The Museum of the Future | Museums and culture in times of social and technological change

22 Mar, 2018 • Strategy • 8090

A global vision on the future of libraries (or how 32,063 librarians can’t be wrong)

Last Monday the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, IFLA, presented the first results of their ambitious global vision discussion. Over the past year, IFLA has worked with tens of thousands of librarians from all over the world to identify the challenges and opportunities for the library field, its enduring values and purpose, its boldest ideas and most effective local actions. The summary of this process is a highly inspirational document, and not only for libraries.

IFLA’s global vision discussion is a genuinely bottom-up process that has given a voice to all types of librarians and library workers. The discussion started last year in Athens with a workshop with about 150 international participants and continued to involve 9,291 people in 185 workshops and 22,772 people online. The contributions came from 190 UN member states, and all participants together had 469,152 years of library experience. A team of people worked for weeks to analyze the tens of thousands of data points to create the first summary.

What did they find? The key finding is that libraries are united globally in their goals and values, such as equal and free access to information and knowledge. Also, the library world must connect global and local actions effectively so succeed in years to come. The field has shared challenges, but to address them libraries need to acknowledge regional characteristics and requirements.

Underlying this key finding are ten highlights and ten opportunities, which range from updating traditional roles in the digital age to giving young professionals opportunities to learn, develop, and lead. They look inward, challenging the field to be less bureaucratic, inflexible, and resistant to change, and outward at library’s all-important community service. Continue Reading
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16 Mar, 2018 • Technology • 6338

Museums, archives, and the opportunities of open world games

Late last year I was taken on a highlights tour of the records office in Ipswich. In the strongroom, with its hum of climate control and surrounded by mobile shelving, we opened drawers and pulled out boxes. My guide was a staff member and talented storyteller who knew very well where to find the best bits of history and could also be amazed by the thousands of stories hidden in the archives.

An archive such as the one in Ipswich is full of stories and colourful characters. It is full of detailed maps of farmland and villages, the register of countless lives, deaths, marriages, people’s promises and depts and misdeeds, juicy newspaper clippings, the careful documentation of business transactions… Many kilometres of human history.

After the tour, we went for a drink in a local pub and talked about the stories of Suffolk hidden in the archives. The Red Barn Murder, Black Shuck, and countless other mysteries.

I thought about this experience – and many like them – when I read Ed Rodley’s latest blogpost(s) about story world design.

Ed describes how over the past decade or so, narrative-driven massive open world games have become hugely popular. Such games tell hundreds of interconnected stories with thousands of characters. Games placed in a historical context, such as Assassin’s Creed, typically employ historians to ensure the accuracy of these stories, the setting, artefacts, and characters. Continue Reading
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5 Feb, 2018 • Case studies • 6214

Book review: An AASLH Guide to Making Public History

“To fully embrace the inclusive nature of history is to embrace the idea that each of us has “our” moment and each of us is entitled to an acknowledgement of that moment.” – Dina A. Bailey

In September 2010, Bob Beatty of the American Association of State and Local History – a for me hitherto unknown organization – invited me to be an observer in their online conference and provide him with an honest assessment of the experience. I accepted and soon found myself learning about the many history organizations focusing on larger and smaller stories from American history. It was a great experience.

I revisited my assessment in light of a new book edited by Bob Beatty, the AASLH’s Guide to Making Public History. My main (and in fact only) criticism at the time was the apologetic attitude of many speakers in the online conference. Although they discussed essential topics and presented inspirational cases, it regularly felt as if they thought their work unworthy of the public’s attention. The same cannot be said of Bob’s new guide, which presents America’s (public) history organizations as more lively and relevant than ever, pressing challenges notwithstanding.

Bob’s Guide to Making Public History is a wide-ranging book, bringing together essays by important thinkers from between 2008-2017 on topics such as entrepreneurship, change management, relevance, partnerships, etc. Key themes in the book include financial and institutional stability, change and transformation, collections, diversity and inclusion, and the relevance of the history field as a whole. Each essay is introduced by Bob, who adds invaluable context and additional sources.

(Many of Bob’s contributions are appearing on his Medium.)

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25 Jan, 2018 • Technology, Thoughts about museums • 9300

Futureproofing the digital museum
The museum of the future is an organisation influenced by social and technological change. Recently, on this blog, I’ve been focusing on social over technological change. This post is different.

Technology is changing the world, and it is doing so rapidly. Advances in technology are also directly affecting museums and other cultural institutions, and the role they play (or do not play).
- Blockchains and similar technologies are redefining trust. Cryptocurrencies may be a fad, but for institutions proud of and relying on being trusted sources of information, the underlying technology is not.
- Artificial Intelligence will replace curators, more or less. Plus deep learning algorithms may use online museum collections to perfect their skills.
- Robots, so far, have only been spotted in staff roles at museums. Give it a few years, and robots will be a museum audience.
- Games. Somewhere between PlayStation 2 – the last console I owned – and PS4 something massive happened, and not just in graphics. Where game reviews used to focus on the hard side of things (glitches, gibs, guns), the ones I watch now on YouTube judge a game by the empathy players develop for the characters and the depth of the story. Wow.
- Privacy.
- Security.
- And good old social media, which is unrecognisable compared to ten years ago when it started to dominate museum debates. (How long has it been since you left a comment on a blog? Scroll down and win a prize!)
None of these and other trends are likely to reverse and time soon. Many of these trends are overwhelming for those of us who are not in the driver’s seat of technological innovation. Most museums are not in said driver’s seat. They’re not even riding on the same bus. Continue Reading
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2 Jan, 2018 • Case studies, Workshops • 5887

From the archives: a warming up game for 2018
Best wishes for the new year to all my readers! Last year, I received a lot of enthusiastic responses to the free Cards Against Creativity game I shared with you. So, I’ll start 2018 with another free game from the archives, and a much simpler one to play. It’s a warming up game and takes about 60-90 minutes to play.

Potatoes* – The Exhibition

A game of collective storytelling to discover the diversity of stories, ideas, and perspectives in any organisation. Play it with your colleagues as a warming up exercise for the new year or at the start of a new project to get the creative juices flowing.

You need:

Sufficient paper, pens, 6-40 colleagues, empty space (e.g., the floor or a huge whiteboard).

You also need a topic (in the example: potatoes, but (*) it can be anything).

How to play?
- Collectively, decide on the topic. It should be a topic everyone has an opinion or ideas about. For instance, potatoes.
- Ask everyone individually to write down on a sheet of paper one or a few things they know about the topic. This can be a story, a fact, an opinion, a surprising insight. One idea per sheet of paper. (5 minutes)
- Collectively, place together ideas that are related and label these groups of ideas. For instance, “historical facts,” “personal anecdotes,” “applications.” This is called affinity mapping.
- Divide all participants into groups. Each group selects one group of ideas (a topic), ideally something they care or know something about.
- Each group will briefly interview the other groups with the question, “what would you like to know about this topic?” (5 minutes)
- Each group designs a story about their topic, bringing in their ideas and opinions while trying to answer some of the questions in the room. (10 minutes)
- Each group tells their story (in 2 minutes) to the other participants.
- Individually, as a wrap-up, each participant writes down responses to two prompts: 1) Something I did not know before, and 2) Something I’d like to learn more about. Collect these answers, for instance on a flip chart, and reflect on them. What are surprising new insights? To what extent does the collective know more than the individual? How can this experience be turned into better stories for your organisation?
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