CoOL logo

I remember the first time I saw the CoOL web page (Conservation Online).  It was about 1995 and I was a student working in the Lilly Library’s Book Conservation department when Jim Canary told me to check it out.

I really can’t think of a topic that isn’t covered at CoOL.  I can remember spending hours digging around all of the pages when I first saw it.  It seemed to answer all of my questions about my interest in the profession and point to ones that I hadn’t thought of.  Have a look at all of the “Conservation Topics,” or look at the number of national and international organizations who have their home pages associated with CoOL.  Dig around there.  It’s amazing.

Perhaps most importantly, though, look at the ConsDistList, an e-mail distribution list that at last count had just under 10,000 subscribers.  This dist list has been going strong since 1988 and has been one of the most important ways for conservators to share and find information on a truly international level.  It has been the central hub for information sharing within the conservation community.

Yesterday that changed when Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources announced that Stanford is no longer going to support CoOL and that the ConsDistList had produced its last instance.  Bang.  It’s over.

Stanford University Libraries also announced that they were laying off 32 employees.  Clearly, these decisions were difficult for Stanford.  As an employee of an institution that has recently experienced lay offs, I know that these are not easy times for anyone.

Also yesterday, the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) sent out e-mails pledging their determination to help support CoOL and to find a way to support the information contained within the web page.  Clearly, this will take a lot of work and effort.

Walter Henry, who had been for the past 22 years the principal organizer and manager of CoOL and the ConsDistList, suggested that CoOL “contains, at a very rough guess, 120,000 documents, possibly quite a few more. I hope they have been useful to you all, and I hope to be of service to you as we move into the future.”  That’s a truck load of documents that are now hanging perilously on the edge of invisibility.

The imminent demise of CoOL and the ConsDistList marks the biggest shift in information sharing for conservators since the profession started printing journals.

I don’t think for a minute that AIC and IIC and conservators in general are willing to let this resource and the contained documents fade away.

But I would like to raise some questions around the best ways for this information and data to be shared and stored.  I would like to suggest that AIC and IIC work to make themselves platforms for the creation and sharing of this information rather than just static distribution sources.  Instead of relying on one person to manage the information (Walter, how did you do it?), I suggest that they rely on **everyone** to manage, create, and update the information.

For the past few years my friend Daniel Cull and I have been involved in creating and editing the Wikipedia article for Art Conservation-Restoration.  While clearly, this article currently contains a fraction of the information that is in CoOL, Wikipedia’s potential is limited only be our efforts and imagination.  It should contain the sum of conservation knowledge.

Could Wikipedia become a replacement for CoOL?  Maybe, just maybe.

But that’s just part of the problem.  What about the ConsDistList, and all of the other e-mail dist lists associated within CoOL?  I can only throw out suggestions or ideas.   But maybe we could build discussion networks within current social media applications such as Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc?  What role could a blog or multiple blogs play in sharing this information?  Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to use these new and existing technologies?

I don’t really have the answers to these questions, but I think this is an opportunity for conservators to open their collaborative networks and try and use social media applications to handle our information sharing.  This is an opportunity for conservators and associated museum professionals to discuss the best ways to share and distribute electronic information.

But it’s not only individuals using these sites. Here at the IMA, as most of you know, we embrace social media as a useful tool in reaching our audiences and fulfilling our mission. And we’re not the only ones – LACMA, SFMoMa, and Walker Art Center are just a couple of our peers actively engaging online audiences. Even the Art Institution of Chicago recently announced here, that they’ll soon be launching a Twitter account.

But as museums and museum employees continue to grow their online activity – both personal and institutional – we’re faced with the challenge of exploring policies and guidelines online activity. Should there be employee policies in place for personal use of such sites? Should museums implement a clearly detailed policy for institutional use of such sites? And if so, what would either one of these policies look like and what purposes would they serve?

In researching the topic, I can tell you for sure that there are several people asking these questions, and I can also tell you that nobody really seems to know the answers.

So what are some of the issues to think about? Well, there are a lot of them. Museum 3.0 suggests the following issues are all important in considering your strategy to online networking: technical concerns, how to archive online museum activity, implementation planning, policy development, training, and a how/why to guide for media sites.

Museum 2.0 blogger Nina Simon discusses what might be included in a social media handbook. Her list includes things like rules on what should or should not be shared, how get a new initiative approved by your manager, what is considered appropriate for internal and external distribution, and a reference guide to social sites that would include recommendations, stylesheets, etc.

