This is why we do what we do

April 4, 2009 in Museum informatics, Museums | No comments

Last Sunday, before Computers in Libraries, I had time to kill after joining my sisters and mother for an early lunch of tapas at the always-fantastic Jaleo in northwest Washington.  Kill time?  In Washington?  That means one place for me: the Smithsonian.  Growing up in northern Virginia meant school and family trips downtown, and there was always, always something fascinating to see and do in the museums on the Mall (and heck, my first job was at a Smithsonian unit: four summers at the National Zoo).

It’d been too many years since I’d been to the National Museum of Natural History, so I decided to check out the new Sant Ocean Hall and hit the slightly-less-new Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals.  There, amid the exhibits on biodiversity and mammalian inner ear structures, the displays of snow-adapted animals and of bottled cephalopods, the models of whales and the specimens of white-footed mice, I found an unlooked-for reminder of just why it is I love working in museums.

They inspire such a palpable and immediate sense of wonder.

And so often they do it in the simplest way possible: by putting cool objects in front of people.

None of the exhibits I saw was filled to the gills with whiz-bang gadgetry.  Sure, there were small video screens and the occasional touch screen, simple interactives and the requisite orientation films–but so often I get the sense that some believe that without producing the equivalent of quick-cutting, hyper-animated, Grand Theft Auto-inspired museum technology infostraviganzas, no child–no modern person–will ever want to set foot in a museum again.

Could have fooled me, that’s for sure.

I couldn’t stop smiling as I wandered through the exhibit spaces.  Here was a teenage girl jumping back and squealing after lifting the door on a shrew’s-nest of earthworms.  There was a posse of what looked for all the world like tattooed skinheads snapping cell phone pictures of themselves in “Going to Sea.”  Everywhere were little kids with mouths agape, eyes popping, and fingers pointing.

And the stuff that was getting them so excited was, again, so essentially simple.  Phoenix the whale, right overhead.  The giraffe arcing its neck by the door.  The bats–and more bats.  The giant squid.

They tugged their parents over and said, “Oooooh.  Look!” again and again.  And the parents dutifully looked.  And took pictures, as if the animals were alive.  And a lot of them read the exhibit labels and told their kids–or their college buddies or their spouses–more about what it was they were looking at.

It wasn’t about the technology.  It was about the stuff.

Computers are great.  Heck, computers are at the heart of the work I do.  But it’s good to be reminded from time to time that computers aren’t the end of what we do; computers are a means to the true end.  The best museum technology helps the institution accomplish one of the its most essential missions: evoke wonder.

The tech needn’t be complex. It just needs to be true to that mission.

The wonder will follow.

—

And to be sure, there’s nothing really revelatory in the above for most museum professionals. I would wager a lot of us–whether we’re librarians, curators, maintenance workers, managers, interpreters, visitors services personnel, or something else–got into museum work because of just this sort of feeling.  But I will say this: it did me a world of good to lift my head from the day-to-day work I do and see the amazing effect of the work we do together as “museum people” on the visiting public.

So I say: get on out there and check out another museum in action.  Preferably a place for which you have no responsibility whatsoever.  You’ll probably get recharged, just like I did.

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Computers in Libraries Day 1, or the Case for Inductivity

March 31, 2009 in Uncategorized | No comments

I could give a blow-by-blow of the sessions I sat in on yesterday, but most of the material for them will be available online soon if it isn’t already.  But for the record, I went to:

  • Website Redesign Pitfalls
  • Help Your Library Be Omnipresent Without Spending a Dime
  • 40Plus New Tools & Gadgets for Library Webmasters
  • Flickr Commons for Libraries & Museums
  • Continued Online Community Engagement

But I’d like to turn my post to another aspect of attending conferences.  I want to speak for the conference attendees.  In, admittedly, a small way.

My plea is this: if you’re presenting at a conference like CIL2009, and you’re talking about a cool project you’ve done at your library, please please please make the inductive leap from your case to a more general case.

Lots of speakers (and this happens at a lot of library/technology conferences–and probably lots of conferences everywhere–not just CIL) have a tendency to tell the story of their great project.  “We started here.  We went here.  This happened.  Then this happened.  And this is the conclusion.”  End session.  Polite applause.

Theirs is a straight-up narration of their project.  And it’s the worst form of conference presentation–if you’re going to do that, why not just write it up somewhere so people can read your story and reach their own conclusions?  Both are essentially a passive, private experience for the recipient of the information.

What’s missing from that sort of talk, what makes the presentation of a cool project truly dynamic, is connecting your particular case to your audience’s experience.  Why have we come to hear you?  To get something from your talk we can take away with us.  Rather than expect the audience to see what it is that they should get from your case, connect the dots for them.  “So, that’s what we did.  And this is what we learned, which is why I wanted to present it to you–so you don’t have to repeat the same mistakes we made, or so you can go straight to the success we had.”

