I'm glad this discussion about a possible separate list for Museums and
WWW, is garnering some attention, and I do not see this as
"meta-discussion-noise". Deciding how this online community of museum
professionals will deal with communicating about technological issues is a
decision with potentially large implications.
 
Discussing tech issues like WWW on museum-L would involve all sorts of museum
professionals like curators and administrators, and would engage them in
these topics where they might not otherwise be. Involvement usually means
greater understanding which can only be good for everyone. Of course, a lot
of tech-talk could also bore them out of their minds, reducing the
usefulness of this list for them.
 
I'm VERY happy to see that the Carngie museum and library is willing to
support an expansion of our discussion; very forward thinking.
 
I know that the library community has chosen to pursue a separate list for
WWW issues (see URL: http://infolib.berkeley.edu/web4lib.html for details)
and it
has been useful to many of them. For that matter, those from this list who
are interested could subscribe to Web4Lib as many interests overlap.
 
However, some interests do not and may be specifically of interest to museum
people. For one, libraries have to deal with providing access through their
Website to their collections, usually in the form of an OPAC (online public
access catalog). Museums have a parallel issue, but one perhaps unique
enough to demonstrate a need for a new list; that is how to make thier own
online catalog of collections (assuming they even have one!) accessible.
Since museums don't use a standardized OPAC system (at least it's not
widespread) there are issues
of whether, and how, to take the previously private collections database of
a museum and turn it into a usable, public record accessible via the Web or
some
other pervasive system. There are also topics like how to
catalog/define/organize images and objects in an easy to use form for the
online public.
 
More museum/WWW topics:
*Exhibitions are not a library or commercial forte either, they are
particularly museum-like operations, which change frequently, so how do you
represent these online?
*How can you use an online (say a WWW site) to enhance Development for a
museum?
*How can museum professionals use the WWW as a research resource with
particular regard to Art, Film, Archaological objects, etc.?
The list goes of topics relating to WWW and museums in particular could be
a long one.
 
One solution could be to form a separate list for GENERAL Museum/Tech
issues, of which WWW development could be one of the hotter topics, but it
could include the occasional question of database management, etc. The
emphasis could be that museum-l is a good list for discussion of policies
governing technology, and issues of public access, and the other list could
emphazise more technical issues like how exactly to port a filemaker pro
database to your new Website, or which systems are useful for cataloging
images.
 
After having said all that; I would readily use both lists if available, or I
would be happy to use just museum-l for all these discussions. Maybe the
question should be not "which of us want to move over to a WWW list" but
"which of the rest of you don't want to be burdened with our tech-talk if
we stay on museum-l"?
 
PS. for those who advocate subscribing to a general WWW list for the tech
issues, perhaps you could provide others of us with the addresses/names of
those other lists. Admittedly I only know of Web4Lib.
 
ciao,
 
 
Richard Rinehart              | University Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive
Information Systems Manager   | University of California at Berkeley
[log in to unmask] | 2625 Durant, Berkeley, CA 94720-2250