Futures of Learning

In the previous posts, we reviewed innovative uses of digital media within community libraries and museums that are designed specifically to provide visitors and patrons access to digital archives, virtual tours, and vast collections of cultural heritage materials.  We also reviewed efforts to use digital media to involve visitors and patrons in the creation of new knowledge through the development of tagging activities, collaborative curating, and games for learning.  The following posts consider another set of activities going on at the edges of these institutions that suggest other efforts to transform informal learning experiences for library and museum participants.  As John Seely Brown (Hagel and Brown, 2005) famously asserts:  “to transform the core, start at the edge.” We’re interested in these edge projects because they offer another set of ideas about how community libraries and museums could function as part of 21st century distributed learning networks.  These efforts foster learning by providing opportunities for physical engagement with a range of objects and environments (from the material to the virtual).  In this post, we discuss the examples of (1) toy lending libraries and (2) the user-friendly authoring/designing environment called Scratch.  These efforts emphasize the importance of play and creative expression in learning and cognitive development. 

TOY LENDING LIBRARIES

Unlike in Canada and parts of Europe, toy lending libraries in the United States did not really take off until the 1960s and 1970s.  Wales, for example, has a national play policy that is integrated into the mission of the nation’s toy lending libraries (Powell & Seaton, 2007).  Although toy lending libraries have existed in the U.S. since 1935, the notion of a such a library is unfamiliar to many people.  The U.S. toy lending libraries take a variety of forms:  they can be based within a community library, be attached to a main library as a supplemental set of offerings, get organized as a cooperative neighborhood venture, or circulate as a mobile lending collection (Moore, 1995).  Though these libraries have diverse structures and lending philosophies, they share an emphasis on the value of play and the importance of providing support to a wide range of children.  Most cater to young children, usually newborn through kindergarten, though some have toys and other learning objects available for kids as old as 10.

One of the guiding principles of toy lending libraries is the importance of play for developing a range of skills in children. According to the USA Toy Library Association, through offering “high-grade” toys to all, toy lending libraries foster children’s development and thus serve an important educational purpose.  In many toy lending libraries, toys including stuffed animals, musical instruments, puzzles, and crafts are available to be borrowed or used within the library space.  Some of these libraries also offer books. Through interacting with a particular toy in the library space, children also learn values of sharing, community, and honesty.  Many toy lending libraries also provide forums for parents, teachers, and others to discuss the educational value of play in general and certain types of toys in particular.  In addition to providing opportunities for fun and educational play, toy lending libraries can be an important source of support for both parents and children. For parents, toy libraries can provide information about child development; they can also help parents to be more informed consumers. Some toy libraries also serve as informal childcare sites. The Cuyahoga County Public Library system in Ohio has a dedicated Toy Lending Library website that offers an online guide to assist parents in choosing the right toy for their child.

Other toy libraries are designed especially to offer a safe and nurturing space for disabled children to learn and play. The most well-known example of this type of toy library is the Lekotek movement, originally begun in Sweden. Roughly translated as “play library,” (Moore, 1995), Lekotek is a network of toy libraries (mostly concentrated in the Midwest and eastern U.S.), computer centers, and support services for families with children with special needs. The Lekotek mission is to use “interactive play experiences, and the learning that results, to promote the inclusion of children with special needs into family and community life”

While many toy libraries focus on promoting the value of play and provide support for parents and guardians, others have as part of their mission a desire to reduce waste and consumption.  When a toy can be checked out of a library rather than purchased, there are clear ecological benefits in that the same toy can be used by numerous children. This allows families to save money and children learn the value of saving and sharing.  The Mission Statement of the Heights Parent Center in Cleveland Ohio clearly articulates this philosophy:

TLL helps families resist the urge to buy, buy, buy every toy on the market.
Use TLL to try different toys out before running out and buying them.
Rotate the toys in your home affordably.
Teach your children the value of borrowing rather than buying.

Another example of toy libraries emphasizing conservation is found in Fiona’s Toy Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Brandt, 2008). This library shares some of the philosophy of the Heights Parent Center above (reducing waste, helping people save money) but is totally free, has no lending time limits, and does not charge for toys that are returned broken.

SCRATCH: Design for Learning, Design for Tinkering

Toy lending libraries typically emphasize the importance of material objects (toys) in developing important learning objectives: sharing, exploration, creativity.  One of the most innovative efforts to integrate the digital with the physical is the virtual authoring environment called Scratch. Created by Mitch Resnick and the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is a ”graphical programming language designed to support the development of technological fluency” in young people. Although anyone can use Scratch, the target audience is 8- to 16-year-olds.  Scratch is currently used in libraries, schools, museums, community centers, as well as homes.  Key attributes of Scratch include promoting technological fluency, creativity, and “tinkerability” as well as building online communities of creative participation.

Scratch Home Page

Technological Fluency

The phrase “technological fluency” can have a range of meanings, but Resnick and his colleagues at MIT’s Media Lab compare it to language fluency. (See the handout titled: “Technological Fluency: The Clubhouse Learning Approach” produced by Resnick and others at the MIT Media Lab (no date).  Memorizing phrases and grammatical structures does not necessarily make one fluent in a language; rather, it is the ability to use the language creatively in complex situations.  In the same way, technological fluency comes not from merely knowing how to use a technological tool, but instead through having the ability to creatively make things with it.  With a tool such as a computer, technological fluency includes using and learning new ways to use the computer, creating based on one’s own ideas, and “understanding concepts related to technological activities.

