Crowd as curator

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Web 2.0 services, such as social networking sites, allow museums to become truly collaborative and democratic

PUBLIC INTERACTION

Web 2.0 is all about interconnections. It can develop the connections between museums and their users, as well as those between the users themselves, but there are also connections between objects - and not necessarily objects held in the same museum.

And it is this last set of connections that can really be harnessed by the interoperability of web 2.0 services and collaboration with the public.

The digitisation of objects and information to create online collections is not new, even though for many institutions it is a slow and ongoing process. But the way that people, including other organisations, might make use of these collections is now changing.

Web 2.0 services such as Flickr and Facebook allow content to be added and manipulated from other pieces of software through what is known as an application programming interface (API).

It is here that some of the most interesting developments will take place, says Mike Ellis, the former head of web for the National Museum of Science and Industry and now a solutions architect at IT group Eduserv.

“[While we focus] heavily on the social aspects of web 2.0 from a user perspective, it is the stuff going on under the hood which really pushes the social web into new and exciting territory. It is the data sharing, the mashing, the APIs and the feeds which are at the heart of this new generation of web tools,” he says.

OPEN SOURCE

A number of museums are building APIs to allow access to their online collections: the Brooklyn Museum in the US and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, are two leading examples. But what does it mean to have an API?

Shelley Bernstein, the chief of technology at Brooklyn Museum, describes it like this: “It’s basically a way outside programmers can query our collections data and create their own applications using it.” In other words, the data in the digital collections becomes open and can be mined and presented in new ways by other web-based applications.

This means that museums can effectively share their digital collections and the public can potentially “collect” information on objects they are interested in, irrespective of which museum holds the real items.

This prompted Beth Harris, the director of digital learning at the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York to ask: “Why would a person want a ‘personal collection’ at seven museum websites? Can we really think about our users instead of ourselves?”

This is exactly what the Powerhouse Museum has done with the creation of “D*Hub”, a resource that uses APIs to search a number of design collections held in institutions around the world.

Developing APIs for digital collections obviously requires a dedicated web team, with time to do the coding, even assuming that at least some of the collection has been digitised. But once created, it could lead to a new form of open access that ultimately saves time.

Shelley Bernstein says: “People [in museums] have been working to create various pan-institution collection databases. By releasing our API, Brooklyn Museum data can now be included in these endeavours without requiring more staff time from us - something that would have been impossible prior to the API.”

As well as staff time, there are other considerations, such as material copyright and terms of use, both of which have to be considered under the ethos of sharing and collaboration that such web services promote.

But as museum collections become more readily accessible in different places and formats, opportunities for the public to contribute to the collection increase. One way they can do this is through “tagging”, where brief descriptions are attached to objects online, allowing people to assign their own attributes or knowledge to an item.

Often, the vocabulary of tagging is neither academic nor curatorial, but instead brings a “lay” interpretation to a collection. But increasingly there are instances where the online availability of collections has brought a direct research benefit.

PHOTO LIBRARY

In January 2008, the US Library of Congress launched Flickr Commons as a way to post photographs held in various public collections online. More than a dozen museums, public libraries and other cultural heritage institutions from around the world have now joined, releasing over 12,000 images to be “perused, tagged and researched by the public”.

In many instances, public users of Flickr have provided, or sometimes corrected, information relating to the images in the Commons collection. The Library of Congress itself has already updated almost 200 of its own records based on information provided in this way.

Similarly, unknown scenes in historic photographs posted by the Swedish National Heritage Board were identified by Flickr users within a day.

Both tagging and Flickr Commons lead to the idea of “the crowd as curator”, where members of the public contribute to museum collections and exhibitions alongside curators and historians.

The Brooklyn Museum’s Tag! You’re It game encourages members of its online “posse”community to tag items for the collection, with the aim that their contributions will make the collection easier for others to search.

The Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) put the crowd-as-curator idea into practice two years ago, before social media had really hit the big time. In the build up to Minnesota’s 150 Years of Statehood celebrations in 2008, the historical society invited public submissions of the key people, places or things that have shaped the state’s history (see link below).

This public engagement was partly conducted online, but the bulk of submissions came from community outreach. “This online technique brought us about 300 responses,” says Kate Roberts, senior exhibit developer at MHS.

“We were pleased with the response, but did feel that we were preaching to the converted, since we reached mostly MHS members. Of course, were we to do this process today, we could take advantage of Facebook, Twitter and so on and have a huge reach.”

The MHS programme has been successful partly because of the collaborative development process, says Roberts. “Had we not used this technique, I feel quite sure that the rich blend of stories and objects presented by real people passionate about their nominations could not have been matched.”

Should the public contribute more and more to the process? “We learned many years ago that our visitors understand there is no single way to interpret the past, and they appreciate exhibits and programmes that invite speculation and debate. Public contribution supports this preference in a real and meaningful way.”

So is this the way museum exhibitions are going? Most definitely,” says Roberts. She is not alone in her views.

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

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