While I think these are all important items to consider, I can’t help but wonder if some topics should just be covered in ongoing discussions instead of binding them into a manual. Why? Well, by the time a policy or manual was organized, there’s a pretty good chance that the certain components (like a ‘how to guide’) would already be obsolete. In other words, the web changes so much that consistent updating might become a daunting task.

Three seemingly stagnant issues that I see as most important in policy making or strategic planning for social media include: information release, content quality & content control.

Information Release – A problem might arise here when someone inadvertently releases sensitive information about the museum. An example of this might be tweeting in excitement that a new acquisition has just arrived to the dock (which might jeopardize the safety of the work), or announcing an event on your facebook page before it’s been announced by your museum. This issue is one that might arise more frequently when an organization’s employee is using a personal account that wouldn’t be filtered by a colleague. The question to be asked here is: should museums tell their employees what they can and can’t discuss on their personal sites?

The release of certain information can also be a problem even on an institutionally controlled site. For example: Let’s say Daniel, our New Media Director, comes back from Spain next week and blogs about something regarding an artist in an upcoming exhibition that he interviewed. Let’s also say that the curatorial department was waiting to release that information for whatever reason – we might have ourselves one unhappy curator, or even worse, maybe an unhappy artist. (With effective communication amongst departments, this issue should not be as difficult to manage as the issue of personal Facebook, blog or Twitter accounts).

Content Control – With so many departments/individuals managing various sites and social network accounts for the institution, who’s the gatekeeper of information? For example, if multiple writers are contributing to a blog (as is the case here at the IMA) how do you filter or should you filter content? Is there someone that gets final say on what goes up where?

Content Quality – Because it’s so easy to post things on the internet and incredibly cost efficient how does an institution refrain from overloading their audiences? Even worse, how do we keep from putting up information (that might not be very good or insightful) just because we can? Here is a short post by Matt Yglesias that suggests that while non profits are increasingly enjoying the captivity of online audiences, the quality of information on the web is a growing problem.

Like most everyone I have come across, I do not have answers to all of these questions nor do I have a suggested policy or manual. But I will leave you with some additional links that I have found useful in the discussion of social media and museums.

IMA’s Blog Guidelines – which is posted directly on our blog.

Powerhouse Museum’s 2007 Blog Policy

BBC’s social media policy – this is a good example of a fairly extensive policy.

Brooklyn Museum’s Shelley Bernstein discussed various ways to use social media sites in Where Do We Go From Here? at the 2008 Museums & the Web conference. I would be shocked if the topic of social media policies were not discussed at M&W 2009, which is here in Indy, next week.

And finally – On the lighter side, this article entitled The 14 Types of Twitter Personalities might help you pinpoint some possible problems or areas of concern for your workplace.

At this stage in my Internet life, I’m wise to April Fools’ Day on the web and haven’t truly been had in years. However, that’s not to say I don’t look forward to the one day every year when cornball webmasters and bloggers try to pull one over on unsuspecting visitors. Honestly, I love the cheap humor April 1st brings and thought it would be fun to share a few fool sightings from around the web.

My first foolish sighting of the day was Wikipedia’s homepage. Most mornings I’m greeted with a rather bland but necessary infusion of random trivia from the web’s main tome of knowledge. However, my eyes perked open and a smile came to my face when I saw that the main article today is for a museum called MOBA (Museum of Bad Art). Cool. The best thing about Wikipedia’s “prank” page is that all of the content is seemingly true. For example, Britain’s oldest man, Henry Allington, really does credit his longevity to “cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women—and a good sense of humour.” Latecomers can see the April 1st site here.

An overwhelming amount of unbelievable news is usually a good tip that the calendar reads April one. For example, Warner Bros. Acquires the Pirate Bay for the price of a whopping $13 billion is unbelievable. BMW releasing cars that have a magnetic tow feature is totally unbelievable. And although there are some times I wish Google would really create this feature, Gmail’s Autopilot is unfortunately just unbelievable April news.

Some other notable pranks around the web include…

YouTube’s foolish contribution to April orientation here.  Try it yourself by addin “&flip=1″to any YouTube video.

Pizza Hut is apparently getting into the portrait business. Check out their artsy prank here.

Funnyordie.com has been completely taken over by Reba.

