“. . . essentially collaborative . . .”

“. . . a commitment to the openness of knowledge.”

” . . . interdisciplinary; by necessity it breaks down boundaries between disciplines . . .”

“Making stuff, and using it to collaborate and connect with the public . . .”

“. . . genuine interdisciplinarity . . . open communication.”

“. . . an inclusive, open community . . .”

“. . . using interdisciplinary approaches that may go beyond the comfort level of traditional scholars . . .”

They speak to me in large part because I really come from the museum (specifically public history) and library worlds, and many of those celebrated features of DH are fundamental aspects and approaches of those other fields as well—and have been for a long time. The practitioners in those fields? Well, they’re my people.

Libraries, museums, the digital humanities, and other public-facing humanities efforts share some or all of the following values:

• Collaboration
• Inclusivity
• Interdisciplinarity
• Open Access
• Open Process
• Open Source
• Involvement of the public and/or public “communities of passion”

I’ve started referring to this larger perspective as the open humanities. It’s a broad term that encompasses those values outlined above, values shared by many libraries, museums, public humanities projects and practitioners of all kinds and standing in opposition to much of the traditional approach of “solo scholar” research and closed publication.

If I were to offer a first-pass attempt at capturing these elements in a definition, I might say something like: the open humanities are those aspects of the humanities aimed at democratizing production and consumption of humanities research.  It makes no judgment on the precise manner or praxis in which this work is done or delivered.

And because I work in a digital humanities shop, I wanted to show my take on the relationship between digital humanities and the wider open humanities:

The digital humanities are a part of the open humanities to the extent that those same values are held, though of course the purely digital elements (the code, the markup, the hardware) are unique to the digital humanities and live largely outside of OH. That being said, much of DH—the commitment to open source, the collaborative nature of the field, the interdisciplinarity—is open.

As a comparison, the public humanities are virtually entirely open by my definition, so they are included entirely within the circle of OH almost entirely open by my definition, but as Sheila Brennan points out there are still elements even within those institutions that don’t support openness at every turn. (See my original diagram here.) There is also some overlap between public humanities and the digital humanities, as some—but not all—public humanities projects are also digital.  You see how this starts getting a little overly-Venn-diagrammatical, but you can probably see where I’m going.

Those who know me know that I’m no coder—some might say that means I’m not much of a digital humanist. I’d say I’m a proud open humanist with one foot solidly in the digital. That counts as DH for me.

But whatever it is–and my knowledge of the people involved tells me that it’s definitely not going to be a disappointment–other observations can already be made about the process based on what we do know so far.

And the key one for me is this: #oneweek shows the merits of monotasking.  Or more broadly, that when you pull people out of their ordinary work environments and patterns and instead go full immersion in an environment focused on one thing, incredible things are possible.

I’ve seen the same thing happen with the summertime residential Virginia Governor’s School program which my wife directed for five years.  Her staff of fifty–a faculty made up of college professors and high school teachers from around the country and a committed, creative student life staff–built an incredible learning environment for four weeks that annually changed the lives of 400 gifted high school students.

One of the things that always struck me during the program was how hard it was to “break in” from the outside; sometimes frustrating, sure, when some banal but important thing having to do with scheduling some family event or question about a bill needed her attention.  But mostly it was just an impressive testimony to the creation of this focused and finite world, the throwing up of barriers that cut out the rest of the “real world” so that the authors of the program could concentrate fiercely on creating something the world had never seen before.

I imagine this is what happens at Pixar during their creative process.  It certainly happens at professional football training camps: players are pulled out of their daily routines and thrown in together to concentrate on this one thing at the exclusion of everything else.

Successful ingredients appear to include: a place apart, a finite length of time, a concentrated (and concentrating) group of people, a specific charge, and creativity.

The result?  Magic.  It happened at Governor’s School, and it happened at #oneweek.

And the takeaway question for me: how can we replicate that effect in the ordinary workplace, where multitasking tends to rob us from this kind of approach?

My practice as an institutional social media manager has generally been not to follow our followers, mostly for reasons of convenience along with a little twist of “gut says not to” thrown in.

But when confronted with the direct question and in getting caught up on the positive possibilities, my subsequent reaction was that museums following their followers is a great idea: after all, visitors are the life-blood of any institution and any opportunity to show that we appreciate and think highly of them should be seized without delay!

