them in a short time - most of the onus is on the writers.

Mia Ridge at the Science Museum estimates that it takes about an hour to write a post, if the author has thought about the topic in advance.

Another way of disseminating museum content is through a podcast. This may seem technologically daunting, but can be simple and effective. The NMM’s On The Line podcast is an example of how to harness the participatory nature of the web, while creating a museum-authored production.

As well as featuring museum staff talking about their activities and telling various maritime and astronomical stories, the programme also answers the public’s questions.

“We were keen to have real voices asking these questions so that it was authentic,” says Natasha Waterson, the digital project manager at NMM. To achieve this, people call an On The Line answering machine, which records their questions as MP3 files. A presenter then scripts and records the answers on a handheld device and the two are edited together.

“The voicemail system costs about £2 a month, and we send the file for transcription to Castingwords.com, so the whole thing is really cheap. The transcription helps with search engine optimisation and provides better accessibility to the [online] content. All in, it takes about half a day to do,” says Waterson.

Blogs and podcasts extend museum content beyond a physical visit and in a manner that can be more detailed than is appropriate for an exhibition or conventional website. They can also can be instructive and entertaining while at the same time performing a marketing function, albeit not a conventional one.

Just be prepared to rethink the way the museum authors and publishes its “voice”.

This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.

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