Category Archives: Authority

How Web 2.0 will change history

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As an editor of archival websites, I’m interested in the tools available for historical publishing, research and interpretation. And the advent of Web 2.0 means that such tools are proliferating and becoming easier and more fun to use. Social software is making search interfaces more intuitive and clever; it is making publishing dialogic – readers can also be writers; and it is enabling many new kinds of collaborations to occur in interpreting collections.

Last month I addressed a small group at the Australian Historical Association conference in Canberra on this topic of How Web 2.0 will change history – possible futures for websites of the National Archives of Australia (PDF 312kb). The paper was framed by this mindmap I made

Mindmap of Web 2.0 and the life cycle of historiography

(inspired by other mindmaps on Web 2.0, like the one on Wikipedia).

There are plenty of exciting things the National Archives of Australia could do with these technologies, and it is starting to happen, but the path is long, resources are limited, and in some ways a cultural shift is necessary – it does not come naturally for a cultural institution to radically trust its audience.* So the paper is a bit imagin-ary. But didn’t Einstein say that imagination is more important than knowledge?

* Deep bow here to the Powerhouse Museum and its new collection interface, which you can read more about on the fresh + new blog.

Not learning, making

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A recent post on a blog called Cultural Interpretation & Creative Education made me pause and think. Bridget McKenzie writes that
schools and museums are not for learning. Rather, she argues, they’re for making – self, things, meaning, and so on.

I find this idea compelling. Structurally, education is often marginal to the function of museums, and educators therefore struggle for recognition of the core value of their work. But maybe it’s a waste of energy to struggle to centralise education as the purpose of museums. Perhaps, instead, educators should play down the outcome of learning (to school students and to general audiences anyway – perhaps not to teachers ;-) ) and focus instead on the most fun, engaging moments in the journey – what we make along the way.

On ambiguity and conflict

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Further to my last post on a story in the February 06 issue of the Museums Australia mag… The same issue also contains a review of a book on visitor learning at museums, and there is some nice resonance between the two stories, as well as some dissonance.

According to Dr Janette Griffin’s review of Listening in on Museum Conversations by Gaea Leinhardt and Karen Knutson (2004), their research suggests that:

visitors want to know the stance of the museum, but at the same time they engage with conflict in ideas. [In addition,] visitors were “upset by ambiguity in signage but nonetheless engaged by it.” (p.160) However, if information was incomplete or hard to read, visitors became uncomfortable and disengaged.

An exhibition designed to be unsettlingAn exhibition designed to be unsettling.
Photo by Nikolaus.

The spaces a museum leaves for visitors to make their own meaning seem to be both welcome and unsettling. No doubt, as visitors, we are accustomed to museums giving us unequivocal answers, so equivocation can take people out of their comfort zone.

(Discontent would also occur when visitors perceive that a museum is blocking their engagement by withholding information, or by putting it in too small a font size, or on a label that is poorly placed or poorly lit. I can relate to that.)

But isn’t some element of discomfort intrinsic to the process of learning?

How would you respond to a glass-cased peach stone that is, according to the sign, ‘delicately carved with a minute neoclassical scene’ if, when you looked at it, even through a magnifying glass, all you could see was a small broken peach stone?

Personally, I would enjoy such a gentle bewilderment, especially in the context of a Museum of Jurassic Technology. But I cannot imagine this display in the National Museum of Australia. Well – not without an uproar ensuing.

But surely there is a place for ambiguity, indeed for uncertainty, in museum displays, even (or especially?) in national cultural institutions. And do we still need to even ask whether there is a place for contestation?* The research suggests that many visitors think so. Do you agree?

Note

*On the issue of contestation, Fiona Cameron’s research into exhibitions as contested sites is exemplary. See her paper Transcending fear – engaging emotions and opinions – a case for museums in the 21st century published in the Open Museum Journal in September 2003.

The space in between

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I’ve just read a paper from the first mostly-online Museums Australia mag. (See the members section of Museums Australia.)

Things in glass orbs

Orbs at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Photo by Huro Kitty.

I have never been to the Museum Of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, but I’ve loved the idea of it since reading Lawrence Weschler’s book Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology (1995). It seems to be the kind of place that you could visit again and again without ever exhausting the experience. So it was a great pleasure to read Mark Thomson and Stephen Bowers’ article Strange riches: The Museum of Jurassic Technology (PDF 132kb).

For Thomson and Bowers, the MJT occupies ‘a sort of netherworld between scientific fact and classical fiction, between ambiguity and amazement, speculation and assurance’. That in-between-ness is perhaps central to its appeal, and surely to its success as a space for learning. It is authoritative but at the same time it is playful, so you must decide for yourself how to take it. How refreshing! And how foreign that concept is to most education programs in museums.

Most satisfyingly, when you get to the end of the article, you learn that the authors are Director and Field Researcher respectively of the Australasian Institute of Backyard Studies. Love it.

Folksonomic findability

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It is a pet peeve of mine that museums so rarely draw on the knowledge and understanding of visitors to help interpret their collections. Ever since I read Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture,1 I’ve sought out initiatives that facilitate community interaction. In global terms, there are plenty of examples, especially in terms of public programs. But in terms of the core business of museums – collection management, and exhibitions, it remains rare for a museum to involve audiences in the process of making collections meangingful. (Your examples are welcome!)

In the world of the web, though, the story is different. Social software enables visitors to the site to help make the site. And the cultural heritage sector is starting to explore the possibilities.

a tagged imageSteve is a project of a group of seven museums.2 It emerged out of the mismatch between the classification systems of museums and the way users tend to think about collection items. A museum might describe an artwork in terms of the artist’s proper family name. Whereas a visitor might search for an artwork according to how they remember it – its shape, or the fact that a painting had some nice clouds in it.

The Steve people are researching and developing a tool that will enable website visitors to add descriptive tags to any item they are viewing. The tags then join in with the official description of the item, so that the collection takes on a hybrid official and vernacular classification system. And henceforth each item becomes more findable for more people. And more collectively meaningful!

Have a look at, and join in, this wonderful experiment. (You need to register if you want to do some cataloguing.)

circular fabric designorange fabric designBut wait! Here’s another example, closer to home. Our very own Powerhouse Museum invites users to help describe swatches of fabric, dating from the 1890s to the 1920s. You can enter your thoughts on their colour, pattern, mood and/or ‘other facts’.

1. Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine (eds), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
2. Steve stands for Social Terminology Enhancement through Vernacular Engagement.

How do you know?

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A slow, head-shaking moment from the MA conference…

Paula Hamilton and Paul Ashton‘s study of Australians and ‘the past’ confirms that community and family learning are critical to historical knowledge and understanding. Governments are not the gatekeepers of history. Whew!

Most Australians consider museums the most trustworthy source of narratives on the past. But for Indigenous people, the opposite is true — museum practices are highly questionable.

And yet, even for non-Indigenous Australians, museums are not necessarily places where they feel connected to the past.

So even people who believe museums know best about the past don’t expect to learn much from them…?!