If/When we re-write our code that pulls our collection database into the website, this has given some good tips on how we might make it more accessible. PH is really breaking ground on this and getting great results. MW conferences always make me excited to see how well the Walker is leading / keeping up with the museum world online, but also lets me know there are clearly institutions out there who are far ahead of us in certain areas.
Sebastian Chan – Powerhouse Museum
- Seb started by discussing the importance of “browse” – serendipity in finding related objects you weren’t originally looking for. Real life works this way: libraries, supermarkets, etc.
- Why do people explore in this way? How do they do it at PH? Two taxonomies:
- Prompted to see “similar objects” – internal subject taxonomy with grouping hierarchy. These subjects are applied by the museum.
- Also have user tags to form taxonomies. Anonymous tagging, anyone can do it.
- tag searches make up 40% of their searches.
- Huge volume of searches, they can view them in real time and use the data to increase accuracy. In fact, collecting too much data they literally can’t analyze it all – going to bring in some universities to help if they can.
Man, that brings back some memories.
It is interesting, in this age of tagging and folksonomies, to note that collections.walkerart.org’s notion of related records is pretty useful – one of those rare instances where the metadata is actually pretty good.
Comment by Joe Slag — April 13, 2007 @ 9:35 am
@Joe – You’re right, and the good metadata makes me excited to dig back into the project despite the hassle of the FMP export… The collections site even had basic tagging when it launched – in many ways it was really, really ahead of it’s time. (Maybe too much, seems like no one knew what to do with the tagging option)
Did you check out PH’s collection tagging at all?
Comment by Nate Schroeder — April 16, 2007 @ 10:57 am