Then I heard again from those who thought it isn’t such a hot idea, and figured I should do some examination of the whole notion.

And upon this more measured reflection, taking into account comments in the various discussions above and weighing arguments on both sides of the equation, I’ve reached the conclusion that as a general rule, museums ought not make a habit of immediately following those who follow them.

Why ever not?  Aren’t these the people we want to build a relationship with?

The objection is, your honor, that doing so assumes a relationship not yet in evidence.

Pros and Cons

Let’s turn the question around a bit. In thinking about my own life on Twitter as an individual, how would I respond if an institution (say Honda, my local paper, or a museum) were to follow me?

On the one hand, if I see that the institution in question follows a large number of people, I don’t take their following me as a personal gesture outside of “we appreciate you.”  I certainly don’t think they’re seriously watching their tweetstream, so I don’t particularly worry about them cadging much personal info from me.  For me, any privacy-related concerns are lost in the volume of tweets the institution is receiving.

On the other hand, that very shotgun approach shows a lack of discernment that I find troubling. Institution, don’t you care about who you follow, or are we all just one great roaring mass of people?

But on the other hand, how else does an institution show honest appreciation to the people who follow them? Twitter doesn’t provide a whole lot of ways to say “Hey, you’re an individual we want to be connected to.”

But on the other hand, wouldn’t a one-off @ reply of thanks do the trick there?  “@visitorperson, we saw you started following us today. Thanks so much!”

On the other hand, maybe the institution might consider simply asking if their followers want to be followed in turn.  That, however, strikes me as a highly awkward and uncertain proposition. “Um, really, I don’t care that much about you, Honda.”

But on the other hand, what about direct messages? After all, they’re only available if each follows the other, and wouldn’t that be a nice way for an institution to get feedback?  This is true–we are cutting ourselves off of one possible channel of direct communication.  But to be fair, there certainly are plenty of others almost as easy.  Perhaps the solution there is to periodically tweet your institution’s main e-mail address (or a comments address you have one) and encourage them to contact you that way.

But in the end, doesn’t the individual (the “stalkee”) really have control?  They can always block the institution if the advance is unwanted.

On the other, why force them to have even one moment of “ick” feeling from an institution they might otherwise like and support?

Truth be told, there are no absolutes here. If I care a lot about or have an emotional attachment to the institution in question, I’m flattered (“ooh, they like me!”) but if I don’t, then I’m more than a little put off.

The point is, as the institutional tweeter, I can’t assume that our follower has that emotional attachment to my institution.

So where does that leave me?  In the end, my gut says that fewer people will be upset if I don’t follow them (even if it would be welcome) than will be upset if I do (when it is unwelcome), so I’ll stay with “not following, generally.”

But what’s so wrong with following a new follower?

Let me hand the mic to Judith Martin, who in her mild-yet-incisive way inveighs against the assumption of intimacy in a business relationship: “Miss Manners would like to point out that the pretense of intimacy among strangers in a business association . . . can be seriously annoying to either side.”

She goes on:

Why then is it not only more and more usual, but often vehemently defended?

The answer has to do with our noble commitment to egalitarianism, and a mistaken notion that it necessarily precludes privacy.  Among equals, are we not all friends?

Well, no. Equals get to choose their own friends, and while most people enjoy a cheerful demeanor while transacting the commercial details of daily life, not everyone wants to extend the privileges of friendship under those circumstances.

This is by no means to say that many restaurant patrons, for example, are not gratified to be recognized at places they customarily patronize, and to engage in such pleasantries as asking after one another’s health or family.

The point about such chatting, as in such other contacts between strangers as conversations on trains or airplanes, is that it should be agreeable to both sides, and that it should not assume the prerogatives of those who are on really familiar terms. [emphasis added in both cases]

Heed Miss Manners.

IF we as an institution develop a relationship within Twitter (or outside of it) and/or you as an individual follower seem especially invested in our institution as evinced through retweets of our tweets, feedback about our programs, and so on–well then I’ll happily follow you and think that doing so is very reasonable.  Just not before such a relationship is in evidence.

And one museum following another is simply the museum community supporting and learning from each other, so I would encourage that practice without reservation.

If a follower makes it clear that they’d be happy if you followed them, well by all means do so if you think it right.

So what about this idea of a #followavisitor Day?