Scratch encourages technological fluency in a number of ways. First, it teaches programming language through using graphics that look like building blocks. The user snaps the blocks together (like Legos) in order to combine animation, photos, music, sound, etc. to create interactive projects (Resnick, 2007; Peppler & Kafai, n.d.). The blocks can only fit together in a certain way, which eliminates the frustration caused by inadvertent syntax errors. This type of intuitive programming language also allows users to “‘play with [their] code’ testing out new ideas incrementally and iteratively” (Resnick, 2007).  Through interacting with Scratch, users learn computational concepts, mathematical ideas, and design processes.  The Scratch website also facilitates technological fluency through providing numerous resources, including cards that show users how to do everything from make their animated objects “move to a beat,” to “change color,” to “keep score.”

Creativity and Tinkerability

Scratch was created in line with what Resnick (2007) calls a “‘kindergarten approach to learning or the “creative thinking spiral.” This approach begins with imagining, and then progresses through creating, playing, sharing, reflecting, and then back to imagining.  While these steps do not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion, the key point is that all of these elements are involved in the type of learning that is necessary for the digital age or what Resnick calls the “Creative Society.” Scratch promotes creativity by offering opportunities for users to learn the steps of dynamic and interactive design.  One of the key goals, according to Resnick, is that Scratch encourages “tinkerability”:  the environment/application makes it easy to put together fragments of computer programs, try them out, and take them apart again. The emphasis on tinkerability is hinted at in the Scratch name, which was appropriated from the technique of hip-hop deejays, who use vinyl albums and a turntable to create an array of sounds.  Like deejays, users can make a wide range of creations, including animations, games, birthday cards, and reports.

Resnick and his Lifelong Kindergarten research team have deep expertise in the creation and design of mix-reality learning objects.  The Lifelong Kindergarten researchers, along with the LEGO company created LEGO MINDSTORMS: “the first programmable brings and robotic kits.” More recently Lifelong Kindergarten research has inspired the development of a new invention kit called The PicoCricket Kit that integrates art and technology to spark creative thinking.  The basic component of PicoCrickets (called a “PicoBoard") works with the Scratch programming language such that users can connect material (real-world) sensors to on-line (digital) Scratch projects.

PicoCricket Kit Components

Collaborative Community

One of the most appealing aspects of Scratch is the user community that has developed around the authoring environment.  The creation of community was an explicit objective for the development of Scratch.  As the original designer of Scratch, Resnick believed that technological fluency is based in learning from, and sharing with others. This is in contrast to many other Web 2.0 sites, which support uploading on the part of producers and commenting on the part of viewers, but not necessarily meaningful interaction between the two. The Scratch website is designed to facilitate connection among users, such as through commenting on projects, joining forums, and participating in galleries (formed around common topics).  Another noteworthy aspect of the community is how it emphasizes the positive, again to encourage learning, sharing, and community. For example, users can “love” projects but they cannot give them only one or two stars, as is the case with other websites such as YouTube.  Again, this design feature is intentional in order to promote a supportive community (Resnick, personal communication).  As of July 10, 2009, “There are 473,487 projects with a total of 11,948,669 scripts and 3,702,846 sprites created by 72,121 contributors of our 320,690 registered members.  Another key to the opportunities for creative thinking and designing that are built into Scratch is that projects are remixable.  This means that any member of the Scratch community can download the source code of a project to create a new project.  Creative appropriation is in fact encouraged.  As of August 2007, 15% of the approximately 24,000 shared projects were remixes (Monroy-Hernandez and Resnick, 2008).  When a new remix project is posted, a link to the original project appears in order to credit the creator. This practice has led to discussions regarding originality, creativity, and copyright.

Learning From Remix Culture

Scratch was developed in accordance with a long tradition at the Media Lab of a philosophy which focuses on the value of teaching students to design learning environments rather than simply use them. This philosophy of teaching young people to make music (or visual art, etc) rather than simply consume it informs many after-school and community-based informal education programs that make use of digital audio software to encourage young people to recognize their creative potential.  See for example:

• Digital Youth Network provides students tools and faciliates their ability to become creators who can and innovators.
  http://iremix.org/
• Berklee City Music Program is a national network of institutions offering the Berklee PULSE music method to under-served teens.
  http://berkleecitymusicnetwork.org/
• Youth Radio was founded in 1990 to train young people from under-resouced public schools, community-based organizations, group homes and juvenile detention centers in broadcast journalism, media production and cutting-edge technology.
  http://www.youthradio.org/about/youth-programs
• The Hiphop Archive Project is dedicated to increasing youth representation and participation in artistic creation and collaborations.
  http://www.hiphoparchive.org/university
• Rock the Classroom restores music education in under served public elementary schools by using music and songwriting to complement literacy curricula.
  http://www.rocktheclassroom.org/whatwedo.html
• A Place Called Home provides cultural arts program to at-risk youth in the form of music, dance, and fine arts.
  http://www.apch.org/creativeexpression.php

