A Twitter Reflection

I have now been in the ranks of the twittering masses for just over two months. These are my observations of successful (and not so successful) twitter usage by museums (and related people and organizations) thus far. I will provide the names of those museums I feel are doing well, but at this time it is not my place to call out museums I feel are not doing the greatest job. (What can I say, I'm non-confrontational and am not in the position to ruffle feathers.) Anyhow, on to the post.

One of the things I love is the museum that provides interesting tidbits about goings on in the museum. The Shelburne Musuem in Shelburne, VT is one of my favorite twittering musuems (@ShelburneMusuem). Why? Because I want to know more about the museum than just what events are happening and. Yes some advertising of events is acceptable, since spreading the word is always good and twitter is certainly an outlet for it, but I want to know more than just that. I loved being told by @ShelburneMuseum that "The turtles have emerged! Collections Asst. Nick rescued one that was trying to cross the road in front of the Covered Bridge." I followed the painstaking process of restoring a Tiffany settee, and the pouring of the lighthouse foundation. Things like this made me like the museum that much more.

So rule No. 1 in twittering about museums is to provide something extra about the museum that one would not be able to find out otherwise. It is easy enough to look at a museum's event calendar to figure out what is going on (although friendly reminders don't hurt as long as it doesn't dominate the twitter stream). I look forward to tweets from @ShelburneMuseum because of this something extra, and the next time I'm up in Vermont when it's open (season starts May 17th) I know where I want to go.

Rule No. 2 in twittering is to not do the opposite of what @ShelburneMuseum is doing. Please do not tweet solely about upcoming events. I can find out about them elsewhere.

Rule No. 3 is to not heavily rely upon bots. What are bots? Autobots (no not the kind from The Transformers) as they are also referred to as are programs that search for tags on news stories, or anything really, and if the particular tag matches what is being searched the bot (hooked up to the twitter account) will tweet the link to the story. This often ends up in a tweet looking like *tag being searched* "partial article title..." link to story. What gets really annoying is when these searches occur all at the same time so in a span of a few minutes 5, 10 or more tweets come from one account, blocking up the stream. I like the idea of there being a real human behind the tweeting. This in no way is me saying I don't want to get links to something newsworthy online. I do, I just don't want them automatically given to me. I much rather prefer someone writing Found this museum news article interesting: link to story.

No. 4 Respond to those who reply to you through @ tweeting (where the @ symbol is placed in front of the twitter name, for example @museummusings). These messages show up in the sidebar under the aptly named @youraccountname, making replying to others easy. Now I know this rule is not always followed and I certainly understand why for some institutions it is not feasible. Sometimes the personpower isn't there and sometimes there are just too many questions/comments/suggestions to reply to them all. I do suggest replying to some when one can. I also suggest the Direct Message feature and have gotten numerous direct messages from museums just thanking me for following them. Things like this create a good relationship between follower and tweeter and I feel retains followers. I certainly appreciate them. The museum groups that sent me Direct Messages just for following them are @ShelburneMuseum, @heardmuseum, @metmuseum, @EngineMuseum, and @fordstheatre.

I also recommend using the established protocol of the hashtag #followfriday in which a tweet consists of other twitter accounts that you recommend following. The trend is to provide 5 of them. So even though today is Monday, I recommend following (in addition to myself and the accounts above): @TheWomensMuseum, @MuseumMaknMusic, @tenementmuseum, @fieldmuseum, and @GettyMuseum. There are many more museum related twitterers out there. Just search for Museum on twitter and go from there.

There has been much discussion in the museum world about this too. Multiple people have discussed twitter and its benefits on Museum-L and numerous tips on how to utilize it properly have been included. Apparently there are also podcasts on iTunes that deliver tips on how to effectively use twitter, although I have not used them. Connecting with others who share common interests and is a good thing in the museum world: person to person, museum to museum, museum to person. I maintain my stance blogged previously that twitter has the unique potential to reach the masses thereby expanding a museums presence in the virtual world.

Hello to all and today especially to those who found me via twitter.