Maybe instead of focusing on following our visitors–which may or may not be welcome–March 1 (or some other date) can be dedicated to institutions showing thanks for visitors both online and off? I doubt a museum’s tweeple will be upset if on this grand and glorious day the very heartfelt thanks of the institution is broadcast generally and very intentionally to all of them at the same time rather than individually.  Same for those who visit via Facebook, Flickr, the main web page, etc.

And there could and should be an offline component, expressing the same thanks to people who visit in person.  Maybe offer discounts or cookies or free shows.  Basically, I’d argue that #followavisitor day should be a multimodal tidal wave of appreciation for museum-goers of all kinds!

I’m all for it.

For me, there is one core characteristic for “2.0″ in the web, library, and museum worlds in which I live, move, and have my being: 2.0 = the lowering of barriers.

On the web, the main barrier to participation is code. So barrier-surmounting technologies include blogs and Twitter and WYSIWYG website editors–anything characterized by its ability to get users up and running as participants in the conversation without a lot of effort (read: coding).  Ajax, CSS, XML–these things, while critical behind the scenes for many a 2.0 tool, are not themselves 2.0.**  They are not intuitive; they do not lower the barriers between average user and participation.  YouTube and Flickr and their simple interfaces do.

For museums, the big barrier is between the public and the institution as monolith.  It is that fabled voice of authority that so often gets in the way of public participation. The conversation has too often (until more recent years) been very much one-way, with the public seen as supplicants at the Temple of Knowledge: lucky to be there and expected to be quiet and take what is given them by those who know better than they.

Museum 2.0, then, is about breaking down that barrier and engaging with instead of talking at.  And those efforts should be both technology-driven and not; or better yet, Museum 2.0 is not really about technology at all.  In fact, it is a temptation for museums to set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and say “Hey, we’re doing Museum 2.0!”  But if those efforts are about using new media to send out old, carefully-controlled messages (announcements of events, calls for membership, etc.) that flow only from institution out to public, then all they’re doing is another form of marketing.  They may say they’re engaged with their public, but they’re not.

Rather, this form of 2.0 is too often the illusion of engagement in the same way that customer service is too often the illusion of caring.  Without a sincere spirit underlying it all, it is a hollow act.

I’ve said it before, but I think that a museum curator simply having lunch with museum visitors and talking about their work is doing more Museum 2.0 than all the one-way, marketing-oriented site designing, Facebooking, and tweeting combined.

Libraries are in a similar place.  But their primary barrier is library anxiety–the intimidation and inferiority that patrons feel when they enter libraries and don’t know what to do, which combine to make them feel ashamed to ask for help.  It freezes them in their tracks.

That barrier is broken through not simply by better customer service (that is too late in the relationship), but by a real commitment to hospitality at an institution-wide level. Everything from the signage and lighting to the reference training and catalog to the outreach beforehand and follow-up afterward should be geared towards making the stranger feel at home in this strange land.  They have to learn–more properly, libraries have to teach–that a library is not a scary place but a welcoming and helpful one.

Real hospitality reaches deeper than mere customer service, which is mostly about behavioral training, into the fabric of the institution itself.  And hospitality scholar Elizabeth Telfer argues that it is “appropriate motivation” that sets the truly hospitable person apart, a “genuine concern” that separates the truly hospitable behavior from its merely commercial counterfeit.  I would argue that to properly break down the barriers thrown by patron anxiety and library coolness–to instead be a next-generation Library 2.0–the sense of hospitality has to permeate the relationship from beginning to end.  Then the wall gets well and truly breached.

The early web and the museums and libraries of the 20th century all had high barriers to entry–many of us figured out ways in anyway. And now we’re in a position to help our institutions to lower those barriers, to democratize participation.  I urge it. That’s a 2.0 world worthy of the name, in my opinion. One in which everybody is welcome(d) to take part.

And on that note: Death to the aristos! Happy Bastille Day!

* I’m very aware of the arguments about whether the term “2.0″ actually means anything or if it’s just an empty buzzword.  Count me as somebody who doesn’t much care whether it should have meaning on a larger sense; I’m primarily interested in reading how others actually seem to use it (different in different contexts) and, here, in pointing out what I mean when I use it.