References

Brandt, D. (2008, October). Toy lending service may keep Ann Arbor area kids stimulated. Ann Arbor News [Online]. Retrieved March 14, 2009, from
http://www.mlive.com/annarbornews/news/index.ssf/2008/10/toy_lending_service_may_keep_a.html

Hagel, J. and J. S. Brown.  2005.  The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization.  Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Monroy-Hernandez, A. and Resnick, M. (2008, March + April). Empowering kids to create and share programmable media. Interactions.  Retrieved August 30, 2008, from http://mags.acm.org/interactions/20080304/?pg=52

Moore, J. E. (1995). A history of toy lending libraries in the United States since 1935. Unpublished master’s thesis. Retrieved March 12, 2009, from http://eric.ed.gov:80/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/14/4f/ef.pdf

Peppler, K. A. and Kafai, Y. B. (n.d.). Creative coding: Programming for personal expression. Retrieved September 1, 2008, from http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/llk/scratch/archives/CreativeCoding-PepperKafai.pdf

Powell, R., and Seaton, N. (2007). “A treasure chest of service”: The role of toy libraries within play policy in Wales. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research. Retrieved March 10, 2009, from http://eric.ed.gov:80/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/3e/ab/4b.pdf

Resnick, M. (2007). All I really need to know (about creative thinking) I learned (by studying how children learn) in kindergarten. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition, Washington, D.C. Retrieved July 20, 2008, from http://web.media.mit.edu/%7Emres/papers/kindergarten-learning-approach.pdf

Resnick, M. (2007-08). Sewing the seeds for a more creative society. Learning & Leading with Technology.

Scratch Research Wiki: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Research

Authors Bio:

This posting was authored by Cara Wallis, Maura Klosterman, and Anne Balsamo.

The topic of online museum experiences (focusing again on art museums) is an expansive and complex one, growing ever wider with the creation of new digital technologies and applications. A previous posting described some of the experiences that are occurring around online collections, databases, and archives of images. It raised key issues such as how museums are partnering with broadcast media, corporations, and third-party sites such as social networking sites (SNS), how museums are navigating control (and expertise) in the midst of user-generated content and information access/excess, and also the ubiquitous debate surrounding the relationship of the virtual and the physical. This latter topic (virtual experiences) was dealt with in more detail in our last posting by Anne. Museums create online experiences based largely on three factors: 1) the emergence of new technologies; 2) their institutional priorities and goals; 3) external influences from funders, governmental entities, academia, the media, or the general public. Certainly all of these factors often overlap, such as with museums’ interest in cultivating online participation (this is dependent on new Web 2.0 technologies, museums identify this as a goal that they believe will lead to more meaningful experiences, and there are numerous studies on the importance of participatory learning both in academia and in foundations). These three factors will be woven into a discussion of many significant online art museum experiences, with noteworthy examples and their accompanying theoretical debates. 

GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY
The Museo Nacional del Prado (Prado Museum) in Spain and Google Earth Spain announced their partnership in January 2009. Google Earth uses geospatial technology (also called spatial information technology) that maps features or phenomena on the surface of the earth. By downloading Google’s software for free, viewers can view 14 of the museum’s masterpieces in high definition of 14 gigapixels, along with a three-dimensional tour of the museum. This resolution is 1,400 times more detailed than any image that a common 10 megapixel digital camera could take. For all those except the privileged few scholars, these enhanced images are the closest they will ever see such masterpieces.

The 14 works featured correspond to the museum’s proposed itinerary of 15 works on their Web site as the “essential” recommended visit, highlights of their collection. The Prado’s entire collection consists of 17,300 works of art, of which only 1,300 are currently on display at the museum (an additional 3,100 are on institutional loan around the world). The museum’s Web site currently has around 2,000 images of its collection in the On-Line Gallery database, with a section called In Depth that includes detailed photographs and technical information for one highlighted work at a time. However, this project is not intended to bring together an entire collection, rather it is about specificity. Many of the original paintings are so large that, “you would need a three-meter high step-ladder” to see them up close, states Claudia Rivera of Google Spain. And that is only if you could get past the crowds and the security guards. In a Press Release (March 13, 2009), Prado director Javier Rodríguez Zapatero states that, “with the technology of Google Earth it is possible to enjoy these magnificent works as never before, allowing for details impossible to appreciate with direct contemplation.” Mr. Rodríguez even says he has used the technology to check on restoration work of the paintings. The images can be appreciated equally by scholars, students, and the general arts-interested public anywhere in the world, including those familiar with the Prado’s masterpieces and those attracted mainly by the novelty of Google Earth technology who are perhaps less familiar with the art.

It is worth mentioning that the Prado Web site has no mention of the Google Earth project on its homepage; in fact, the only place mentioned is in the Press News archive. It appears that the museum’s intent is for audiences to link to the Prado’s Web site from other popular sources such as Google, and not the other way around. This project was initiated by Google Earth Spain, and subsequently proposed to the Prado, which enthusiastically embraced it. A terrific video of the three-month process required to take 8,200 photographs of the 14 masterpieces is on YouTube.

