Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Picture this.








http://images.swinburne.edu.au/handle/1111.1/1982

This is one of the 1.5 MILLION images on Picture Australia.( Click the link for a better view) It depicts Mrs Swinburne, in garden party regalia, hostess of a garden party at Shenton, the Swinburne family home in Hawthorn, 1945. The garden party for staff was an annual event.. The faded photo is in an album of photographs donated to Swinburne by one of the family. Like most photographs this, and the others in the album, offer viewers a wealth of information – fashion, hospitality, Swinburne family commitment to staff, formality and manners,language, collection habits…

These pictures would never have been seen again, but now can be through Picture Australia.

Web 2.0 is changing, no, has changed, the stately world of library and museum collections

I went to Canberra early this week and attended a meeting of participants in Picture Australia: http://www.pictureaustralia.org/

I just cannot work out whether I am enthralled by anything to do with giving the public a chance to look at wonderful things or I am enthralled that this is done so brilliantly, eloquently and idiosyncratically through the internet and Picture Australia.

I listened to presentations from new participants to P A, developers of new search engines talking in technical language I do not really understand but know what they are talking about and talks by eminent scholars in the field of communication between communities and the use of web 2.0 technology that is revolutionising this.

When I think about the swirling items of information I gleaned in that one day in Canberra, I find that I am definitely shouting hurrah to the people in museums and libraries who are working with the web 2.0 phenomena to make their collections available to searchers, even flickr and google searchers. There is now a new world out there where even the littlest (regional) library, when a participant in Picture Australia, is getting “web hits” from anywhere and everywhere because its staff have:
*gone to the public to suggest that their stories and photographs are important and had the public respond in droves with marvellous and perfectly valid material;
*added terms to their cataloguing of items, formerly languishing in archives, and in transferring their data to Picture Australia, brought a new admiring audience – the general public and researchers;
*been able to get grants from their own management, regional government and other such bodies to further enhance the accessibility of their collections because they are getting such rich feedback from their own and external communities (and the Councillors like their photographs on line, on flickr, on the www).

Research in earnest is now taking place within the institutions and in the academic world about connecting or being connected to popular sites like flickr to beef up the numbers of visits to their sites. Serious (re)searchers can always find most of what they want, whether they use popular sites or esoteric and little known search engines. But the public at large favour ease and easy, so they use google, wikipedia, flickr and others as well as a specific library or museum catalogue on line if they know the item is most probably in that institution.

I am quite amused by my own views post 23 things, my presumption of what a conference such as Picture Australia would have said even a short time ago, say 3-4 years, about all this acceptance of new audiences via the popular. I even sensed a small amount of reluctance to “give in” and a wish to remain pure.

One of the most interesting issues I have pondered on since my day in Australia’s capital is that Delta Goodrem’s dress is a very popular site for the Powerhouse Museum* and so is the Tyrrell collection**


Extract

“The Delta Goodrem dress was collected by the Museum as an example of contemporary fashion and in particular the influence of 'celebrity' on style, and thus it is entirely appropriate that this object be discovered by users searching in Google or linked from Goodrem fan sites. It also has a relatively complete object record with three available zoomable images (including one of Delta Goodrem wearing the dress), a full statement of significance, object description, production notes and history notes (totalling 865 words) written by curator Glynis Jones. The object has never been on public display. However, this is not the whole story.” Read more*

Extract
“Powerhouse Museum joins the Commons on Flickr - the what, why and how
What Flickr offers the Powerhouse is an immediate large and broader audience for this content. And with this exposure we hope that we will have a strong driver to increase the cataloguing and digitisation of the remaining Tyrrell glass plate negatives as well as many more the previously hidden photographic collections of the Powerhouse. **
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


All is well with our world when a pop star’s dress and the Tyrrell collection are written about in learned articles about collecting, accessing, search engines, museums and the public view of them, as well as discussed at meetings of librarians and museum curators.



*Chan, S., Tagging and Searching – Serendipity and museum collection databases. In J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, published March 31, 2007 at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/chan/chan.html

**About this entry: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2008/04/08/powerhouse-museum-joins-the-commons-on-flickr-the-what-why-and-how/Author:
Seb Chan
Published:
08.04.08 / 6am

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