Museums and Wikis at MW2009

As Frankie Roberto has already blogged, I'm really pleased that he and I have been accepted to co-author a paper for April 2009's Museums and the Web Conference in Indianapolis!

The full programme is now available for the conference. We'll be speaking as part of a session on Thursday 16 April called 'Wikis and the Expanded Museum Community'. Our abstract is available online already and we'll be writing the paper over the next month or so and this will be available in advance of the conference online.

Also speaking in the session will be Tracey Baker, Joe Hoover and Rose Sherman from the USA, and Justine Richardson, Canada, Marsha MacDowell, Dean Rehberger, Amanda Sikarskie and Mary Worrall, USA. I'm particularly interested in the first paper by Tracey et al. as I mentioned their MN150 Wiki in my dissertation.

The conference looks really good. I've already signed up to attend the following pre-conference workshops:

• Developing effective e-Learning resources: a practical guide - interesting on two counts for me - partly because I'm now working specifically on e-Learning rather than just web generally, but also because Steve Gardam, one of the speakers, is my former colleague, initiator of the BPMA Wiki which has been so important to me recently, and also a good friend.
• Evaluation Methods: A Practicum - I'm hoping this will be useful just generally for help with evaluating the projects I'm now working on at the Museum of London

I'd have liked to attend Martin Bazley and my colleague Mariruth Leftwich's paper, Pedagogy and Design: Understanding Teacher Use of Online Museum Resources but unfortunately they're speaking at the same time as us so I'll have to content myself with reading their paper online!

I'll definitely try and catch Using Online Maps for User-Generated Content in Museums as it'll be interesting to hear about other project similar to the Museum of London's Postcodes project which I now montior. The session called Young Audiences and Creators also looks very relevant. It includes two papers:

• Doing it for the kids: Tate Online on engaging, entertaining and (stealthily) educating six to 12 year olds, by Sharna Jackson
• The Roar of a Virtual Campfire: Using Video Podcasts to Attract Young Adults to New York's National Parks, by John Harlan Warren

At the Museum of London, we have a whole range of online resources and games for children of all ages and it will be useful to hear Tate's perspective on the 6 to 12 age group. I'd also like to look into using podcasts more as well.

It's certainly going to be a great experience - to speak at such a well-known and well-thought-of conference, to meet a lot of names that I've read about and also a chance to hear others talk about subjects directly related to my current role. I look forward to meeting anyone else who's going in April!

MA result!
As a p.s. I thought people may also be interestd to hear that I passed my MA with merit in the end, with 66% for my dissertation. I was a little disappointed with my dissertation mark as I had been hoping for a distinction, but I'm mostly just very relieved that it's over now. Many thanks to everyone for their support during 6 fairly gruelling months!

Ross Parry's recommendation to proceed

My dissertation pack arrived today, complete with instructions and guidelines on writing my dissertation, and, most importantly, a detailed response to my proposal by Ross Parry. This concluded, crucially, with the very welcome sentence 'I recommend the applicant and this project for Masters research' - phew!

Ross described my proposed subject as 'a timely and potentially important piece of reserach into how museums might use wikis'. He noted that 'there is potential for genuine innovation within this project' - which was very encouraging!

He feels that my decision to focus on Wikis as a specific aspect of Web 2.0, and The British Postal Museum & Archive's (BPMA)'s Wiki specially as a good one as it limits the topic and stops it from becoming unmanageable.

Ross suggests that during my preliminary reading around the subject, I should seek to refine my research questions into one single, challenging question. As an example, (but not suggesting I should necessarily use this one) he puts forward 'Can Wikis really work for museums? The practical, technical and conceptual challenges of Web 2.0 technology for the BPMA'.

In addition he advised me to 'marshal more systematically [the] key ideas and themes.' e.g. the practical, conceptual and technical themes in the example title.

As recommended reading, Ross has suggested the online proceedings of the 'Museums and the Web' conferences, especially those of the last few years.