** So what, then, are all the technologies like mashups, XML, Java and the rest, if not 2.0? I actually see them as web 3.0 technologies–not for the casual user or faint of heart. 1.0 was the early web, with its need for knowledge of code and servers; 2.0 is easy entry, democratization, and increased participation; 3.0 is about more complex connections being made. Museum 3.0, for instance, may be more about building connections among institutions (e.g. participation in a sort of OCLC for museums, formalized connections with related “communities of passion,” and the like).

It was, in the profoundest sense of the word, awesome. THATCamp is a kind of crazy quilt of a hundred digital humanists of diverse backgrounds (academics, libraries, archives, museums, archaeology, documentary film, and more) and varying positions on the technical spectra (code hackers, designers, content expertise, points all in between) coming together to talk about the things they are passionate about.  It is user-generated, meaning the participants proposed the program, open discussion was at the heart of the matter, and Twitter enriched the entire experience. Completely the opposite of most academic and professional conferences, and I went them all to now be more like this.

You might want to check out others‘ reviews of the unconference format as lived out at THATCamp; learn the top 10 reasons THATCamp beats the pants off of traditional conferences; and read about excellent suggestions for improving future THATCamps.  Finally, to really immerse yourself, check out the THATCamp Twitter archive and the wiki.

Whew. That being said, onto my main point:

Three themes that stood out for me @ THATCamp

None of it revelatory to those who were there, but still–they jumped out to me during the weekend and after.

I. Library/Archive/Museum and Scholar Convergence

A sense of collaboration ran throughout THATCamp; indeed, collaboration could be said to be the life’s blood of the digital humanities, as was often discussed throughout the weekend. I’m used to considerations of library/archive/museum (LAM) convergence–been talking about that wonderful Venn diagram since before library school. The idea is that there is a lot of overlap in purpose, function, and employee skill set among those institutions and it’s a thing very much worth talking about, thereby making all three institutions faster/better/stronger.

But this is the first time I’ve been at a conference where academics and those who work at LAMs were so excited about the possibility of working all together on projects. In one of the last sessions, we had a frank discussion that touched on this very point: traditionally, there has been a kind of tension between, say, teaching faculty and librarians on campus, with the librarians often feeling put down (and put upon) by the faculty. Or as another example, scholars who have felt like museums ignore their work while mounting related exhibits.

But those traditional models are dissolving in the face of a more open approach. Many were the comments–explicit and implicit–throughout the weekend that pointed towards the increased success (and flat-out fun) of projects that involve the skills and backgrounds of many players. The traditional walls are falling down and technology is a major reason that is happening.

So: collaboration crushes division. I’m always happy to be on the right side of history; in this case, I’m even happier to be on the right side of the future.

II. The Centrality of Tools

A quick check of the archive of the twitterstream shows 142 uses of the word “tool” or its variants in the backchannel talk over the course of the weekend; I can guarantee the word was uttered out loud at least as many times. The people at THATCamp are perhaps, like their Paleolithic ancestors, set apart from their own forebears by their use and appreciation of tools–digital ones, to be sure, but tools nonetheless. All the incredible historical and literary data that has gone online over the past fifteen or twenty years (on the order of tens of petabytes) is meaningless without some way to do something with it, and THATCamp folks are passionate about creating and using ever-more-innovative and helpful ways to mold and connect that data.

Which is something to be said, since by several accounts this year’s THATCamp was more conversational and less hands-on than last year’s. But even without as many intense coding sessions, it was clear that the participants aren’t just thinkers–they are doers.  It’s part of the digital humanities ethos.

III. Much love for the unconference model

My sense is that for a lot of us first-time campers, THATCamp was a revelation–it could be heard in the conversations we were having at dinner after the first night, seen in the backchannel tweatstream, and read in the blogs written after the fact. For many of us who had only been to traditional academic and professional conferences, THATCamp had us emerging from our gloomy previous experiences, blinking in the sunlight of cooperative, open participation.

The excitement has carried on, too. Folks are talking about regional THATCamps in (at last count) at least twelve locations: Central Virginia, New England, Texas/Austin, Pacific Northwest, Midwest, NY/NJ, Southeast, Oklahoma, Ontario, London,  Australia, the Great Lakes. And acolytes are talking about carrying the gospel to other organizations, too: AHA, AAM, SAA, the Virginia Forum, and Smithsonian 2.0. Related lunches may soon be held on Skype and at the Library of Congress.

