Defining Open Authority

An attempt to illustrate, define, & discuss the intersection between museum
authority & participatory digital culture. | Ask me about museums & Wikipedia.

Posts tagged "museums"

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6 months ago 1 note open authority TED science museums Indianapolis culture

TEDxIndy: “Indianapolis as a Science Museum: Urban Infrastructure for Science Learning,” Tim Carter

What would happen if we didn’t have any walls for our museums? If we took the learning from museums outside of those walls, what would happen?

We need to challenge the paradigm that the environment is not the city, that it’s somewhere else.

What if we look to the artistic community to do the interpretation for scientists. Scientists provide content; artists provide the interpretation and the teaching. That collaboration can be a powerful one.

We can now build this idea of an informal science learning environment, that doesn’t have any walls, that takes place in a city, and is curated by artists, informed by science.

I attended TEDxIndy last month, which had a theme of Design in Learning, and was really inspired by this talk. I see this as a future-future form of Open Authority, where the “temple” (authority) that was once the museum is reconfigured within an urban environment.  I also see this as a new form of “openness,” as well. Rather than curators, in the traditional sense, opening up their interpretation to the general public, it is scientist curators opening up their interpretation to artists, drawing on their strengths to bring new relevance to topics. I think this may be happening in small ways around the US (and world), but this might be the first time that a more formed idea has been put out there. There’s so much potential here and I look forward to seeing how Tim’s idea develops!

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6 months ago 1 note open authority culture24 museums world war i great war centenary

Open Authority example #6 100 First Air War Objects, Royal Air Force Museum Website: 100 First Air War Objects Press: Culture24, “RAF Museum Asks Public to Choose Objects for its World War One Centenary Exhibit” To help us in our aim of making all the Museum’s exhibitions as accessible as possible, we would like to invite the public – our future visitors – to tell us which objects and their stories inspire them, and those that they would like to hear more about The museum, which has been engaging audiences for some time by sharing its archive of First World War photographs on Flickr, is also hoping  people will provide their own stories through letters, photographs and artefacts left by relatives who served in the Royal Air Force, or supported its efforts, during the First World War.

Open Authority example #6

100 First Air War Objects, Royal Air Force Museum

To help us in our aim of making all the Museum’s exhibitions as accessible as possible, we would like to invite the public – our future visitors – to tell us which objects and their stories inspire them, and those that they would like to hear more about

The museum, which has been engaging audiences for some time by sharing its archive of First World War photographs on Flickr, is also hoping  people will provide their own stories through letters, photographs and artefacts left by relatives who served in the Royal Air Force, or supported its efforts, during the First World War.

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7 months ago 7 notes open authority ignite museums technology culture art

Ignite:MCN | Museum Computer Network 2012 | Seattle, Washington | Opening Party-EMP Museum

1: Over the past few years I’ve followed along as museums first became terrified of the idea of “the crowd”  - with predictions running rampant about the death of the curator….and now, slowly but surely, we’ve begun to embrace the crowd.

2: But, at this point it’s more like we have the tiger by its tail. User-generated content, crowdsourcing, open platforms - these are all the cool new things-  but there are still fears about what that means for museum authority.

3: So I began to form my master’s research around the question: How can museums best integrate visitor insights and interests, and still maintain our authority and established reputations as experts.

4: As I began my research I already had a foundation: which was Duncan Cameron’s classic 1971 article, “The Museum: A Temple or the Forum.” In my museum studies program “the temple and the forum” was pounded into our heads so much that it essentially became its own meme.

5. But it’s easy to forget that Cameron was not saying that museums shouldn’t be temples.  It was that museums should be temples AND forums for dialogue. The two should be related but distinct. And remember, this was 1971! I’ve learned that museums aren’t slow to come UP with the big ideas, but they can sometimes be slow to implement them. (This was actually our class t-shirt.)

6: So what next? Well, my work with Wikipedia already had me considering where museums fit into the world of open, collaborative communities. So I decided to dig deeper into what made the open-source movement tick.

7: And it didn’t take me long to discover that the open-source movement had its OWN temple and forum metaphor — only it’s called the Cathedral and the Bazaar. I really was shocked by how closely these metaphors fit together, at first glance. And I was glad when these lessons from the cathedral and the bazaar really could be applied to our temple and forum.

