library of primitive art

A Generation Joneser speaks

I tried to post a comment to Michael Stephen's Tame The Web, specifically in response to a guest post on Generation Jones written by Michael Colford. After muttering under my breath, I finally realized I can simply post the comment to my own blog and pray for trackbacks. So here goes:

Add me to those unfamiliar with the GenJones term, but who will gladly adopt it henceforward. Apart from being a librarian (and isn't that why I'm reading this anyway?), I'm at the bottom -- or rather, early -- end of the Gen, at a whiskered 50. Older than my fellow commenters, I believe I feel that sense of tween-ness even more strongly.

Some of my peers have no interest, in fact an outright fear of the new technology: they feel positively threatened by it.

I am looked upon by the younger, connected-since-birth generation as something slightly extraordinary: pretty hip for an oldster, or at any rate getting cred for wading into 2.0 with only modest trepidation.

 And I'm at the tail end of the more established Boomer set, the ones who wear suits and run libraries, the ones who let the youngsters fiddle around with the technology. I suspect they think my interest in the profession's technological future is a career killer (and time waster). Or maybe it's that they anticipate being safely retired when the future finally comes to pass.

 But being the youngest family member to older, 'true' Boomers, this sense of being between generations has been with me since childhood: The Boomers had all the fun we missed out on, whereas we had to come of age in the unenlightened Seventies.

So wot the hey, wot the hey! Best we just soldier on. What is it we Gen Jonesers can add in this multigenerational muddle? The experience that says that play is good -- and learning better -- but not every toy makes a good tool.

Call for IT terminology

Here's something that could have fallen into either of my blogholes, from the Spanish-language library humor site (¡sí­, existe!) BiblioTICando con humor, about Alfons Cornella Solans, the information theorist and founder of Infonomia, 'the network of innovators'. (Here is the pdf English-language version of its About Page.)

Among the term he has coined in his writings is the captivating  infoxicación. I feel as if there must certainly be an English-language term that capture this as succinctly. Even though 'infoxication' has a Google presence, I'm afraid that it doesn't capture the same sentiment while hinting at other, less savory other sentiments. Any sugestions out there?

Museum object-based reference tool

Above: An example of a rollover for a single object in an installation photograph. Read below to see what I mean.

Not that anyone would suspect it, but the prolonged silence at this space hasn't been for lack of something to say. Okay, maybe a lack of something to say, but not a lack of activity. Much of my activity has been concentrated on local project planning -- offsite storage, WiFi, and a few stray efforts at improving reference tools.

One of the latter projects was an idea I came up with to use flickr! to assist in object-based reference questions. One of the most frequent questions asked at MPOW is: "Can you help me to find out more about an object in your galleries?" There are nearly 1,200 objects on display in our galleries. Keeping track of them in your head is impossible. In the best of all worlds our patrons would arrive with most of the information we needed to identify the object. Sadly and predictably, this is seldom the case. Absent that there has never been a practical way for us to match these often vague object references (“It’s in the case on the right as you come in, about halfway down, on a stand”) with the specific citation in the library's reference resources. Right now our only recourse is to send them back down to the galleries to copy down the pertinent information – an option I’ve never particularly liked: I worry that they’ll simply never come back again.

What if we had a way to share installation photos with our patrons to identify object they want to know about? And what if the photo had rudimentary information about the objects in the photo, enough to launch a fuller research effort?

While walking through the galleries one afternoon it struck me that I could tailor some of the existing features of flickr! to suit my needs. By using the ‘Add Note’ feature over an installation photo, I could create rollovers for each element in an installation photo, and presto!

I proposed a pilot project to the head of my department, who suggested that I start with objects I knew cropped up often with our walk-in patrons. She also informed me that our department’s segment of the museum-wide collection management database (TMS) already includes many installation shots, stored on the department’s shared drive, that are associated with specific objects.

For my initial effort I picked a wall of Benin brass plaques. I located the relevant installation photo in TMS, downloaded it to my PC and uploaded it to flickr! I created four sample rollover notes with only each object’s unique accession number and the object title. I created a mock flickr! set for it and future photos from the specific gallery in which it resides.

I tagged the photo with some boilerplate terms common to all the objects in the installation photo. I have my colleague Dan to thank for suggesting that I could tag the accession numbers as well as put them in the notes. As I subsequently discovered, tagging in flickr! is an imprecise art. Unlike our collection management system, there's no truncation, for one thing, making a search across accession numbers impossible.

I intend to use the 'Comments' section as a feedback mechanism to solicit suggestions and answer questions from the (for now) closed community with access to the project in vitro.

As is so often the case with projects employing museum photography, I’m waiting for the powers that be to determine if this use of the images complies with museum policies. I don’t know which of several real or imagined aspects of their use that might be giving our administration pause. Fortunately flickr!’s image options allow us to limit access as narrowly as library staff only if called upon. Naturally I’d prefer the resource was available to a much larger audience.

The project is still in development at this writing, pending approval from the administration and a lot more tinkering with the specific features of the tool. I had considered keeping this quick-and-easy DIY application of flickr! to myself until I could showcase a more finished project. But I'd rather put this out there now and see if it might have an application with other museum collections.

Digital Asset Management at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Even though RLG does a fine job of publicizing its own efforts, it never hurts to highlight important articles -- particularly when they come out of your own 'shop'. The most recent issue of their RLG DigiNews (Dec. 2006) features Why Digital Asset Management? A Case Study, by Susan Chen and Michael Jenkins, both of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The article is a comprehensive overview of the decision making that surrounded the establishment of a museum-wide Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, now christened Met Images, and the concomitant reorganization of museum resources required to implement and sustain such a system. Of particular interest for an insider is learning what steps were necessary to get institutional buy-in from all the parties affected -- senior management, curatorial and research staff, and the image support staff.

One intriguing assertion appears in a box-out two-thirds of the way down the article, reproduced here on the left, in a section headed Cataloguing. (Evidently the image community clings fast to that interstitial 'u'.) When I first read it I thought the suggestion was that cataloging works of art was significantly different from cataloging 'sneakers or pickup trucks'. On its face this seems eminently arguable. Some institutions have wasted much time and energy in developing elaborate and idiosyncratic DIY systems that try to mimic pre-existing cataloging paradigms (with all their inherent flaws) rather than taking advantage of systems that employ industry-standard input and output.

But in the context of this section of the article, the statement is only meant as a caution: The complexity of cataloging works of art may not be sufficiently recognized by DAM vendors in the design of their products. The authors seem optimistic that "tools will be developed that are more appropriate to the needs of museums, libraries, and archives." From my perspective I hope that the tools are both appropriate to the museum's needs and practically implementable.