There’s something about the digital humanities/THATCamp model that really speaks to folks: myself, I think it’s the creativity and collaboration.  The old model of the dusty scholar working alone amid his musty tomes, speaking occasionally to the four other people on the planet who share his narrow interest (and hoping to beat them all at the game), doesn’t cut it any more. Content specialization certainly won’t die, but the doing of it will entail a lot more collaboration and communication–it’s really inevitable, since the next generation of scholars will have largely grown up in a world with Web 2.0 tools and other online resources that both expand their worlds and pull them closer to their fingertips.

There will always be humanists who jealously guard their labors, for sure, just as their have always been humanists who are collaborative.  But the pendulum is shifting in favor of the latter.

Just look at how, in less than a week, the THATCamp unconference model has gone global.

One final note: I cannot say thank you enough to Dave Lester, Jeremy Boggs, Tom Scheinfeldt, Dan Cohen, and all the behind-the-scenes folks at the Center for History and New Media for putting on such an incredible, energizing weekend.

It was . . . awesome.

[These institutions] will be primary sites for civic dialogues about community interests and the policies that affect communities. They will be one of the most powerful agents in helping all children understand the future and ensuring they are prepared to take leadership roles in various sectors. . . . [These institutions] provide common experiences for diverse audiences, serving as safe public spaces for civic dialogue.

And this one:

Throughout the country, [these institutions] are rekindling civic engagement, promoting greater citizen participation, and encouraging increased involvement in community problem-solving and decision-making by developing community partnerships, facilitating local dialogue, and disseminating local data. These efforts are likely to garner greater community support and position [these institutions] as even more essential community-based institutions.

Which of the above is talking about libraries and which is talking about museums?  This overlapping? competing? view of these institutions is something I think bears some further exploration.

I am absolutely in favor of examining the convergences of libraries, archives, and museums–there’s no doubt in my mind that there are huge areas of overlap and expertise to share among these institutions.  That, I know from working the front lines of all three kinds of institutions.

But there’s still something that bothers me about the terrain that public libraries and museums seem to be staking out in terms of what they’ll “be” to their communities moving forward, especially with regard to what might be termed their non-traditional (which is not to say non-essential) roles in the communities they serve.

It’s as if planners (or marketers) for both kinds of institutions decided “Well, we’re not going to get anywhere if we stick with our core missions–what else can we offer our communities?  Hey, we’ve got the space–we’ll bill ourselves as de facto community centers!  That’ll bring the kids to our doors.”  I find myself wondering if there is a demand for such a role, especially in regards to museums, or if it’s a “if we build [our idea of what we could be], they will come.”  And if the latter is the case, are libraries and museums in danger of stepping on one another’s toes?  Which should be the go-to organization to fulfil these needs?  Is there such a thing as “should” in this case?  Could it be both?

Having just said that, I do know it’s deeply unfair to many institutions that long have been and will continue to be very much at the heart of their civic life, as both participants and as venues.  Public libraries, especially, have long served as meeting hosts for a wide array of organizations in their communities.  However I would venture to say, though I’m certainly happy to be wrong, that a civic organization in need of a meeting space would probably think of their public library before their museum.

So does that mean museums shouldn’t try to stake a claim to that terrain, or that both museums and libraries are wrong to venture down the road of expanding their roles in their communities?  Emphatically not!  My main concern is really that museums and libraries might be trying to, as I commented to Suzanne Fischer, compete for the same piece of the civic pie instead of shooting for complementary pieces.

To be sure, museums and public libraries in every community will have different relationships to one another and to the communities they serve.  Add to that the fact that each will also be able to offer different sorts of amenities, services, perspectives, and kinds of hospitality, and there is of course room for both kinds of institutions to be involved.  Which is better for museums, libraries, AND the communities they serve.

So to the questions: is there a conversation worth having on this particular point?  How do museums and libraries each serve as contributors to discussions of and as platforms for civic engagement?  Is there a danger of collision?

Oh, and for the record, the first quote above is from the American Association of Museums‘ discussion paper, “Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures.”  The second is from “Libraries Promote Civic Engagement” by Nancy Kranich, Past President, American Library Association.

**

I wanted to be a buffalo hunter on the digital frontier.  But that’s not really me right now, and that’s okay.

