Strategic Issues for Sharing Information in Museums John

Strategic Issues for Sharing Information in Museums John Perkins “Sharing the Knowledge” International CIDOC CRM Symposium Washington, DC March 26 -27, 2003

The Consortium for the Interchange of Museum Information • Solutions to digital information management, access, and use through standards and international collaboration

Impedance on Open Access to Information Market Technology Information Norms Law Adapted from Lessig, L. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Basic Books, 1999 and Tom Moritz, American Museum of Natural History, March, 2003

Museum constraints on open access to information Audience, Applications, Services Interoperability Open Information ©, IPR, DRM Business models, Organizational capability

Some Strategic Responses

Audiences, Services, Applications • What do we need to know about public need to design services to appeal to the widest possible audience? • What services are needed? • What applications are needed to support the services?

Audience • Collect& expose User Studies Needs and Evaluations • Develop frameworks, metrics and tools • Mine across studies • Non-Users “option values”

Services • Mental models of services – Library, exhibition, exploration • Hybrid Spaces • Mediated Experience

Applications • Applications and interfaces for both the production and delivery of services • Personalization • Communications • Sense-making

“Sharing Information” Before During Digital Device Paradigm After Networked server channeled to devices Orientation Registration Background Information Context Experience Reflection Analysis Extension Engagement Adapted from CIMI Handscape Project and Robert Semper, Exploratorium, March 2003

Law • • Copyright, Fair use, public access, first sale Privacy Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management • Digital solutions are driven by commercial purveyors of multimedia content • Middleware for authentication, authorization, tracking

Technology • High-level frameworks • Interoperability • Persistent, Recombinant Digital Repositories

High-level Frameworks -IMS

Interoperability • Is about providing services people want • Based on “recombinant potential” – Bringing together and combining – Deconstructing resources

Recombinant Potential • Can I… – – – – Add to a repository Extract from a repository Fuse metadata from different sources Embed an interactive service in an exhibition Navigate various databases cite a resource and link to it Assemble resources into a new package …etc

Higher level services? Format/collection specific presentation tools Subject portal or online catalog Alerting service Image or other formatbased service Educ. discovery service LMS authoring tools Persistent open digital object repository Recombinant Repositories Adapted from Dan Greenstein, CDL, IMLS Workshop Presentation , March 2003

Persistent Open Digital Repositories Need. . • • • Service models Metadata models Content package models Ontologies Tools/Infrastructure

Business Models & Organizational Capability • Organizational capability • Paying for it • Management support

Capability Needs • Standards & Good Practice • Content Management • Web Services

Drawing it all together • Multiplicity of effort • Community efforts to lead & serve – Horizon scanning – Research – Capacity Building

CIMI Consortium • Http: //www. cimi. org • Jperkins@cimi. org