The INNL network – what it is and how it works

Last week we launched our new website. As I wrote last week it’s a connected website. With our website, we launched the INNL network. The INNL network is a semantic network of history and heritage websites.

Connecting online collections and communities

When we started the new website project, we realised that over the last couple of years many museums, archives and other institutions have digitised their collections. At the same time many created communities around projects and expositions. The result of all these efforts is a rich, but dispersed online presence of culture, history and heritage. If you know where to look, you can find almost anything online. Most people, however, don’t look further than Wikipedia and the top-3 results in Google (often the same).

We wanted to make it easier for people to discover history and heritage online by connecting different collections and communities. Sort of like Europeana builds an enormous database of European collections, but then focused at the normal Internet user, who doesn’t even know Europeana exists. This idea, the INNL network, allows people to enter anywhere in the network and experience the rich online collections, rather than having to search for them.

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The Lego-factor of the Stedelijk ARtours

(Image via)

I have been planning to review the ARtours of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam ever since I first devised the Lego-factor. In short, the Stedelijk AR tours allows you to borrow art of the Stedelijk Museum and put it up wherever you like. As the Stedelijk is mostly closed due to a redesign of their building, it’s a great way to have people interact with their art.

The project uses innovative technology such as QR codes and Layar. Furthermore, they’ve presented the project not only around the museum, but also at the Lowlands festival and the Picnic conference. I missed it on both occasions, but at the Dutch Museum Congress I was finally able to borrow some art and use the ARtours.

The Lego-factor is a completely subjective checklist I made myself to understand why I like certain projects and dislike others. And, to add to the subjectivity, I think the nice people behind the Stedelijk ARtours are amazing. So, whatever you do with this evaluation is entirely up to you;-)

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Users and use of the National Vending Machine – 7 lessons about participation

Two months ago the Museum of National History, my employer, launched the National Vending Machine. The interactive installation, currently on display in the Amsterdam Historical Museum, encourages people to discover history through objects. It’s a pilot project and we will use our experiences of the three-month try-out to improve future instalments of the National Vending Machine.

The National Vending Machine is a participatory project. To discover who uses the machine and how these users interact with it, I’ve spent quite some hours observing visitors and I’ve used the website (and especially the visitor part) to get an overall idea about participation and interaction. Read the rest of this entry »

The National Vending Machine – Building a community of objects

An automatiek type vending machine, or trekmuur – “pull wall” – as we call it in Dutch, is a traditional piece of robust technology used to sell deep-fried snacks. Many visitors to Holland might have seen it, especially late at night when they’re popular places to get something to eat.

Over the last years some machines started to sell other stuff than traditional Dutch snacks. There are ones that sell Chinese food and even sunglasses, but that’s about all the innovation the machines have seen. The Museum of National History and Mediamatic decided to take the vending machine to the next level. Yesterday we launched the pilot of this project. Read the rest of this entry »

Nieuwe Groeten Uit… A crowd-sourced and crowd-curated exposition

Nieuwe groeten uit… (“New greetings from…”) is a crowd-sourced, crowd-curated exposition in the city of Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands. Last Thursday my museum opened the last part of the yearlong project. In many ways it’s a special exposition and project, I think, and worth sharing.

Somewhat over a year ago FOAM photography museum Amsterdam, the ANP Historical Archive and the Museum of National History of the Netherlands came together to find a replacement for the traditional postcards. Most postcards show an old-fashioned image of Holland: cheese, cows and wooden shoes. The Netherlands has changed significantly over the last years, and Nieuwe Groeten Uit… was a search for new postcards.

The general public played a mayor part in every phase of the project: gathering the photographs for the postcards, selecting the best post-cards and even putting them on display.

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