National Council on Public History Conference- Part 4

Part 4 starts off with the project Beyond Steel created by Lehigh University. It is a live project and can be found here at http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/beyondsteel/. As I am writing this, I am having quite a bit of fun exploring the different features of this site and I highly recommend that you go do the same. A grant funded project started in 2004, Beyond Steel is meant to capture the middle of the 19th century through the 20th century. In addition to Sanborn Maps of the area, extensive work has been done to find out the history of the places on the maps- heads of households, their wives and family make up, their occupations, and if there are boarders living in houses. This information is arranged alphabetically by surname and by location, so if you want to know for example who lived at 445 Vine, you can do a search and find that Clinton H Bitting lived at the address in 1900 according to the Sholes directory. Just for your information, he was a tinsmith and his wife's name was Minnie. In addition to that, you can even get an image of the source and see exactly where the information came from (in this case page 173 of the directory). During the presentation, we were told that there were 600 items on the site, which might not seem like a lot, but considering one item (the directory) has multiple pages (522), there is plenty of information to go around. There are also a multitude of essays and numerous photos. There is a comment feature on the photos, which will be extremely useful in identifying the people in them. The goal was to portray the industry and society of the area, and I feel that this project did exactly that. Again, go visit the website and explore it on your own; it really is quite something.

The presentation on the Knowledge Cube is the only one that really confused me, maybe it was because the movie about what it is didn't work or because it is still in the concept stage. I think it is most certainly a mix of both, this was one of those times when it is important to make sure that everything works on a powerpoint presentation when it isn't on your own computer, but I have to give the presenter a lot of credit for making due without it. Looking at just the presentation, she also spoke the loudest, having sat in the back for the previous projects. Anyhow from what I gathered, the Knowledge Cube is in development at Clarkson University and the project is being handled by numerous departments there. It is a project of in house collaboration, which a univerity setting is perfect for. On the campus of Clarkson is a building called Old Main; it isn't in use anymore. Knowledge Cube is bringing it back to life in a virtual sense as the setting of the project is located in it. However, the walls of the virtual Old Main are meant to melt away to present new objects, to create a dialogue about them, and history, so as not to make it seem like an alternate reality. The first run of Knowledge Cube will be static, but as time goes on, interactivity will be added. One of the more interesting aspects of the project so far (I'm sure there will be many more as the project is further developed) is that Knowledge Cube has been created completely using "off the shelf technology" such as Qlab (usually used in theatrical production). There has been no special Clarkson only programming, which is a great thing, so when Knowledge Cube is finished, it will show a multitude of universities, organizations, and locations just what can be acheived using available technologies.

I could write about the next project at this point, which is on Fredricksburg, but I feel that due to its subject matter, it belongs in Part 5 with the Civil War Mapping project. If I could have changed one thing about the organization of the session it would have been the organization of the projects, because some are similar to others. I would have had the Beyond Steel project come after the GIS in Annapolis, and the Maine Memory Network and the Fox Point project (will be in part 5) come after the Massachusetts Studies Network but before PhilaPlace. I can see the point of organizing it this way (if there was a method to its organization that is) because it prevents one from confusing similar projects together, but I just like it better when similar things are grouped more or less together.

The Twitter Potential

I have officially joined the ranks of twitter as of yesterday afternoon. Up until a few days before that, I didn't realize that it had a web presence, I honestly thought it was just a cell phone thing. Anyhow, one of the things online that I follow faithfully is the Museum listserv and a topic started on Thursday involved John McCain's twittering about pork in the Omnibus bill (I will have a totally different post about this perhaps tomorrow evening). I actually spent time in researching if it was really John McCain tweeting or a fake one, after all there was an article a few weeks ago discussing celebrity posers, so I was skeptical. There was also the thought running in the back of my mind that during the campaign he didn't know how to use email, so how could he possibly use twitter? My research came up with the following conclusion: John McCain twitters with help. I'll accept that, but if he was using twitter, why wasn't I?