Don’t fear that you’re reaching conclusions for us.  If we’re prone to make conclusions of our own based on the story of your project, we’ll still do that amidst hearing about your conclusions; more likely, your connecting of those dots will spur even more thoughts from us.  Anticipate the conclusions that the audience is likely to draw from your description of your experience and address them proactively.

It’s not so much what you did as about what you think about what you did.

Take that approach, and everybody will get greater enjoyment–and learn more–from your talk.  And that after all is the point of the thing.

Important note: many, many speakers do a great job of this and do so very naturally.  May those folks be models for us all!

Hello world

March 28, 2009 in Housekeeping | 1 comment

I’ve been telling myself for ages and ages that I should do a blog.  Or rather, I’ve been coming up with material on and off for several years that led me to say things like, “If I would only get off my [tail] and set up a blog, I’d have a place to put/say/think about/noodle around with that” or “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could share that idea/notion/crack-pot scheme with others to hear what they think?”

So enough’s enough, right?

Welcome to my blog.  I’ve stripped it down and now I’m still tuning it up, design-wise (including the need to update the default graphic at the top) and function-wise.  But the heart of it is running, so I’ll dive in and blog while finishing up the other work.

Cybernetick Inkwell is primarily a place for me to examine the practices and the theories of librarianship, with a general concentration on what is sometimes (if rarely) called heritage librarianship.  I’d call it “museum librarianship,” because I’m a museum librarian at heart, but I’d rather thinking beyond the walls of any one sort of institution.

At a macro level, what gets my blood pumping is solving the mystery of how it is that people connect with the information that most interests them; at a (more) micro level, I find myself wondering how it is they connect with information about, information from, and information by cultural and natural heritage entities–museums, parks, historic sites, libraries, archives, and so on.

Here are some of the topics likely to find their meandering ways here:

  • Museum informatics. In my professional position, after all, I focus on “web services,” meaning that I am charged with figuring out the best ways to help people connect to information in an online environment.  There’s an endless world here, with a lot of connections to other digital humanities-related efforts.
     
  • The relationship between libraries, archives, and museums. I am not one of those who thinks these are three words that actually mean the same thing, but there are some exciting possibilities where the sets overlap in the Venn diagram.  And important distinctions where they don’t.
     
  • Storytelling in heritage institutions. My path has taken me from history to museum education to librarianship, and all three share perhaps the most powerful way to convey information: the narrative.  Freeman Tilden once laid out as the first of his six rules of heritage interpetation: “Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.”  Tell stories.
     
  • Information management across the institution. Heritage institutions are remarkably siloed places–lots of people with information expertise in specific areas who don’t talk much to others who have their own areas of expertise.  It is a fascinating Gordian knot.
     
  • Technology and information management in small institutions. I have worked in museums and at parks large and small, and one of the great levelers between the two is technology.  But it’s got its own particular challenges (and opportunities) in small institutions.

Other areas less directly related to heritage librarianship but sure to find their way here:

  • Libraries as places of hospitality. I firmly believe that libraries would do well to think of themselves as places of hospitality every bit as much as does a restaurant or hotel–or even more significantly, a private home.  The only significant difference is that the food we’re providing is intellectual rather than physical.  I wrote a paper on this; I promise it’s true.
     
  • Information ecology and information ecosystems. “Ecosystem” is a useful model for understanding how we relate to the sphere of information and how its elements interact with one another.
     
  • Serendipity as a route to information discovery. It’s one of the fundamentally fascinating topics that got me into librarianship in the first place.  Can it ever be captured?  Can it be reproduced in an online environment?
     
  • Information use and information seeking in creative settings. Another question that got me into librarianship.  How and when do creative people use information?  How can information be “structured” to help creative individuals and creative groups?
     
  • Library history. Hey, what can I say.  I’ve been a historian longer than I’ve been a librarian.  Library history is a natural extension.

And, of course, whatever else seems to fit.

More on me, soon.  Best place for details will be in the About section.  But by way of quick introduction and background, I’ll say: I earned my BA in History at the College of William & Mary, my MA in U.S. History from George Mason University, and my MS in Library and Information Studies from Florida State.

I’ve worked in various capacities at the following places, among others: two Smithsonian Institutions (the National Zoological Park and the National Museum of American History); Valentine Riverside historic park at Tredegar Ironworks; the Library of Virginia; the university library and the career library at the University of Richmond; and Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. I may “do” web-based technology, but I think of myself primarily as a reference librarian that focuses on the online environment.

I’m looking forward to exploring all this and more.  With or without you, I suppose–but I’d much prefer with.

Ad astra!

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