Hey guys,
Hope you are all well. I really enjoyed Nick Poole’s talk. I think he was purposively provocative, to make us really think about the whole process of Collections Management and why we do it and for whom. It seems to be a common occurrence that people undertake documentations / collections management without really any idea of how this information can be enjoyed and used in the future.
Some of the main things from the talk which stood out for me were these following ideas:
· Passive Consumption to Active Co – creation: some visitors to museums want to be able to contribute to collections knowledge and management; we should be able to accommodate this. As Nick made a point of saying - some visitors know more about collections than some curators – they should be able to share this.
· Dialectic instead of the Didactic: Digital media has the potential to democratise this process of who interprets collections. You should be able to visit a collection and hear multiple voices and responses; this should also be a continual process, whereby people can keep on contributing to this dialogue.
· It is a PROCESS, not a finished goal. I think this is really important – we’re never going to finish documenting.
· Understanding the “connections”. Web 3.0 seems to have the potential to contribute / facilitate this.
Is documentation dead, I’m not sure? Our processes of carrying out documentation, might be? Due to time limits I don’t think Nick had the time to explain this idea in more detail. I think what he was trying to say is things like the Web and search engines, will replace this documentation process, but I wasn’t sure in what way? In the respect, there has to be some person creating fundamental documents which can then be critiqued, developed? I’m guessing Ross and Andy can take this further. See you tomorrow.
1 comment:
I'm going to add some notes of "The future of collections" here.
* Move from passive consumption to active co-creation (didactic to dialectic).
- Curators becoming more like librarians; matching what people know to what people want to know
* At time, spectrum innovative and far-sighted, but now become its own enemy.
- A smoke screen - SPECTRUM become ubiquitous; museums do own thing but use SPECTRUM to give a patina of respectability.
* Documentation a process - not a project
- allowed itself to be stuck in broom-cupboad, because enjoying new technology, vocabularies, ability to mystify managers.
* Documentation about people and principles - why are we doing this?
- Doesn't matter what form of documentation (paper/ expensive technology) so long as it works
- should be servant of what museum is doing, not the end to itself.
- Integrated into wider work
* Good documentation frees you and facilitates working together. No longer worring about - do we own it? Can we do it?
* Sustainability a concern
- Holding back process of degradation a very expensive process (in space and money). Australia - switched off electricity. NA (Kew)- has now said don't believe science behind climate controls.
(I'm not sure about this part, but it looks very interesting.)
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