Abstract
Despite the proliferation of web-based news and information services, there remains a lack of online destinations from which to obtain reliable and authoritative cultural knowledge. In many countries, such knowledge is provided by cultural institutions such as museums and libraries. Recent discussion suggests that social media – including blogs, wikis and digital stories – may provide a creative solution to the ongoing interaction between cultural institutions and communities of interest. However, little applied research exists to demonstrate how social media can be established and maintained within museums and libraries, and what issues are raised within the institution by a more participatory approach to cultural communication. This paper highlights the implementation of a new program at the Australian Museum to train staff in social media production, in order to make the many thousands of objects and stories held within the Museum’s collections more accessible and engaging to communities of interest.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Mattelart, A., Mattelart, M.: Theories of communication: a short introduction, p. 186. Sage, London (1998)
Australian Museum Online (AMOL) (February 11, 2007), http://www.amol.org.au
Voyager Heritage Network (February 11, 2007), http://www.visitamuseum.com/en/about.asp
Wilkinson, H.: Collections for the Future, Museums Association. p. 36 (2005)
Trant, J.: Trust, audience and community: museums, libraries and identity. In: Trant, J. (ed.) Museums and the Web, Museums and the Web (2006)
Spadaccini, J.: Museums and Web 2.0. In: Spadaccini, J. (ed.) ideum (2006)
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (February 10, 2007), http://www.cci.edu.au/
New Literacy, New Audience (February 10, 2007), http://www.cci.edu.au/nla
Gillard, P.: Museum Visitors as Audiences: Innovative Research for Online Museums. In: O’Regan, T., Balnaves, M., Sternberg, J. (eds.) Mobilising the Audience, p. xii, 363, p.177, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland (2002)
See for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdKHboldZIA
See for example, http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/selfportraitr/
LaValee, A.: Museums Try YouTube, Flickr To Find New Works for the Walls, in Wall Street Journal Online. New York (2006)
Shedroff, N.: Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design. In: Jacobson, R.E. (ed.) Information Design, p. 357. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1999)
Checkland in Long, J., Dowell, J.: Conceptions of the Discipline of HCI: Craft, Applied Science, and Engineering. In Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the BCS HCI SIG. 1989. CUP (1989)
Turpeinen, M.: Co-Evolution of Broadcasted, Customized and Community-Created Media. In: Remit, L.G.F., H.T. (eds.) Broadcasting & Convergence: New Articulations of the Public Service 2003, Nordicom,Göteborg (2003)
Schofield, J.: Microsoftie tries to improve Wikipedia, indirectly. Guardian Unlimited, London (2007)
Australian Museum Audience Research Centre (February 10, 2007), http://www.amonline.net.au/amarc/index.htm
Kelly, L.: Developing educational websites: investigating internet use by students and teachers. In: Proceedings of Thinking, Evaluating, Rethinking, ICOM-CECA Conference, ICOM, Rome (2006)
Druin, A.: The Child as Learner, Critic, Inventor and Technology Design Partner: An Analysis of Three Years of Swedish Student Journals. International Journal for Technology and Design Education 12(3), 189–213 (2002)
Groundwater-Smith, S.: Millennials in Museums: Consulting Australian Adolescents when Designing for Learning. Invited paper presented to the Forum of Museum Directors, National Museum of History, Taipeh (October 2006)
Molnar, H., Meadows, M.: Songlines to Satellites: Indigenous communication in Australia, the South Pacific and Canada. Pluto Press, Sydney (2001)
Springer, J., Kajder, S., Borst Brazas, J.: Digital Storytelling at the National Gallery of Art. In Museums and the Web 2004. Toronto, Archives & Museum Informatics (2004)
Vergo, P.: The Reticent Object. In: Vergo, P. (ed.) The New Museology, pp. 41–59. Reaktion Books, London (1993)
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (February 11, 2007), http://www.acmi.net.au/digital_stories.htm
Watkins, J., Russo, A.: New media design for cultural institutions. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Designing for User eXperience, AIGA, San Francisco, USA (2005)
Holden, J., Jones, S.: Knowledge and Inspiration: the democratic face of culture. In: Demos (ed.) Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, London, p. 23 (2006)
Russo, A., et al.: How will social media affect museum communication? In: Nordic Digital Excellence in Museums (NODEM 2006), Oslo (In press, 2006)
Nie and Erbring in Etzioni, A.: On Virtual, Democratic Communities. In: Feenberg, A., Barney, D.D. (eds.) Community in the digital age: philosophy and practice, p. 229. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. Oxford (2004)
Livingstone, S.: Media Literacy and the Challenge of New Information and Communication Technologies. The Communication Review 7(3), 5 (2004)
Taxén, G.: Introducing Participatory Design in Museums. In: 8th Biennial Participatory Design Conference. Toronto, Canada (2004)
Nikolova-Houston, T.: Using Participatory Design to Improve Web Sites. In: Hoffman, D. (ed.) Computers in Libraries. Information Today, Inc. (2005)
Greenbaum, J.: A Design of One’s Own: Towards Participatory Design in the United States. In: Schuler, D., Namioka, A. (eds.) Participatory design: principles and practices, p. 28. L. Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ (1993)
Ames, M.: Museology Interrupted. Museum International 57(3), 44 (2005)
Schuler, D.: Community networks: building a new participatory medium. Communications of the ACM 1(37), 38–51 (1994)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Watkins, J., Russo, A. (2007). Cultural Institutions, Co-creativity and Communities of Interest. In: Schuler, D. (eds) Online Communities and Social Computing. OCSC 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4564. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73257-0_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73257-0_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73256-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73257-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)