Let me ‘splain:

Fans of David Milch’s brilliant Deadwood are familiar with that late and lamented series’ meta-narrative: Deadwood was an exploration of how civilization grows out of the uncivilized chaos of the frontier.  Through the life of the series, Milch hinted and squinted at the sequence of steps that led to a community’s rise in the howling wilderness:

Al Swearengen: “Where were they when Dan and me were chopping trees in this gulch, hands all blistered, buck-tooth f__ing beavers rolling around in the creek, slapping their tails on the water like we was hired entertainment?”

–

Ellsworth: Well, Ma’am, I’ve got myself a workin’ gold claim.

–

Clell: No law at all in Deadwood? Is that true?
Seth: Bein’ on Indian land.
Clell: So then you won’t be a marshal?
Seth: Takin’ goods there to open a hardware business. Me and my partner.

–

Sol: Looks like we’re in business, huh?

–

Al: Well, anyways, this is it.  What we spoke about before, this puts it to the test.
Seth:  Alright.
Al: Informal municipal organization.  Not government.  No, that would mark us rebellious.  But structure enough to persuade those territorial [people] in Yankton that we’re worthy enough to pay them their f___ing bribes.

–

Wolcott: “The operations of the old Aurora and Keet’s mines and a number of smaller adjoining claims are now entirely consolidated, accessed through the former Hidden Treasure property. . . . With purchase of the claim formerly operated by the Manuel brothers, we will control save one—-the Garret property—-every considerable deposit now discovered. . . .”

–

Martha: I hope I’m…adequate to guiding my son’s studies—I believe I am.  But a child in solitude cannot find his gift for society.
Alma: What do you propose?
Martha: That I teach the camp’s children.

–

Jack:  My interest, to be direct, is in buying your building.
Joanie: What do you want to use it for?
Jack:  A theater. My troupe will season in this camp.

Or to look at the frontier succession through another famous, if rather oversimplified, approach: that of Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History“:

The Atlantic frontier was compounded of fisherman, fur trader, miner, cattle-raiser, and farmer. Excepting the fisherman, each type of industry was on the march toward the West, impelled by an irresistible attraction. Each passed in successive waves across the continent. Stand at Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file–the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer–and the frontier has passed by.

The point here that I’m stealing from Deadwood and from Turner’s frontier thesis is that it is no huge stretch to see any given point on the frontier as evolving through stages from wilderness to exploration to capitalization to cultivation.  The wild, then the explorers and trappers, then the traders, then frontier outposts, then rough towns, then the trappings of “culture:” schools, libraries, and the theater.

The digital frontier, it could be argued, moves in similar waves: first, the coders and innovators; then the early adopters; then, as things become a bit safer, the commercial interests; finally, wider, settled acceptance.  Or to go with Everett Rogers’ “diffusion of innovation” succession: innovators; early adopters; early majority; late majority; laggards.

This pattern has certainly been seen in the diffusion of digital services like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter: the service is encoded; a few early adopters start playing with it, sharing with their other early adopter friends; word gets out and more people start joining in; enough people get involved and platforms get stable enough that commercial interests start sniffing around.  In fact, at a conference I attended earlier this year, a speaker mentioned something along the lines of, “Once Chevrolet and Marriott show up on Twitter, you know it’s time to move on to the next technology.”

So why bring all this up?  Because, as I said at the outset, I once aspired to hunt buffalo on the digital frontier.  I liked to picture myself as a guy out ahead of the masses, helping blaze the digital trails others would follow. But that’s not really my place.  I’ve come to realize that I’m not so much the innovative frontiersman as I am a guy several steps down the continuum of succession, living in a pretty well-established digital frontier town. Not out there in front, but also a good bit further out there than most folks. Say it’s the St. Louis of 1846; to the settled people back east, I’m on the edge of the howling frontier wilderness.  But to the real frontiersmen and women further west, I’m one of those folks back in the last big city.  I mean, there are parks!  Gas lights!  A Mercantile Library Association, for all love!  I’m not soft like the dandies back in New York City, but I ain’t out with a horse and rifle miles from nowhere hunting down stray code, either.