8: Eric Raymond wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar in 1997- and it compares the Cathedral - which is top-down software development (like Microsoft) - with the Bazaar (Linux), where everyone is free to adapt and improve open source software together.

9: Raymond’s most important point is that, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” Or, The more people you have looking at a problem, the more quickly you’ll find a solution. I feel like that’s  “crowdsourcing” before it was called “crowdsourcing.”

10: So we have temples and forums and cathedrals and bazaars. Things were getting a little crowded so I decided to moosh the two metaphors together. Museums should go one step beyond the forum, and embrace the collaborative bazaar, instead.

11: We can be temples and bazaars! But since it takes a lot to explain what I mean by “temple and bazaar,” I decided to cut to the chase and name this “Open Authority.” “Openness” is needed to remain relevant in our insanely collaborative world. “Authority” is needed to bring expertise to all of that user-generated content.

12: The curator is absolutely not dead. They’re needed more now than ever to make sense of the dialogue happening on open platforms. Maintaining authority and being open do not have to be mutually exclusive. 

13: And that’s what Open Authority is: The coming together of museum expertise with meaningful contributions from our visitors. You combine the two.

14: A lot of very smart people talk about the public value of museums, the commons, sharing is caring! But sharing is also scary. I think that putting a name to something makes it less scary, and that’s really all that Open Authority is doing. Putting a name to the ideas you’ve already been discussing - and doing.

15: People keep asking me, “But what does Open Authority ACTUALLY look like?” The thing is, I don’t completely know. And it’s a thing I think we should be defining together. I do feel that there might be a sort of spectrum of open authority, but I don’t know what that looks like yet, either.

16: And I can say that the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History is definitely somewhere on that spectrum. Nina Simon calls her museum an “open platform” where all visitors can contribute their stories, ideas, and objects to exhibits.

17: In the end, we need to PRACTICE open authority, by collaborating together, in order to PRODUCE a more precise definition of it. We’ve already been discussing this new vision for the future. Now we just need to go out and put it into practice.

18: I hope you’ll join me in the discussion. You can use the #openauth hash tag. And I’m proud to say that Rob Stein made up that hashtag, which means it’s a real thing. Thank you.

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7 months ago open authority museums art participation santa cruz

Open Authority Example #5: Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (the whole museum) Website: santacruzmah.org Blog: Museum 2.0, “Traveling Couches & Other Emergent Surprises Courtesy of an Open Platform.” To me, this is an example of how the aggregation of participatory practices fundamentally changes the role that an organization has in its community. We’ve created a very consistent message about being an open platform for local creativity—through exhibitions, event design, online, even the conversations we have with the press. And while we are still continually seeking out great partners and cultural combinations, we’re not always the instigators of those opportunities. The more we structure in participation, the more people feel empowered to bring their own brilliance to the table, spontaneously and completely beyond our expectations. The magic isn’t by design. It happens because people see an opening where there wasn’t one before. The MAH is Nina Simon’s Participatory Museum in practice, and in a big way. Rather than having one program that centers on visitor particiption & contributions, this premise forms the philosophy of the entire museum. This blog post summarizes the overall environment of the MAH really well.

Open Authority Example #5:

Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (the whole museum)

To me, this is an example of how the aggregation of participatory practices fundamentally changes the role that an organization has in its community. We’ve created a very consistent message about being an open platform for local creativity—through exhibitions, event design, online, even the conversations we have with the press. And while we are still continually seeking out great partners and cultural combinations, we’re not always the instigators of those opportunities. The more we structure in participation, the more people feel empowered to bring their own brilliance to the table, spontaneously and completely beyond our expectations. The magic isn’t by design. It happens because people see an opening where there wasn’t one before.

The MAH is Nina Simon’s Participatory Museum in practice, and in a big way. Rather than having one program that centers on visitor particiption & contributions, this premise forms the philosophy of the entire museum. This blog post summarizes the overall environment of the MAH really well.

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7 months ago 4 notes open authority university college london qrator qr qr code museums

Open Authority Example #4: QRator Institution: University College London Website: qrator.org Blog: Digital Urban, “Introducing QRator” QRator is a collaborative project between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, and UCL Museums and Collections, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, museum curators, and academic researchers, to enhance museum interpretation, community engagement and establish new connections to museum exhibit content.  I’ll venture to say that QRator may be one of the best examples of stimultaneous on-site & online open authority. As such, it’s a project I’ve followed with great interest!

