Posted on September 16, 2010
In the next blog we'll be exploring the innovative digital tools people in South Africa are already using for heritage and archive management, some of which, like the Zamani 3D mapping of cultural heritage sites, have been featured on our website already. We'll also look at some digital tools that might be used more widely in the future. Contributions from readers for this blog series are most welcome.
Making objects more social
Simply digitising archival documents, museum objects, or heritage sites, may not make them more accessible to the public, as a recent Australian report on tagging heritage objects, Clayton et al. 2008, suggests:
"museum collections appear to be relatively inaccessible even when 'made available' through searchable online databases. Museum documentation seldom satisfies the online access needs of the general public, both because it is written using professional terminology and because it may not address what is important to, or remembered by the museum visitor."
Nina Simon, in her book, The Participatory Museum, which is available free online, suggests that some objects are more social than others. Social objects are more interesting to viewers and more productive of interaction. She suggests that the context for displaying an object (in a museum, archive or online) is important in determining how much impact it has on the public, and how much social commentary it generates. When this photo, which shows workers from Pennsylvania shipyards in 1943, was hidden in the Library of Congress archive, for example, it was accessible mainly to dedicated researchers. When they placed it on Flickr it developed what Simon calls 'an active social life', generating questions, comments and further information from interested members of the public. Clearly, how objects are described or categorized on Flickr makes a difference too: it is not simply digitisation that makes the photo social. Simon also makes the point that in a museum, real objects can be juxtaposed or displayed in such a way as to enhance their sociality too.
Workers leaving Pennsylvania shipyards, Beaumont, Texas (LOC), Library of Congress, 1943
The social lives of online objects like photos can be easily followed through sites like Flickr, but new ways of documenting the social lives of real-world objects are also now becoming possible. This might enable museums or heritage sites to create opportunities both for deeper social interactivity with their objects, and for tracking and observing these interactions. The LA Times recently reported a new social media concept called stickybits. The use of this software tool requires a smart phone in the hands of the user and a barcode on the object, perhaps an object in a museum. Users can then attach a message to the bar code: say text, a photo, music or a video that could be shared with others who scan the object. There are also websites where stories can be associated with objects online, although the actual content on a site like tales of things is currently rather disappointing.
Soon, many real-world objects will have manufacturer- or user-embedded chips that tell the story of their movements over time and space, and engage with the digital world around them. Why would this only be applicable to modern objects? There may be ways of making historical objects both more digital and more social, and good reasons to do so.
A digital game of tag
As mentioned in my earlier blog, archives are already asking their users to help generate metadata about their digital collections, by tagging collections of documents, photographs and so on. Some kind of tagging seem more fun than others, and may encourage public participation. The Europeana thought lab site talks about a Dutch project using gaming to generate good tags for some of its digital television archives:
"Waisda? is a video-labelling prototype that introduces gaming as a way of encouraging users to add tags to cultural heritage content. People are invited to watch the videos on the site and describe what they see and hear. They earn points for each tag and compete against other users in real time or against a pre-recorded session. Tags that match each other score higher, as do tags that provide a greater level of detail than generic terms. Through this unique approach, Waisda? has added 350,000 tags to its content within a period of 7 months. It has also introduced 3 innovations: 1. Using gaming as a method to annotate television heritage 2. Actively seeking collaboration with communities connected to the content 3. Using curated vocabularies as a means to integrate tags with professional annotations."
In another project, called Mapit1418, the Dutch National Archives asks its users to geo-locate its photo collection from World War I and to upload their own photos of the sites depicted in the photos. To do this, they have uploaded a map of the Netherlands to the Flickr site where they have placed the photos. User participation in this tagging exercise is a kind of game, and there are prizes for high levels of participation.
It's not just the level of participation that matters, but also the useability of the tags for new audiences. The Australian report on tagging heritage objects mentioned above suggests that many museum collections (and one could say the same of archives) are catalogued using terms that make more sense to other museum workers or researchers than to the general public. The report describes how the 'steve' project, founded in 2005, was developed to improve public access to ever-growing online collections of art museums, by enabling social tagging of their collections.
"The Guggenheim Museum began a preliminary exploration through a prototype application where users were encouraged to annotate a collection of images (http://steve.museum/index.php? ). Many researchers ... are optimistic that the Steve project will solve problems, such as of additional access points, multilingual information and things that are not often included in art catalogue records such as colour."
Initiatives like askacurator help to connect museum curators not only to other curators but to the public. People posted queries on twitter using the #askacurator hashtag which were responded to by museum curators. Jim Richardson, who had the idea, hoped that it would 'give the public unprecedented access to the passionate and enthusiastic individuals who work in museums and galleries and also break down barriers within these institutions, where all to often social media is still the remit of the marketing department.' There was an the excellent response, although they had some problems with spammers. According to a commentary on the event, 'One person suggested that curators create an #askavisitor day'. Why not?
Placing new narratives on the map
In some cases archives are also asking their users, and online visitors, to add their own stories and commentaries. In the Netherlands, the region of Brabant has a website for the public, run by the Brabant Historical Information Centre, that provides opportunities for people to comment on their archive and historical information, as well as add their own data to the site. Information is organised by region rather than by theme, which in my view is a good way of encouraging public participation. Members of the public tend to be interested in names and places rather than administrative classifications or academically-defined themes.
Projects like Historypin create opportunities for people to add historical photos and narratives to sites of interest, and they can be equally useful to heritage management authorities in deciding what the public value of the sites in question might be. You can of course upload historical photos to Google Earth as well, allowing for sharing of public site-related interpretations. For some areas Google Earth has now uploaded historical aerial photos: this would make doing heritage surveys so much easier!
The public does not need an archival platform to create interpretive historical overlays for maps. It is possible for anyone to create historical tours of a region of interest using google maps. Geotagging might also be an interesting way for both the public, and heritage management authorities, to encourage people to explore sites with a historical eye, as long as sites are not thereby opened up to damage by visitors. Given the latter concern, it might be wise for heritage management authorities to keep an eye on irresponsible geotagging of sensitive sites that they manage.
Concluding remarks
Using web-based technology for public interaction may seem a rather far off possibility in the less-wired African context, and most of my examples come from wealthy countries. But many of the participatory principles can also be used in non-digital contexts. Some of the tools discussed above are already being used in the African context. It is also important to plan for a future which, if we know nothing else about it, surely will offer intensive digital interaction. In South Africa better mobile devices have already given more people access to the internet, and we would like to anticipate lower connectivity costs at some point in the future.
Interactive web 2.0 technologies offer new ways of encouraging public participation in the work of archives, museums and heritage site management. Exploring these new ideas may spur us on to develop better participatory techniques in the off-line environment too.
More public participation is not just good for the lefty soul, and the annual report - it also actively helps those who manage archives, museums and heritage sites to understand what the public values, and why, and what they know that archive managers do not. What strikes me about these new tools for public participation is that they are tools for heritage management too.
Acknowledgments
This blog was inspired in part by blogs like this one by ArchivesNext and answers to a query by Mike Evans on 'Archives and user generated content' posted in January 2010 on Archivists: the social network for archivists and by inputs from collaborators and friends on twitter.
Harriet Deacon, former Director of the Archival Platform is now an independent heritage consultant, and a correspondent for the platform.