LOST is cancelled.

If you were made a fool today or did some fooling of your own, I’d like to hear about it in the comments. And for those of you who think that you made it all the way to the end of my post without getting pranked, why don’t you check out the history behind the name “April.”

Wikipedia Loves Art

So here’s the scoop, directly from Wikipedia’s page: “Wikipedia Loves Art, the name being a play off Valentine’s Day, is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide, and aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles. The event is planned to run for the whole month of February 2009. Although there are planned events at each location, you can go on your own at any time during the month.”

Straight from the horses mouth. All you need is -

• A good understanding of the official rules and listing of themes we/Wikipedia needs documented. You can find that list HERE.
• You’ll also need to sign-up, but that part is easy. It’s your chance to contribute something worthwile, show your photographic eye and experience our art galleries = warm and free.
• Transportation to the IMA, a digital camera, pencil/notepad and a Flickr account.

It’s also Indiana’s opportunity to help out Wikipedia with better art content, go head-to-head against some of the leading museums throughout the world and, perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, your opportunity to win an iPod touch, blog t-shirt and more.

Questions?  Feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me at newmedia@imamuseum.org.  Let’s do this thing!

My first idea was to do simply what I described above. I searched around a bit for a Flickr app, but I haven’t found one written by the Flickr team and I don’t really want to give my information to yet another third party. It seems, however, that Flickr has a really nice mobile web interface. Paired with the ability to email photos to Flickr from the phone, I think I have all I need to take that route. However, in the meantime I found that uploading photos with the Facebook app is really easy. This, along with the fact that the iPhone camera can’t compete for image quality with my digital camera, has led me to decide that the iPhone will fit the bill for the sort of in-group photojournalism that my close friends would appreciate, as I capture photos of my pets (and theirs) and other humorous things while I’m out and about. Some might argue that this is a waste of digital resources, but hey… what’s life without a little whimsy?

My discovery of the Google Earth app’s integration with Wikipedia and Panoramio, however, rekindled my interest in contributing high quality geotagged content. Contributing content to these resources is something that could have been done before, but the iPhone (and other devices that utilize both GPS and wireless networks) provides a new level of exposure. Rather than needing to research a travel destination beforehand, it is now possible to whip out a device like this and find interesting features nearby, or learn more about your current surroundings.

I decided that it would be quickest to try out Panoramio. After signing up for an account, I uploaded a couple of my photographs (one of them taken here at the 100 Acres) and found the process to be very easy. I could really see myself getting addicted to uploading new images and waiting in great anticipation to see if they are deemed Google Earth worthy, at which point they should show up on my phone. There are also thematic contests that are very easy to enter, so I couldn’t resist adding my photos to those as well. We’ll see if people think they’re any good.

I might also try out Wikipedia. After signing up and reading the newbie documentation, I’m a little concerned about finding what they would call “notable” subjects (among other qualifications, things of more than just local interest). According to the guidelines, I can’t write about the IMA, so I’ll have to find other local gems… seems like a good challenge.

I believe that these new devices could open up an era of increased engagement with our surroundings. It will be interesting to see how these tools handle the increasing amount of geotagged information as more people contribute content. Hopefully the result will be high quality resources that educate and inspire the people who use them.

The Wikipedians, Max, and I.

Pictured from right to left are: Max, Aaron (aka The Urbanophile), Jasmine, Christina, and myself.  Not pictured here are Jenny and Joelle.  While I know that Jenny had a scheduling conflict that day, we never did get a response back from Joelle (where’d you go, Joelle?).

Here’s a list of the articles they created:

Christina’s Sutphin Fountain

Jasmine’s Numbers

Aaron’s Mega-Gem

Joelle’s LOVE

Jenny’s SnowPlow

I’ve been watching these articles since they were created and noticed each one has been added to by other Wikipedians – even if just a little.  The article on Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture has really taken off.  It’s started to grow into an article about all of Indiana’s LOVE sculptures, not just the one at the IMA, which of course was the first sculptural version that he made.  Wouldn’t it be cool if it became the place for information about that sculpture!

Though I don’t think I’ll be offering lunch with Max anytime soon for making more articles, I do encourage you to make an article about an artwork in the IMA’s collection.  Maybe it’s just because I’m a believer in Wikipedia, but I think it’s important work.  It could be a student project either at the college or high school level – really, anyone can make an article once you get the hang of it.