In terms of data gathering, Ross thinks that I need to get a clear idea pretty quickly of what I'm trying to achieve with the project as this will affect whether or not, and how much I need to gather user evaluation data etc.

Luckily Ross didn't foresee there being any ethical risks to my project (which is why I got my proposal back earlier than some people I think). He in facts suggests that I could even consider looking into the ethics of wikis (specifically user-generated content).

So there we are, permission to start on the project that will no doubt dominate much of my waking (and perhaps some of my sleeping) life for the next six months. I'm taking a week off from my MA this week. I'm still recovering from the final essay and I need some time to clean my flat, do some washing, and turn my head around! I expect I might do the odd bit of reading here and there but mostly I'm having a rest.

I'm actually quite excited about starting this project though. Unlike the prescribed essays all the way through the MA, it's a subject that I've been able to choose myself, and can shape into whatever I want to make it. It's a topic I'm becoming increasingly interested in and I feel quite fired by it. Whether or not I still feel like that by the end of August will be another question - if you're interested in finding out then keep reading! :-)

Next week I'll start doing some reading. I hope to comment on and summarise it as I go along on here.

Starting my dissertation on Museum Wikis

I have submitted a dissertation proposal for the final stage of my MA in Museum Studies by Distance Learning. It's going to be broadly about museum wikis. For those of you that don't know, a Wiki is defined on Sandy Berger's Techionary as 'From a Hawaiian word that means "quick", a wiki is a website that can be edited quickly by Web visitors'. At The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) where I work, we've just launched a new Wiki which I am in charge of. This puts me in quite a strong position to talk about the practical issues that face museums wanting to use Wiki technology.

I had discussed this with my personal tutor and as a result submitted a proposal based around comparing a Museum Wiki experience with a real-world museum experience, and discussing issues about authority etc. I had identified certain key research questions:

• Is interactivity and web 2.0 technology the future for the process of meaning-making and storytelling in museums?
• Can wiki technology help audiences learn and engage with a museum and its website by getting them actively involved in creating content?
• In a broader context, how does interactivity in museums benefit visitors?
• How are wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies changing the face of modern museums?
• Does interactivity have implications for the ‘authoritative’ nature of the museum?
• Is this wider cultural context of audience participation really what audiences want?

These were quite general questions and had strayed slightly from my original conception of a dissertation basically about the BPMA Wiki.

An encouraging conversation with Ross Parry on the phone last week in fact confirmed that I could do just that. It was great to discuss some ideas with Ross and hear his enthusiasm about our Wiki and my dissertation proposal.

He suggested that I treat it as a story of how the BPMA have got to the position we are currently at with the Wiki and the issues that have arisen. He suggestedI start by taking stock of web 2.0 in general and the stage it is at. I could then write about 2,000 words specifically about Wikis generally both inside and outside the museum and heritage sector. Following on from this, he thought I could talk about the constraints and pressures that face museums wanting to work with Wikis and how Wikis work with museological ambition. This might encompass issues like authority, content and digital assets.

The next chapter could then say 'ok, if a museum wanted to build one of these Wikis, how would they do so? Why might they do so? What rules would they need to apply? What precedents are there. This would bring in the practical examples of the BPMA Wiki and the issues that we have tackled and are tackling.

I'm waiting now for Ross's official write up on my proposal and now I'm itching to get started. I've just got to finish my final essay this weekend and then I can really get my teeth into it. I'm starting to build up a bookmark list of all the articles out there that I want to read - there are so many of them! I'm also starting to keep an eye on key blogs that seem to regularly comment on Museums and the Web, particularly Web 2.0 and Wikis.

The ones I am currently looking at are:

Frankie Roberto's blog
Open Objects
Foe Romeo

and a few others. I'd be interested to know of any others I should be keeping an eye on.

The next stage will be receiving Ross's comments and official sanction to begin my research. I'm on tenterhooks now until that arrives! Watch this space!