So I joined twitter as a way to expand my online presence and awareness, to be primarily used in conjunction with this blog. So there will be tweets alerting to new blog posts and some that sum up blog posts in 140 characters or less, but in a short amount of time, I realized how twitter will allow me to do much more than that.

I began following numerous museums that are using twitter to update their followers on new exhibits, different events and museum specific news. Many of these museums follow each other too. I have been introduced to museums that I didn't know of and thus I have been spending a good portion of my Saturday looking at these museums' homepages. I would love to go on a huge road trip to visit many of them.

Not only am I following museums, I am following museum professionals, museum studies students and all around museum enthusiasts, including other museum bloggers. It is a great way to meet new people, forge contacts and just stay connected to others with like interests. I find people so interesting and I like to network and learn from those who know more than I do. Above and beyond following someone's tweets, I've seen twitter used to find roommates for museum conferences, plan gatherings, and have short and succinct conversations. I am also pleased to see that there are many my age who are interested in entering the museum world for their careers.

The first step is for museums to get out there and tweet, then following like institutions. Soon others will begin to follow the newly twittering museum. I think a crucial step lies in making the statement that the museum is now on twitter, whether that announcement comes on the museum website, via an email newsletter, or even posted (albeit with small signs) around admission desks or at the museum store. I don't know if I'd think to search twitter for a single institution if I didn't know that there would be a positive result, searching for the keyword museum and rolling from there has proved successful enough. The point is though, that tweets can only reach those that are following them and these numbers are far lower than some attendance numbers, so why not reach as many people as possible?

In conclusion I love the connectedness that I get off of twitter, because it is so much easier I feel to find other people with similar interests. It is also something that is easy to do, which means that museums and other cultural institutions can cheaply utilize it, and if utilized properly I think that this is a great virtual expansion of a museum's reach. It's already starting to happen, and I only see this going further as more museums catch on and decide to tweet along with the rest of us.

Hello to anyone who found me through twitter and thanks for visiting!

Canon Camera Museum

Occasionally I stumble across museum related things while I am not trying to. Take for example the Canon Camera Museum, which I found on the Canon website while looking up the differences between two different flash memory camcorders. There it was, on the sidebar of the page... an ad for the Canon Camera Museum. Of course I clicked on it.

I was taken to a new page with animation. It started off blue and as the animation panned down I could see that it was a of a museum complex set in the country. There are open pastures, a garden, a pond, horses and what seems to be a petting zoo. And the horses move as do the kids and animals at what I'm thinking is a petting zoo. It's actually quite cute. I would be in love with the museum's setting if it were a physical place.

The museum complex is made up of 5 buildings: A more classical motifed building with pediment, pilasters, and columns. This building is in the center and is the largest. It is called Camera Hall. The other halls are housed in buildings that are progressively more modern looking in terms of architecture. The Design Hall reminds me of the Farnsworth House. There is also History Hall and Technology Hall. There is an information building as well but it's only real purpose is to balance the museum complex's design. When it's clicked on, a pop up gives a basic 'Welcome' and introduction.

When any of the other four buildings are clicked on, the animation zooms closer to that building and one can see that the people out side of the buildings are excited to be there. The children bounce up and down. It's all very cute and highly innovative.

Camera Hall is just that, a hall about the different types of cameras. Digital Cameras, Film Cameras, Digital Camcorders, Analog Camcorders, Movie Cameras and Lenses. They are all set up as if they would be different exhibition rooms in a physical museum.

History Hall is formed by the Canon Camera Story, a more complex version of the Canon Camera Story and EOS- Goddess of the Dawn.

Design Hall features the Design Room, Portrait of the Pioneers, the Camera Design Process, and the Theory of Design Evolution.

Technology Hall consists of the Technical Room, Virtual Lens Plant, and the Technical Report.

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The Canon Camera Museum is very much worth checking out. I love it when I see technology being used for museum purposes in this way. I think that while museums in the physical sense may be limited to the walls of the buildings they are housed in, the limits to their virtual presence are almost nonexistent (or they should be nonexistent anyway). I really do think that this is an avenue into which we are going to see more and more museums head in the near future. I do hope to be a part of it in some way.