What About the Little Guy?
I consider myself a computer person. Not a “professional” computer person; I don’t have a degree in Computer Science and I certainly do not spend my days creating or perfecting complicated software programs, but I’m a computer person in the sense that I am good with computers. Computers are a huge part of both my personal and my professional life. Working for a museum, I spend the majority of my day checking email, using word processing programs to write grants, fidgeting with Excel and QuickBooks to create grant budgets and generate monthly financial reports, and if I cannot find an answer to something…oh, the power of Google. The computer is not just a technology that helps to make my job easier…it is a necessity. Grant applications must be typed; budgets almost always need to be created in Excel; and for a number of federal grants, applications must be submitted via Grants.gov…no more hard copies. But up until two years ago, these technologies that most of take for granted were not available to me at the Museum. When I started working at the Carousel Museum in 2005, all of the computers were running Windows 98, there were only two working printers in the office, only one computer had internet, and if you can believe this, it was dial up. That’s right…dial up. When I sat down at my desk on my first day, I honestly thought I entered the twilight zone. How could such a fabulous cultural organization be so primitive? Well, it did not take me long to figure out the non-profit world. It is not that the Carousel Museum, or other Museums without computers or high tech gadgets did not want to incorporate technology into the work place…they just couldn’t afford it.
The emergence of the web has allowed museums to present their collections and other archival materials to a larger, more diverse audience. Thanks to the internet, collections that are housed in a museum in Georgia can be viewed by anyone with an internet connection, if the museum in Georgia chooses to publish its collection online. Now, please keep in mind that creating an online exhibit is not an easy feat and certainly takes time and money, but for the museums that can afford to do so, they are making their collections more accessible to the general public. And with new tools such as social tagging, museum collections are more searchable and accessible than ever. The Steve.museum: An Ongoing Experiment in Social Tagging, Folksonomy and Museums, provides a detailed and cohesive overview of the benefits of social tagging. According to Susan Chun, social tagging, or the creation of key words to categorize content, is making searching online collections easier and more efficient. Tagging tools such as Flickr and Delicious can be accessed and edited by the general public, and tagging tools similar to these can help to make museum collections more accessible. The general public can give a voice to pieces in a collection by assigning vernacular keywords to pieces in a collection that are more understandable to the general public. The steve.museum project has proven that many individuals are utilizing social tagging to enhance museum collections, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to enhance social tagging software. Chun argues that if the software is easy to use, is affordable, and fosters an environment in which the general public and the museums work together, than social tagging can greatly enhance museum collections. Matthew MacArthur also points out in, Can Museums Allow Online Users to Become Participants, that while social tagging and other internet tools such as blogs and wikis, help to enhance museums collections, the general public and the museum must work together to create content that is accurate. Museums are a trusted source of information, and while the general public can contribute to and enhance museum collections, in essence it is still the museum voice that must remain the strongest voice. Museum curators are still the professionals, but they are able to better do their job with the help of the general public.
I think social tagging is fantastic. I love the fact that the general public can contribute to an online collection, and add value to the collection by pointing out keywords that some curators may not have thought of. My fear, however, is that many small museums will not be able to afford to digitize their collections and make them available online. Again, if small museums cannot afford to keep up technologically with other museums, will they suffer?
The Council on Library and Information Resources conducted a survey on Digital Cultural Heritage Initiatives and Their Sustainability Concerns in order to determine what types of organizations were initiating digital projects, what kinds of products and services were being utilized, where the financial support for the digital initiatives was coming from, and whether or not the projects were sustainable. Now, based on some of the examples I looked at, such as the American Council of Learned Societies history e-book project and the Americans for the Arts Reference Database, these projects appear to be very well organized and very well funded. Many of the foundations or organizations that fund digital projects, such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services, provide large sums of money to many organizations to implement digital projects. Which, of course, is fantastic and wonderful and funding from organizations such as these has lead to the creation of many fantastic digital projects (who doesn’t enjoy the 9/11 digital archive or the American Memory project?) I hope the funding keeps coming. What does concern me, however, is the lack of funding for smaller institutions who need small tech grants to purchase basic necessities such as new computers and maybe a website redesign. I remember the first grant I ever helped write for the Carousel Museum was to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. I cannot remember the name of the grant, but it was for small museums who were trying to upgrade their technological infrastructure. Perfect. Exactly what the Carousel Museum needed. So I spent hours getting price quotes, talking to different computer networking companies and doing other research until I had a pretty good idea as to what the Museum needed in terms of technological infrastructure; five new computers, peer to peer networking, a wireless router and so on. I was excited. And disappointed when the Museum got a rejection letter back from IMLS. The reason the Carousel Museum’s grant was not funded was because the reviewer did not think our proposal was “ambitious enough and could not figure out how an organization our size could be so inept technologically.” I wanted to call that reviewer up and call him/her a number of horrible names I only reserve for Sarah Palin. Inept? I didn’t think we were inept. I just thought we were a small organization that needed help. And we needed someone to give us the start up money to get on the right path. I think I only asked for like $7,000. So after I got rejected, I took a look at the IMLS website to see the kinds of projects that got funded. All of the projects were like $30,000 projects. I was so confused. I thought this grant was supposed to be for small museums and other non-profits who were trying to upgrade their outdated infrastructure? Nope. I think the reviewers at IMLS just “assumed” that all organizations already had that capability (only six months later, you were no longer allowed to submit hard copy applications…everything had to be done online, and while I was using dial up internet, the stupid server continued to time out on me and I was unable to submit any more proposals) and therefore asking for funding for new computers was hardly “ambitious” enough.
I don’t know what is going to happen to small museums. I embrace technology. I love it. I think online collections, podcasts, searchable archives and museum Facebook pages are going to revolutionize the way we think and use museums. But I still fear for the little guy…and that would be me.
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