GAMES
Games have long been offered by museums inside the galleries, usually targeting youth with old-fashioned scavenger hunts or even interactive digital games on computer kiosks. In our posting on mobile experiences, we mentioned that games are now being incorporated into cell phone audio tours as well. But with the popularization of the Internet and the development of Web 2.0 technologies that facilitate participation and collaboration, museums began to incorporate games into their Web sites, again targeting youth (also through parents and educators). Another reason for museums to engage online games is to compete with the torrent of highly visual entertainment activities now readily available such as console games, reality television, anime, virtual reality, and interactive computer games such as MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games). Museums utilize games in the service of education. These entertainment-based learning tools – infotainment or edutainment – offer an important opportunity for learning that is social and fun, both integral to how youth experience art.

As part of the American Association of Museum’s (AAM) new Center for the Future of Museums, Jane McGonigal (Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA) gave a talk last year entitled Gaming the Future of Museums (the event in Washington, DC was later presented as a free webcast by the AAM). Her basic premise is that games make people happy, which is why they are so successful (as well as the fact that they provide clear instructions, feedback, and goals). She believes that museums should incorporate games because they should strive to make people happy, calling on museums to “create sustainable world-changing happiness as its primary mission.” McGonigal believes that games do all the things we need to be happy: satisfying work, the experience of being good a t something, time spent with people we like, and the chance to be a part of something bigger. She states, “We have all this pent-up knowledge in museums, all this pent-up expertise, and all these collections designed to inspire and bring people together. I think the museum community has a kind of ethical responsibility to unleash it.” Elizabeth Merritt, head of the center, believes that in the future, the best museums will be as interactive and fun as alternate reality games, both for kids and adults.

While scavenger hunts continue to be utilized for kids inside the galleries, they are also popular with adults, especially the new multimedia version that utilizes third-party sites and mobile technologies. The best example of this is the well-known Ghost of a Chance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (July 8 – October 25, 2008), the first alternate reality game (ARG) hosted by a museum. Over 6,000 players participated online and 244 people came for the final onsite event at the museum. Multimedia platforms included Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, the museum’s blog Eye Level, text messaging on mobile phones, as well as exploration of the physical museum. In the museum’s final report and a subsequent presentation at this year’s Museum and the Web conference, Georgina Bath Goodlander (Interpretive Programs manager for the Smithsonian’s Luce Foundation Center) states that the museum was successful in achieving two of its goals: “to get people talking about our museum, to get our name out there” and “to encourage discovery.” The third goal, “to bring a new audience into the museum,” was only partially achieved. The museum did not experience many new visitors to their physical museum, but interestingly it did occur online, with increased traffic driven to their Web sites.

McGonigal states that 91% of youth under the age of 18 play games on the Internet today. Some examples of online games aimed at younger audiences include Getty Games at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Match Madness, Detail Detective, Switch, Jigsaw Puzzles), Matisse for Kids at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Waltee’s Quest: The Case of the Lost Art at the Walters Art Museum, Schoolhouse at the Yale University Art Gallery (Match Game, Art Detective), and Meet Me at Midnight at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The educational value of many of these games is not always clear, but what is clear is that kids are becoming more familiar with works of art, they are learning to look and think critically about art, and they are associating museums and art with fun.

Incorporating games – and much more – is Whyville.net, an educational virtual world for teens and pre-teens. It was launched in 1999 by Numedeon Inc. (neuroscientist Dr. James Bower while at Caltech), and now has a player base of over five million worldwide. Its Web site states that, “Whyville has its own newspaper, its own Senators, its own beach, museum, City Hall and town square, its own suburbia, and even its own economy - citizens earn “clams” by playing educational games.” In 2005, the Getty Museum became the first cultural organization to partner with Whyville, adding their arts content to the site (other museums have since joined, including the Field Museum of Chicago). In a 2005 Getty press release, Peggy Fogelman, assistant director and head of education and interpretive programs at the museum stated, “At the virtual Getty Museum, kids can explore our collections on their own terms. By making art fun and familiar, we hope that Whyvillians will venture beyond their computer monitors into art galleries and museums in their hometowns, and to the Getty Center when they visit Los Angeles. We want them to make art a part of their virtual as well as real lives.” The Getty Museum in Whyville, located in the town square, offers games such as Art Treasure Hunt, and ArtSets Gallery, and Art Hour conversations which is like a chat room for Whyvilleans. A 2006 assessment conducted by the Getty’s Susan Edwards showed some interesting results. The majority of “citizens” interviewed (ages 8 to 15) said the experience made them like art more, and they like games that challenge them. However, most said that the experience didn’t necessarily make them want to visit the physical museum more, but it did generate visits to the Getty Web site (links provided on Whyville). In general, the report stated that Whyville is a “cost-effective word-of-mouth marketing to the youth audience.”