Because I’m interested in exploring and developing the idea that Wikipedia articles can serve as a place to document public artworks by hosting images, referencing other published information, and allowing the public to have first-hand involvement in the history and preservation of public art, I started working a while ago with a two other conservators Crista and Daniel to make Wikipedia articles about a few public artworks.

Here’s a list of the articles that we created:
In Indianapolis:
Ann Dancing

Depew Memorial Fountain

In Wabash, IN
The Lincoln Monument of Wabash, Indiana

In Washington, D.C.
Always Becoming

While we found that hosting images can be a little tricky (clearing copyright, etc) there’s clearly a lot that can be achieved through this work.  Take for example the Ann Dancing sculpture here in Indy by Julian Opie.  While it was installed in January of this year, it had some display issues and was recently taken down for repairs.  How do I know this?  I found out when someone made an edit to the article.  In a matter of days an image was uploaded and links were made to the local newspaper coverage.

I had never been so interested to see an artwork not working.  It was an example of history being written almost as it happened!

Who knows what will come of all of this but I believe there’s great potential for Wikipedia to help raise awareness about the preservation of artworks through documentation and keeping an up-to-date history – something that print publications simply can’t do.

Anyway, I’m going to tell you how I help to keep our numbers clean and looking good (I get lots of help). For the past few years I’ve invited IMA summer interns working in other departments to help me and the conservation interns wash the “Numbers” (you can go here to Flickr to see a ton of images of our sculptures and Indiana’s various versions of the same sculpture on exhibit around the world).

Washing these 8 foot tall painted aluminum artworks is a fair amount of work, even when you have the good help I had. It’s a fairly straight-forward process to clean the sculptures: we simply wash them gently with soap (I use Orvus ) and water. Really, that’s it, some soap and water, a few ladders and lots of me acting like Mr. Miyagi and demanding perfect motions when doing the work.

Beyond the actual work it’s also a time when I can provide a real example of some of the maintenance we complete on the outdoor sculptures to interns in the other departments. After all (and this number is for Meg), there are over 50 artworks scattered throughout the IMA’s grounds, and soon to be a lot more over in the 100 Acres.

There are two other things that I wanted to mention, one is that you can go here and see a drawing by Robert Indiana that shows what the organization of the numbers meant to him and why we arranged them so. I’m always intrigued by this notion that just by putting two numbers together you can achieve a kind off greater meaning.
The second thing I wanted to mention is the fine Wikipedia article that Jasmine made about the numbers this spring. I have it on good word that invitations for Lunch with the IMA’s director have been sent out to the 5 that made Wikipedia articles of IMA sculptures. I’ve been digging around to see if others have been made, but haven’t found any. Speaking of that, I hope our IT department doesn’t check how many times a day I look at Wikipedia on this computer….

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/08/15/numbers-blog/feed/ 7 http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/04/16/say-hello-to-christina-and-ted/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/04/16/say-hello-to-christina-and-ted/#comments Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:07:24 +0000 Richard McCoy http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/04/16/say-hello-to-christina-and-ted/ Meet Christina Gentry; she’s the first – and so far the only – person to take me up on my offer to have lunch at Pucks with the IMA’s director, Max Anderson, for making a Wikipedia article about one of the IMA’s outdoor sculptures. As for TED, I’ll get to that later.

First check out Christina’s Wikipedia article on the Sutphin Fountain, which even has a link to a set of pictures of the fountain on Flickr.com. Nice work, Christina!

I asked her if she thought making a Wikipedia article was hard to do and she said that once she took a few minutes to figure out how to use the software that Wikipedia employs that it was “pretty easy and kind of fun.”

Christina is finishing up her bachelor’s degree in the Museum Studies program at IUPUI, and thought that it would be a good networking opportunity to have lunch with the IMA’s director (yeah, I agree, plus the food at Pucks isn’t too shabby either).

While I was thrilled to meet Christina and see her work, I’m a little bummed that she’s the only one that’s made an article so far. I thought for sure other folks would jump at the chance to have lunch with our director. Really, I kind of thought I would be over-run with undergrad & grad students interested in museum careers from nearby universities. I thought we’d already have something like the Wikipedia article: List of Sculptures in Central Park. But, then again, I’m an optimist.