And that’s okay.  Mid-19th-century St. Louis was a hub of activity, pulling the trappings of civilization out from the east and learning all it could of the unknown areas to the west.  Since circumstances dictate it, settling in at the crossroads on the edge of the digital frontier is a pretty good place to be for a while.  Since I don’t really have the time right now to get out on the bleeding edge, I’ll stay on my scratch-built front porch, reading my dime novels (you know, like Wired and Fast Company) and dreaming of the day that I’ll pack my rifle and join one of the exploring expeditions heading into the digital frontier.

For now I can take advantage of the town’s civilized ways–its strong infrastructure and museums and libraries–but I’d be crazy not to keep an eye on reports from the explorers coming in from the digital west to see when and where my own excursions might get under way.

And who knows, while I’m here maybe I can send some useful information back east to “civilization,” too.

It’d been too many years since I’d been to the National Museum of Natural History, so I decided to check out the new Sant Ocean Hall and hit the slightly-less-new Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals.  There, amid the exhibits on biodiversity and mammalian inner ear structures, the displays of snow-adapted animals and of bottled cephalopods, the models of whales and the specimens of white-footed mice, I found an unlooked-for reminder of just why it is I love working in museums.

They inspire such a palpable and immediate sense of wonder.

And so often they do it in the simplest way possible: by putting cool objects in front of people.

None of the exhibits I saw was filled to the gills with whiz-bang gadgetry.  Sure, there were small video screens and the occasional touch screen, simple interactives and the requisite orientation films–but so often I get the sense that some believe that without producing the equivalent of quick-cutting, hyper-animated, Grand Theft Auto-inspired museum technology infostraviganzas, no child–no modern person–will ever want to set foot in a museum again.

Could have fooled me, that’s for sure.

I couldn’t stop smiling as I wandered through the exhibit spaces.  Here was a teenage girl jumping back and squealing after lifting the door on a shrew’s-nest of earthworms.  There was a posse of what looked for all the world like tattooed skinheads snapping cell phone pictures of themselves in “Going to Sea.”  Everywhere were little kids with mouths agape, eyes popping, and fingers pointing.

And the stuff that was getting them so excited was, again, so essentially simple.  Phoenix the whale, right overhead.  The giraffe arcing its neck by the door.  The bats–and more bats.  The giant squid.

They tugged their parents over and said, “Oooooh.  Look!” again and again.  And the parents dutifully looked.  And took pictures, as if the animals were alive.  And a lot of them read the exhibit labels and told their kids–or their college buddies or their spouses–more about what it was they were looking at.

It wasn’t about the technology.  It was about the stuff.

Computers are great.  Heck, computers are at the heart of the work I do.  But it’s good to be reminded from time to time that computers aren’t the end of what we do; computers are a means to the true end.  The best museum technology helps the institution accomplish one of the its most essential missions: evoke wonder.

The tech needn’t be complex. It just needs to be true to that mission.

The wonder will follow.

–

And to be sure, there’s nothing really revelatory in the above for most museum professionals. I would wager a lot of us–whether we’re librarians, curators, maintenance workers, managers, interpreters, visitors services personnel, or something else–got into museum work because of just this sort of feeling.  But I will say this: it did me a world of good to lift my head from the day-to-day work I do and see the amazing effect of the work we do together as “museum people” on the visiting public.

So I say: get on out there and check out another museum in action.  Preferably a place for which you have no responsibility whatsoever.  You’ll probably get recharged, just like I did.

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But I’d like to turn my post to another aspect of attending conferences.  I want to speak for the conference attendees.  In, admittedly, a small way.

My plea is this: if you’re presenting at a conference like CIL2009, and you’re talking about a cool project you’ve done at your library, please please please make the inductive leap from your case to a more general case.

Lots of speakers (and this happens at a lot of library/technology conferences–and probably lots of conferences everywhere–not just CIL) have a tendency to tell the story of their great project.  “We started here.  We went here.  This happened.  Then this happened.  And this is the conclusion.”  End session.  Polite applause.

Theirs is a straight-up narration of their project.  And it’s the worst form of conference presentation–if you’re going to do that, why not just write it up somewhere so people can read your story and reach their own conclusions?  Both are essentially a passive, private experience for the recipient of the information.

What’s missing from that sort of talk, what makes the presentation of a cool project truly dynamic, is connecting your particular case to your audience’s experience.  Why have we come to hear you?  To get something from your talk we can take away with us.  Rather than expect the audience to see what it is that they should get from your case, connect the dots for them.  “So, that’s what we did.  And this is what we learned, which is why I wanted to present it to you–so you don’t have to repeat the same mistakes we made, or so you can go straight to the success we had.”

