. Recently the California Historical
Society, in collaboration with the Geography Dept. at U.C. Berkeley had a
project of gathering information on WPA and other New Deal built
structures and features that are still extant in
Lucy Sperlin
From:
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011
9:18 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Collection
Indexing via Social Media?
Dan --
I love it when someone has the same crazy-hair-brain ideas as I do!
I work as curator of a firefighting museum, and among my other tasks I am the
official historian/photographer for our local fire department. We've got
1000s of contemporary photos or people and equipment at fires, retirement
parties, and various training events. My biggest problem is that the
photos are sorted into folders by date and event, but none of the people have
been identified.
I'm proposing we upload these photos (en-mass) to a photo sharing site such as
Flickr, and then invite our local firefighters to "tag
themselves." Seems like a win-win..... The
firefighters/public would get free accesses to our collection, and we'd get it
indexed.
Of course there are a couple of unresolved issues.
One -- we're wrestling with how much access do we give. Do we upload
full-sized photos? Do we allow for downloading? Do we give the
public access or only firefighters? Do we make this a revenue stream and "sell"
prints/copies/downloads (right now they are freely provided informally on a
case-by-case basis).
The Second hurdle -- the technological questions. While
"tagging" is easy in Flickr or some other such consumer friendly
website, how do we ensure quality control (IE: how do we make sure folks are
tagged with their full name, "John Doe" - as oppose to
"Johhny" or "James" or a person's nickname "'Mr
Carson' Doe". The second unresolved problem is how do we get
the tagged information back off the internet and into our collections
database. Flickr doesn't make it easy to download the meta-data
(tags). And if we've uploaded anything other than the full-sized photos
then the downloaded copies won't be what we want for our primary-source
files.....
You seem to have (or envision) a custom designed "web-portal"
which might eliminate some of these technical questions -- have you actually
talked with a web-geek to see if what you're proposing is feasible?
I'm eager to hear any other comments and replies.
- David -
David Lewis, Curator
www.AuroraRegionalFireMuseum.org
-----Original
Message-----
From: Dan Bartlett <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 8:36 am
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Collection Indexing via Social Media?
Hello All:
The
One idea is to
create a web portal and use the power of social networking to allow people
interested in Oaxacan textiles do the indexing for us. We would post the
materials on line, create a portal and forms for linking key words and specific
objects to notebook pages, and manage the online indexing by engaging with
affinity groups and interested individuals in an environment that allows
participants and museum staff to work together in a social and collaborative
online environment.
My question is
whether anyone knows of similar indexing projects done either in-person and
in-house, or by way of social networks on line. In either case what were the
strengths and weaknesses of the approach? What advice on setting up the systems
can you give? Are we crazy to even consider this? And thanks to Nina
Simon for the inspiration (or insanity, whichever it is).
Dan
--
Dan Bartlett
Curator of Exhibits and Education
Instructor of Museum Studies
========================================================= Important Subscriber
Information:
The Museum-L FAQ
file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain
detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail
message to [log in to unmask]
. The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).
If you decide to
leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] .
The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the
quotes).
========================================================= Important
Subscriber Information:
The
Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/
. You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a
one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask]
. The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).
If you
decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] .
The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the
quotes).
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1204 / Virus Database: 1435/3445 - Release Date: 02/15/11
The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).
If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).