it’s a shame that UKOLN’s anniversary celebrations kept CL from being at all of mw2008 [he had agreed to be right up until just before] because one of the real differences between museums and libraries on the web is that museums have always embraced the social. there are discussions from the outset of mw that explore connecting people, building communities, enabling alternative interpretations, empowering users. …. all things that are enabled by the tech that marketers call web 2.0.

it’s easy if you come from the academic community, to think that museums are only about supporting scholarly research. or as a librarian to think that museums on the web are more collections databases to be searched [caricatures, i know]. but most museums’ programming swings another way, towards engaging the general public. strategies and goals may be different, even if tools and techniques are shared.

I don’t know what to do about this. ‘Instant takedown’ might be a bit too maverick for many museums (and rightly so if it exposes them to a real risk); but the ogre of the lawsuit from an angry copyright holder also prevents us from really exploring the possibilities. IANAL – I’m a geek, and I can’t make that call on ‘copyright unknown’ images, but is there anyone in our institutions who can?

Sure, and do agree in general re. eggs / baskets, particularly around making “THIS IS THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY” type sweeping statements. Enough people have made that mistake…

Maybe I’m too deep in it to see the edges, but (and of course, I *will* regret saying this..) I see social media as being -much- deeper than “just web2.0″. I’m much happier saying this than espousing the next big technical standard, language or data format because it has people at the heart of it. Social media, including tagging, make the web better and more personal. And that is why I see this as long-termisim rather than short-term hit.

re. copyright – this just feels like a fragile area which needs some stroking, rather than increasing of fear levels. Of course there are huge issues, but there are also huge opportunities, too. I guess I didn’t feel that those got enough exposure.

Mike

same is true for tagging. we don’t know how it will scale, how it will age, or what happens when really diverse groups of people tag over time. that’s why watching what’s going on is so important, as is adjusting strategies in response.

do you really think he dwelton (c)? other than nods to the fact that it’s an issue that’s important in some contexts?

/jt

Personal opinion, but the “tagging and social media are going to die out” line didn’t ring true to me, and is actually a bit of a dangerous thing to say to a group of people starting to invest (and invest in a “good” thing IMHO) in this stuff. I also think that the “copyright is a major issue” position – although true from some angles – really badly needs qualification within a framework that now contains Creative Commons. Quite a lot of what Brian and I talked about both at the blogging workshop and at the Openness session was about ways in which the community can start to embrace fair ways of working; how these *really* work, how they don’t; how we ascribe “value”; and issues like scarcity vs scale. To continue with the “ooh, copyright, let’s be really scared” line as we have for the last few hundred years just won’t move anyone any further forward…

What did you think? (reply via email if you’d prefer )

Mike

i’ll take the bait … what did clifford say that you think was ‘just plain wrong’?

/jt

Working up my own post on the Delphi toolkit, I’m hoping to grab a copy of that tomorrow and start throwing our metadata at it to see what it can see.

I’ll check your blog out and will be in touch soon!

cheers

Mike