TARGETING YOUTH
In the past fifteen or so years, teenagers (and increasingly “tweens” as well, ages 8-12) have become the center of empirical study in the US regarding learning, socializing, and digital media (as was discussed in our previous posting on library teen Web sites). A few examples include the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, the Digital Youth Project headed by Mimi Ito at UC Irvine, Harvard Professor Howard Gardner and his GoodPlay Project, the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Council on Adolescent Development, the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative, the Milken Family Foundation’s Education Technology Project, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services’ Engaging America’s Youth initiative. Teenagers are now highly valued as representing the “pulse of contemporary culture.” Outside the academic world, teens are also the focus of market researchers and trend forecasters that depend on teenagers’ constant search for the latest product, on their free spirit of experimentation, and on their strong social networks to rapidly (virally) spread information. If the topic of teenagers, learning, and digital media has become a “fundable” one, according to the government, foundations, and influential individuals, then it will also become a priority for museums. Educational initiatives in museums have been fundable for a while, but the digital age has now shifted them onto a different plane, demanding their institutional integration.

Most museums focus on youth for their educational programming and interpretive technologies, creating social groupings (Jeremy Rifkin’s “communities of interest”) that advise the museum, produce content, and even donate money (Brooklyn Museum of Art’s 1stfans). These youth are the future generation of visitors, artists, scholars, even funders, and museums are keen to cultivate their interest and loyalty from an early age, much like brand communities in the corporate sector that foster early habits of consumption. Many museums have separate Web sites producing radio shows, zines, and podcasts managed by teen groups, and even younger kids from six years of age. In 2005, Deborah Schwartz, head of Education for the Museum of Modern Art, stated that “despite the fact that 73 percent of American youth ages 12 to 17 reportedly use the Internet, museums conduct surprisingly few media-based programs for youth.” Much has changed in four years, but these examples – extraordinary for the rich ways in which they engage youth online – are still the exception and not yet the norm.

Many museum Web sites have pages or sections dedicated to youth activities, with some museums even having their own teen councils, but this posting will focus on those that are not merely a repetition of onsite activities. The Web sites mentioned here include features that promote participation and creativity, provide options, invite the public to at least view the content (and at most to participate), and have links both back to and external to the museum. Each Web site is distinct, as are their parent museums equally distinct in their on-site teen programming, their relationship to the Web sites, and in their own histories, priorities, and organization.

The Walker Art Center is one of the most technologically experimental art museums in the country and a leader in teen programming since 1994. The Walker was the first art museum in the country to devote full-time staff to working with and building teen audiences. The teen Web site WACTAC is based on the museum’s Walker Art Center Teen Art Council (WACTAC), a group of 12 or 14 teenagers that meet weekly to design, organize, and market events and programs for other teenagers and young adults at the museum such as artist talks, exhibitions, teen art showcases, and hands-on workshops. The site is divided into four categories: Blogs, Links, Events (museum and external), and Art, although the bulk of the content and the homepage is centered on the blogs. Heideman and Siasoco (2008) note that the Walker’s first goal was to provide WACTAC with a sense of ownership of the site, with direct involvement in the process in order to ensure success. WACTAC members have a username and password that lets them post a blog and add a link, event, or artwork. They can also choose colors, set the background image and header text similar to customization options of MySpace, but they are restricted “from doing things that would severely harm the usability of the site.” It is interesting to note that this is the only site that does not allow outsiders to contribute content or participate in any online creative activities; however the public is free to read the members’ blogs and notices.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s teen website is called youth2youth, and is designed by teens in the museum’s Youth Insights (YI) program for New York City teens. The site provides links to external resources and programs related to art, and announces YI programs at the museum that are open to other teens such as Artist and Youth: A Dialogue series, What’s Up? At the Whitney, and Teen Night Out. The Web site also features Cast a Vote, an on-line poll about art issues, The Gallery is an online exhibition space for high school age youth to submit their own artwork, and speakART is a space to share opinions and respond to other opinions on artwork in the museum. The Discussion section poses a provocative issue related to society and culture in general, and then asks a number of questions that users can respond to and view other responses. These features are all available to the public, which is an important aspect of the site, as it states that it is “a place where teens can share their insights on American art and culture with other teens around the globe.” While also open for public viewing, the section Youth Insights Reviews presents commentary on specific art-related projects, but only from program participants, and the Bulletin Board offers a space for current and past participants to post and retrieve messages (access is free and open to the public, but only with prior registration). The teens also have their own blog, which is part of the Whitney’s general blog.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s teen website is called Red Studio. Regarding creation and participation, Red Studio is the most interactive for all site visitors. Three activities on the homepage are “inspired by current Red Studio features and guest artists;” Remix is an interactive collage activity based on images, Fauxtogram lets you make your own virtual photographs inspired by artist Man Ray, and Chance Words allows users to create a Dadaist poem.. Unfortunately, these activities are individual ones that do not get shared with others on the site but are more like online games. Red Studio also features artist interviews by teens (currently Vito Acconci and Shahzia Sikander), along with the interactive features youDesign and Character Sketch Contest for users to participate in online activities related to creative design. The site also includes an audio program with podcasts developed by the museum’s Youth Advisory Committee (an internship for New York public school students) to “offer different perspectives on works in MoMA’s Painting and Sculpture galleries. Other features include the Talk Back bulletin board, Quick Polls, and links to museum departments as well as to external sources on artists, museums, and teen art.