Open Authority Example #4:

QRator

QRator is a collaborative project between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, and UCL Museums and Collections, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, museum curators, and academic researchers, to enhance museum interpretation, community engagement and establish new connections to museum exhibit content. 

I’ll venture to say that QRator may be one of the best examples of stimultaneous on-site & online open authority. As such, it’s a project I’ve followed with great interest!

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7 months ago open authority Grand Rapids Michigan oral history history collections museums

Open Authority Example #3: ArtifactGR Institution: Grand Rapids Public Museum Website: artifactgr.org This fall we are beginning a project by professionally photographing 500 of the artifacts of the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Visitors to the website will eventually be encouraged to attach their own oral and written histories to the artifact, giving them a more complete and in-depth story. We’ve asked community members to write about objects that caught their attention so we can share them here.

Open Authority Example #3:

ArtifactGR

This fall we are beginning a project by professionally photographing 500 of the artifacts of the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Visitors to the website will eventually be encouraged to attach their own oral and written histories to the artifact, giving them a more complete and in-depth story. We’ve asked community members to write about objects that caught their attention so we can share them here.

Download high-res photo

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8 months ago 1 note open authority museums open authority toys

Open Authority Example #1: 100 Toys (& Their Stories) that Define Our Childhood Institution: The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis Website: www.childrensmuseum.org/100toys Blog Mention 1: Know Your Own Bone, Colleen Dilenschneider Blog Mention 2: New Media Consortium, Lori Byrd Phillips The Children’s Museum searched its collection and chose 100 of the most iconic objects that have defined American childhood in the last century. Everyone has a story to share about their favorite toys, whether it’s finding a high-demand Cabbage Patch Doll ® in the ‘80s, waging battles with toy soldiers in the ‘60s, or collecting Beanie Babies ® in the ‘90s. After over 24,000 votes, our online visitors chose the below toys as the Top 20 toys that define our childhood. These 20 toys are now featured in a special display at the museum, alongside selected stories from the over 600 submissions received.

Open Authority Example #1:

100 Toys (& Their Stories) that Define Our Childhood

The Children’s Museum searched its collection and chose 100 of the most iconic objects that have defined American childhood in the last century. Everyone has a story to share about their favorite toys, whether it’s finding a high-demand Cabbage Patch Doll ® in the ‘80s, waging battles with toy soldiers in the ‘60s, or collecting Beanie Babies ® in the ‘90s.

After over 24,000 votes, our online visitors chose the below toys as the Top 20 toys that define our childhood. These 20 toys are now featured in a special display at the museum, alongside selected stories from the over 600 submissions received.

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9 months ago museums Open Authority

Defining Open Authority

Hello again world! My blog has been on a bit of a hiatus while I’ve focused on some important GLAM-Wiki organizing in the US and some incredible social media projects at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. And, oh yea, while I completed my Masters and finished up my thesis! (Phew, so glad that’s over!)

It is my thesis, however, that brings me to this post. I am excited to revamp this blog to focus on the topic that I’ve researched, pondered, analyzed, and written about non-stop over the past year: Open Authority. Well, it wasn’t called that nine months ago. But I decided that things, such as the threat of participatory culture on curatorial authority, seem to be less scary when you put a term to them.

I’ve now had the opportunity to blog about Open Authority in a couple of different venues, and have had it blogged about by some colleagues as well. (I’m telling you, take a scary thing - and name it - and it’s suddenly so much more blog-worthy!) I have now submitted a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal and will be awaiting the results of that for some time. In the meantime, it’s worth further pursuing what Open Authority actually is.

I have now renamed my blog “Defining Open Authority,” and I will use this space to do just that. I will:

  • Post resources that relate to openness, transparency, participatory culture, and institutional authority in the digital age.
  • Share examples of participatory & open experiences in museums and other cultural institutions.
  • Discuss with you where these examples lie on a yet-to-be-determined “Spectrum of Open Authority.”

Disclaimer: Wikipedia is in fact my core example of Open Authority, so far. I will of course continue to post a lot about Wikipedia, the Wikipedia community, and the Wikimedia Foundation. But let this not deter you from seeing the bigger picture of what Open Authority can actually entail. Feel free to call me out on any biases that may crop up here or there. : )

I hope you’ll join me in defining Open Authority! I’m rather excited about the idea, and I hope you are too. And just think, what would a concept about participatory culture be if not formed in part through collaboration on a digital platform?

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