Don’t fear that you’re reaching conclusions for us.  If we’re prone to make conclusions of our own based on the story of your project, we’ll still do that amidst hearing about your conclusions; more likely, your connecting of those dots will spur even more thoughts from us.  Anticipate the conclusions that the audience is likely to draw from your description of your experience and address them proactively.

It’s not so much what you did as about what you think about what you did.

Take that approach, and everybody will get greater enjoyment–and learn more–from your talk.  And that after all is the point of the thing.

Important note: many, many speakers do a great job of this and do so very naturally.  May those folks be models for us all!

So enough’s enough, right?

Welcome to my blog.  I’ve stripped it down and now I’m still tuning it up, design-wise (including the need to update the default graphic at the top) and function-wise.  But the heart of it is running, so I’ll dive in and blog while finishing up the other work.

Cybernetick Inkwell is primarily a place for me to examine the practices and the theories of librarianship, with a general concentration on what is sometimes (if rarely) called heritage librarianship.  I’d call it “museum librarianship,” because I’m a museum librarian at heart, but I’d rather thinking beyond the walls of any one sort of institution.

At a macro level, what gets my blood pumping is solving the mystery of how it is that people connect with the information that most interests them; at a (more) micro level, I find myself wondering how it is they connect with information about, information from, and information by cultural and natural heritage entities–museums, parks, historic sites, libraries, archives, and so on.

Here are some of the topics likely to find their meandering ways here:

• Museum informatics. In my professional position, after all, I focus on “web services,” meaning that I am charged with figuring out the best ways to help people connect to information in an online environment.  There’s an endless world here, with a lot of connections to other digital humanities-related efforts.
   
• The relationship between libraries, archives, and museums. I am not one of those who thinks these are three words that actually mean the same thing, but there are some exciting possibilities where the sets overlap in the Venn diagram.  And important distinctions where they don’t.
   
• Storytelling in heritage institutions. My path has taken me from history to museum education to librarianship, and all three share perhaps the most powerful way to convey information: the narrative.  Freeman Tilden once laid out as the first of his six rules of heritage interpetation: “Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.”  Tell stories.
   
• Information management across the institution. Heritage institutions are remarkably siloed places–lots of people with information expertise in specific areas who don’t talk much to others who have their own areas of expertise.  It is a fascinating Gordian knot.
   
• Technology and information management in small institutions. I have worked in museums and at parks large and small, and one of the great levelers between the two is technology.  But it’s got its own particular challenges (and opportunities) in small institutions.

Other areas less directly related to heritage librarianship but sure to find their way here:

• Libraries as places of hospitality. I firmly believe that libraries would do well to think of themselves as places of hospitality every bit as much as does a restaurant or hotel–or even more significantly, a private home.  The only significant difference is that the food we’re providing is intellectual rather than physical.  I wrote a paper on this; I promise it’s true.
   
• Information ecology and information ecosystems. “Ecosystem” is a useful model for understanding how we relate to the sphere of information and how its elements interact with one another.
   
• Serendipity as a route to information discovery. It’s one of the fundamentally fascinating topics that got me into librarianship in the first place.  Can it ever be captured?  Can it be reproduced in an online environment?
   
• Information use and information seeking in creative settings. Another question that got me into librarianship.  How and when do creative people use information?  How can information be “structured” to help creative individuals and creative groups?
   
• Library history. Hey, what can I say.  I’ve been a historian longer than I’ve been a librarian.  Library history is a natural extension.

And, of course, whatever else seems to fit.

More on me, soon.  Best place for details will be in the About section.  But by way of quick introduction and background, I’ll say: I earned my BA in History at the College of William & Mary, my MA in U.S. History from George Mason University, and my MS in Library and Information Studies from Florida State.

I’ve worked in various capacities at the following places, among others: two Smithsonian Institutions (the National Zoological Park and the National Museum of American History); Valentine Riverside historic park at Tredegar Ironworks; the Library of Virginia; the university library and the career library at the University of Richmond; and Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. I may “do” web-based technology, but I think of myself primarily as a reference librarian that focuses on the online environment.

I’m looking forward to exploring all this and more.  With or without you, I suppose–but I’d much prefer with.

Ad astra!