WRTE RadioArte 90.5FM can be accessed through the Web site of the National Museum of Mexican Art and as a separate URL. As described on the Web site,“As the only Latino-owned, youth-driven, urban community radio station in the country, we want to encourage listeners to become involved in social justice issues and engage in dialogue through community journalism and first voice forums.” The museum acquired the license to own and operate the radio station in 1996 from the Boys and Girls Club in Chicago and they wanted to keep it a community station. As an initiative of the museum, RadioArte trains Latino youth in radio journalism and production, offering them internships and first-hand experience. The station (and the Web site) is bilingual, offering news (local, national, international), Latino music, and a community events calendar. Many of the radio shows are available on the site as podcasts, video, and “radio novelas.”

Although we are focusing on examples in the US, it is important to mention what is happening at the Tate Museum in England (encompassing Tate Britain, Modern, Liverpool, and St. Ives). Previously, the museum had incorporated a Tate Kids section within the Tate Learning page of their Web site, mostly with a few online games. In July 2008, the new Tate Kids Web site was relaunched. Tate Kids editor Sharna Jackson states, “It was hoped that the redesigned Web site would meet Tate’s mission ‘to increase public knowledge, understanding and appreciation of art’ by the creation of a colorful, relevant interactive Web site with engaging content that would both entertain and educate the intended audience of six to 12 year olds (Museums and the Web 2009). Tate Kids features a blog by kids, films, online games, Tate Create (offline activities), E-cards from the museum’s collection to send to friends, an option to change the background, My Gallery (as has been discussed in the previous post where kids can view other galleries, rate them, share theirs, and comment), and an Adult Zone for parents and educators.

Just this year, the Tate Museum launched Young Tate, “a community website by young people for young people.” Targeted at ages 13-25, Young Tate offers Exam Help, Art School (resources, links, advice), Careers at the Tate, Artists Online (blogs), RSS feed of in-gallery events, a Colour Saturation Game, and Project Gallery (podcasts, videos, and on-line projects). There is also a link to the Manifesto for a Creative Britain that was established at the Tate’s 2008 conference with a call for participation (“join the creative debate and add your own videos and images”).On-line membership is available for free, and other members can be viewed (an important consideration among this target group). Completion of a peer leadership training course at any of the Tate museums is required to be involved in the site production.

The many concrete values of these sites include instilling a sense of community and responsibility to a larger public, both the museum institution and the largely anonymous public of the Internet. This is achieved through collaboration, dialogue, and social networking both in-person and virtually, which provide the valuable skills needed for a deliberative democracy (Robert Asen, 2004). Both Asen and Robert Putnam (2000), in his well-known book Bowling Alone, talk about how citizenship engagement is necessary for democratic societies, formed through the acts of “generativity, risk, commitment, creativity, and sociability.” Pluralism is prized within a democracy, and respect for pluralist ideas, opinions, and backgrounds is generated by these sites that present various examples of “amateur” artwork, and also diverse opinions and creative choices by teenagers. Empowering youth (whom Putnam identifies as being less civic-minded) with the production of these sites, with a certain amount of control over some decisions, and with the creation of interviews, podcasts, and curating exhibitions, teaches them to become more active and involved in public acts, helping to produce a more engaged citizenry with strongly developed leadership skills. Museums also benefit by encouraging online participation that supports retention of visitors, members and funders, and attracts new ones that can sustain the organization in the long-run. The public can also provide valuable user-generated content such as personal photos and videos, scholarly assistance with online catalogs, and the creation of creative material to be publicly shared online as we have seen with the teen and kids Web sites. Online participants help museums to know their audience better, which subsequently helps better serve their community. More issues surrounding teen/youth Web sites was discussed in our earlier post focusing on libraries (Digital Media in Community Libraries, Part 2: Teen Websites).

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
The social responsibility of museums is most pertinent to their desire to serve the public and foster a sense of community. Putnam urges us to think about social capital as a public good that can be nurtured and used for the greater benefit of society. By utilizing new digital technologies with their Web sites, museums can play their part in fostering a greater sense of community with their online audiences. These new technologies allow museums to go beyond just offering information and images, and to deeply engage with their visitors, to access new ones, and to create and sustain online communities. An online community, much like any physical community, requires that individuals feels they belong to a group and understand the norms or rules of that group, that they share not only interests, but also goals, traditions and activities, that there is direct interaction and communication between individuals in the community, and that individuals contribute to the community. It is important to note that despite the creative nature of art museums, individual contribution need not be creative in nature; contributions could include sending a comment, tagging, rating an object or a tag, or blogging. Museums are creating many programs on-line that enforce a sense of collaboration and community (aside from the afore-mentioned teen/kids Web sites).

1. Wikis
The first example is based on the concept of collective intelligence or crowdsourcing: the use of wikis. According to Wikipedia, a wiki is “a collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone with access to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.” Museums are using wikis to seek user-generated content, both from experts and the general public, depending on institutional goals. A few examples are the Newark Museum’s wiki, and the more active Minnesota Historical Society that has two wikis (Placeography and MN150). The Michigan State University Museum has a Quilt Index, currently with 12 contributing organizations and 721 individual contributions. The challenge with these wikis, however, is that most are accessible mainly from their museum Web sites, which often have the links deeply embedded into specific sections and not as great a reach as larger SNS, media, or aggregate sites. The MuseumsWiki was started by Jonathan Bowen of London South Bank University in 2006, as a central source of information on museums, and in particular as they relate to the Internet. The Web site states that, “It is intended for museum personnel to participate in populating this wiki with museum-related material, typically in a form that is more detailed than suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. It concentrates on technological aspects, especially museum-related wikis.” You can read more about MuseumsWiki in a paper presented by Bowen et al at Museums and the Web 2007. 

