Uses of the Web

And we're on to the next session - I'm speaking in this group, so of course I'm only blogging the other two (my Powerpoint for the presentation is already online). Timothy Hart from Museum Victoria is the first speaker; he notes that museums do receive a significant number of Web visitors who engage in some detail with their content. What about preserving their sites, though? While the museum collections are of course valued, the Websites aren't necessarily.

Australian Museums On Line (AMOL) started much of the drive to put museums on the Web (and will soon become Collections Australia Network (CAN)); there are also bodies like Museums Australia which contribute to the process. Early on, there was much experimentation, but a reduction in funding has contributed to a gradual slowdown here.

Museums must think about using multiple media tools for the delivery of their content (which of course complicates archiving); what is represented on a museum site is also contentious. There may also be a need to update resources descriptions data in the museums' records with a view to enabling richer online representation of the collection. Searchability might also enable better user-driven engagement rather than simply prescribed usages. Again, though, database-driven sites are notoriously difficult to archive.

Websites can also be used in capturing previous physical exhibitions, of course, and Tim is now showing a number of great examples which use 3D zoomable images of exhibition rooms (however, plugin upgrades have repeatedly broken some of the functionality in some of these cases - limiting archivability once again). Tim is now taking us on a tour through a number of other sites produced by the museum community - too many to mention, but a wide variety of sites from academic journals to resource collections to tools for specific other uses, including even some online knowledge games.

Hmm, some technical problems in my presentation, but overall it went pretty well. I also lost most of my writeup of Melinda Rackham's presentation, but she presented a very good overview of Net art, and pointed out the ephemerality of much of this content; especially also early Net art is now virtually unusable since it's built on by now obsolete technology...