I’m not saying I’m this kind of depressed, that I’m down here in a “glass cage of emotion,” but I’m beginning to wonder if Christina and I are the only ones around here that think this is a good idea. Here’s my way of finding out: the offer is only good until April 30^th, 2008. After that, I’ll move along.

But, listen, imagine for a second if the majority of artworks in the world had Wikipedia articles; it could be like a catalogue raisonné for everything, even new artworks as they are being made. I know Wikipedia isn’t perfect, but I think Jimmy Wales’ concept of an encyclopedia being “radical” is pretty much right on.

I admit, though, my hopes might be a bit far-fetched but that’s because I’m a believer. And this is where TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) comes in; I’ve been watching all sorts of videos over there, and have begun to buy into the whole “True Global Social Organization” notion.

I won’t go on about this for long, but if you’re interested watch the Howard Rheingold video and see him go from mastodons up to super computers “leaping off the desktops” and beyond. Or, better yet, watch Robert Wright tell How Cooperation Eventually Trumps Conflict. My point is that collaboration on a global scale is happening and it might just change the world. So, we play this back to the IMA: your making an article for Wikipedia not only will get you free lunch with our director, it might just help save the world. Okay, now that’s far fetched ….

I think it should be a Nugget Factory goal to someday inspire the same fervent fandom that generated the film project Fanboys.

I was reading through stuff on the Wired blog yesterday (I must admit to being a little behind on catching up with non-IMA blogs lately) and couldn’t help but giggle about this project and feel a little envious. According to Wired, Ernie Cline, the film’s screenwriter, created the story that, “centers on a group of wannabe Jedis who travel cross-country and break into Skywalker Ranch to sneak a peek at a rough cut of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace before its release.” Brilliant, I say, as a Star Wars fan, though I am sure I wouldn’t last long in a themed game of Trivial Pursuit. But as the article points out, Star Wars fan films aren’t anything new, there are tons of them. So what made this one any different? Cline got a big break and his project boasts the support of some Hollywood heavy hitters.

So what does all this have to do with IMA? Well, nothing….yet. However, the Nugget Factory frequently discusses ideas like this one. Nearly always ridiculous, and seemingly impossible to achieve, we brainstorm about the perfect project that would allow us to indulge in our own fan-idol relationships. (Perhaps this topic would be a good one for the next Nugget Factory audio experience. ) Recently, 50% of the Nugget Factory chatted about the inherent coolness of an Angelina Jolie-filled project (sans Brad Pitt) while 25% of the Nugget Factory desperately wants Iggy Pop to blog about his art interests (It’s me…Iggy, if you are reading this, PLEEEEEEASE consider blogging!). And there are many other celebrities populating our guest blogger wish-list.

It seems that there are layers to this notion of fandom. Indulging in your own interests, getting others excited about whatever you are obsessing over (like me and Facebook!), and admiring those who created the interest in the first place, and in the case of Ernie Cline, sometimes you can turn the tables and become the subject of fan admiration yourself. So, this is where the Nugget Factory needs to be! Maybe this time next year we’ll be hosting a NF fan video competition, where people have hunted down just the right sweater vest, pair of shorts, layered look or sunglasses to parody us. But I think we would be just as happy if the phone rings and it is Iggy Pop or Angelina Jolie. You know which one I would vote for.

But feel free to use this forum to suggest your own ideas for fan-indulgent projects.

Though I appreciate the pub, I would have preferred people take me up on the idea of creating Wikipedia entries about IMA outdoor sculptures. And, no, I’m not crazy enough to think we would have an IMA wikimarathon to rival the art wikimarathon, but I really thought my post would have generated at least one entry by now.

There was a suggestion by this guy to give away free t-shirts for folks that created entries, but I really couldn’t do that so easily, what with t-shirt slogans so difficult to come by in this era of clever t-shirts that we live in.

Instead, I’ve negotiated a free lunch at Pucks with the aforementioned IMA Director (or equivalent member of the Nugget Factory) for the first 5 people (you’ve got to find your own way here) that create Wikipedia entries about the IMA’s outdoor sculpture. Mind you, it took some tough negotiations on my part.Seriously, you could have lunch at Pucks with the IMA’s director or one or even the entire set of “Nuggets” just for creating a Wikipedia entry! But wait, there’s more! If you act now, I’ll have your picture taken in front of the IMA sculpture for which you make a Wikipedia entry and then post it on the blog! That’s as close to stardom as I can get. So, what do you say?