2. User-generated content
A successful example of museums integrating user-generated content is the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York. Museum visitors are encouraged to upload photos they have taken at the museum to their Flickr group, the museum’s Web site will link to visitor-created videos posted on YouTube, the museum posts Visitor Video Competitions on YouTube, offers space for visitor reviews on Yelp.com, has a RSS feed on Twitter, posts podcasts on iTunesU, participates in Flickr Commons, and has an account on both Flickr and Facebook. Even more impressive is the museum’s exhibition Click! A Crowd Curated Exhibition (June 27 – August 10, 2008), organized by the museum’s manager of Information Systems, Shelley Berstein. The goal with this exhibition was to determine if James Surowiecki’s premise in his acclaimed book, The Wisdom of Crowds (2004), applied to the visual arts as well. “Is a diverse crowd just as ‘wise’ at evaluating art as the trained experts?” they ask on their Web site? The exhibition began with an open call online and onsite for artists to electronically submit photographs corresponding to the theme of “Changing Faces of Brooklyn.” The museum then opened an online forum for audience evaluation of all 389 anonymous submissions. The top 20% of the 389 images were displayed in the physical gallery, based on their relative ranking from the juried process. In total, 3,344 people participated as evaluators, providing demographic information so as to determine levels of education and art expertise. The results and statistics are fascinating and too long to list here, but are worthy of a click on their Web site to learn more. Even more fascinating is Surowiecki’s final reflections, which observe a surprising overlap between the judgment of the crowds and the experts.

3. Meetups
Museums have started to organize meetups, where online groups of people with similar interests from around the world meet offline in physical spaces. The Ontario Science Centre in Canada organized the first YouTube meetup in a museum (888torontomeetu), August 8-9, 2008, which was presented by Kevin vonAppen and colleagues at Museum and the Web 2009. The Brooklyn Museum of Art also created a new membership group called 1stfans, which is a socially networked museum group whose members are invited to exclusive social events at the museum called “1stfans meetup.” Museum Meetup is a community Web site for meetups in museums, with 51,705 members, another 38,753 interested, and 155 groups in 9 different countries.

ONLINE AND ONSITE
At this year’s Museums and the Web conference, Koven Smith from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stated that “Right now there is much more information on the Web site than inside the galleries. Our goal is to have an information-rich experience inside the gallery also.” This statement represents the concerns of many museum professionals today, that after years of trying to create an online presence reflecting the physical museum, they are now trying to take their online successes and replicate them offline. Museum consultant Nina Simon (2009, 21) concurs,

No matter how innovative your museum is on the Web, the core service of most museums is still based in the physical building. The more the online functions of a museum deviate from the onsite experience, the more your work will be seen as tangential to the mission of the institution. Now is the time to align your experiments and innovations to the core mission of your museum, and to demonstrate that your successes can be translated to the physical galleries, exhibitions, and programs.

This trend in thinking can be dangerous to the core value of museums, and in particular to art museums. Visitors at the physical museum are presented with an increasingly wide range of multimedia tools (interactive kiosks, computers, cell phone tours, audio guides, podcasts, in-gallery videos, docent tours, wall text, printed brochures and catalogues) that could potentially compete with the visual, direct art experience, especially with new media works that involve audio, video, or interactive components. In attempting to become more populist, museums provide space for alternative interpretations that are incorporated into their interpretive materials, including public figures, celebrities, and other visitors. Museums are doing great jobs of providing different channels for different visitors to explore their content, but often this causes confusion and “information overload,” especially with older visitors not accustomed to a high-tech, open-ended museum experience. In the SFMOMA study mentioned in our previous blog posting, Samis and Pau reveal that “visitors most highly value listening to the artist’s voice, followed by curators and critics, then public figures and celebrities, and lastly the voice of other visitors” (2009, 83).

Henry Jenkins talks about “transmedia storytelling” that flows across different media, and refers to the term “multiplatform entertainment” (he credits Danny Bilson), which both apply to the ways in which museums are incorporating new technologies. Steven Peltzman, MoMA’s Chief Information Officer describes this strategy. “What we want to do first is sit back and see what works and what doesn’t. Things are changing so rapidly in this world that we can’t afford to get ourselves pigeonholed into one approach” (Kennedy, 2009). Museums strive to bring their online audiences into the physical museum, using the same system of visitor categorization and replicating Web 2.0 practices and tools. But perhaps museums should also consider the alternative: that online museum experiences are entirely different than physical ones; that their online audiences are different than their physical ones; and that visitor expectations are different for the virtual and physical museum. Online experiences provide much greater benefit than just promotion and marketing of the physical museum with the goal of attracting walk-in visitors. Now with most Web hosting services offering user statistics, museums can boast impressive numbers of online audiences in addition to their physical ones. They can also generate substantial revenue online through print-on-demand services, online stores, and online payment of membership and sponsorship that could compensate for revenue earned through ticket sales.

At the physical space, museums can easily address crossover audiences that are accustomed to maneuvering multiple platforms by discretely placing interactive informational kiosks throughout the museum (such as the MoMA.Guide) or even a separate space within the museum (such as The Davis LAB at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, a “mix of gallery space with cyberspace”). But otherwise, there is a danger of over-stimulation, “information overload,” and uncertainty within an environment that strives to provide everyone with comfortable, uncomplicated opportunities for “education, study, and enjoyment.”

As if to preempt controversy on the subject, Prado Museum director Javier Rodríguez Zapatero stated that, “With the digital image, we’re seeing the body of the paintings with almost scientific detail. What we don’t see is the soul. The soul will always only be seen by contemplating the original.” The challenge for museums is not in choosing the best platform with which to disseminate information, or even how to make the physical museum experience more complete, but rather how to recognize the diverse types of museum experiences now available and how to best offer them to their diverse audiences.

CONCLUSION
Numerous scholars have written about the deleterious effects of anonymity and deindividuation on the Internet (Zimbardo, 1969), but newer research stresses its positive effects. The Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (Lea & Spears, 1991) is the basis for a focus on depersonalization, which alternatively seeks to explain under which conditions individuals identify more with the group than with themselves. This line of study is critical today with so many online activities that offer protection of anonymity, ostensibly encouraging participation, but potentially inhibiting collective action and the growth of online communities. Museums do not encourage anonymity on their Web sites, but rather encourage virtual and physical interactions of their audiences and members – not for the end purpose of achieving a physical museum experience, but rather to encourage participation, creation, and sharing that they believe will lead to a richer museum experience for all. Social theorist Michael Warner (2002) states that, “Reaching strangers is public discourse’s primary orientation, but to make those unknown strangers into a public it must locate them as a social entity.” Museum strangers must first be identified so they can be categorized into initial groups of interest that can then be best integrated into the larger community. The critical and challenging step to make these “unknown strangers into a public” is interactivity and discourse, primarily coming from the public, but facilitated and strategically directed by the museum through its use of new technologies.

REFERENCES
Asen, R. (2004). A discourse theory of citizenship. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90, 189-211.
Bowen, J., et al. (2007, March). A Museums Wikii. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/bowen/bowen.html
Cardiff, R. (2007, March). Designing a web site for young people: The challenges of appealing to a diverse and fickle audience. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/cardiff/cardiff.html
Donath, J. (1999). Identity and deception in the virtual community. In P. Kollock & M. Smith (Eds.), Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge.
Goodlander, G. (2009, March). Fictional press releases and fake artifacts: How the Smithsonian American Art Museum is letting game players redefine the rules. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2009: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/goodlander/goodlander.html
Ito, M., Horst, H., Bittanti, M., boyd, d., Herr-Stephenson, B., Lange, P. G., Pascoe, C.J., & Robinson, L. (2008). Living and learning with new media: Summary of findings from the digital youth project. Chicago: The MacArthur Foundation.
Jackson, S. & Adamson, R., Doing it for the kids: Tate online on engaging, entertaining and (stealthily) educating six to 12-year-olds. (2009, March). In J. Trant & D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2009: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/jackson/jackson.html
Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New York: New York University Press.
Kennedy, R. (2009, March 4). To ramp up its web site, MoMA loosens up [Electronic version]. The New York Times. Retrieved March 11, 2009, fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/arts/design/05moma.html
Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2008, April). Writing, technology and teens. Washington, DC: Author. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/808/writing-technology-and-teens
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Simon, N. (2009). Going analog: Translating virtual learnings into real institutional change. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2009: Selected Papers from an International Conference (pp. 13-21). Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/simon/simon.html
Von Appen, K., Nicholaichuk, K., & Hager, K. (2009). WeTube: Getting physical with a virtual community at the Ontario science centre. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2009: Selected Papers from an International Conference (pp. 57-62). Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/vonappen/vonappen.html
Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Cambridge: Zone Books.

The topic of virtual museums induces list-making mania in me.  Twenty pages deep into the Google results for a search on “virtual museums” I have a personal list of more than 100 “special topic” VM efforts.  My collection of virtual collections spans the gamut— from the Cultural Revolution and the city of San Francisco, to widescreen cinema and LEDS.  The explosion in the number of virtual museums didn’t happen overnight; it is the result of a long engagement between museum professionals and new technologies.  Some of the earliest efforts at what might be understood as a “virtual” museum include physical replicas of ancient structures, such as the Lascaux caves and various Greek monuments.  As Victoria Newhouse (“The Virtual Museum,” 1998) argues, the use of “reproductive technologies” by museums has a long history.  When the originals were too fragile or lost altogether, museums often displayed copies of important cultural artifacts.  As she rightly points out, the Internet, and the WWW in particular has profound implications for the circulation of digital copies of museum holdings and the creation of digital collections.  “Open to anyone who wants to set up his or her own site, it [the Web] is the great leveler, and an unknown artist and a powerful corporation have addresses of equal weight” (267).  With this statement she anticipates the proliferation of virtual museum websites that include the sites sponsored not only by the most venerable institutions such as the Vatican (The Vatican Museums Online), but also by those devoted to niche topics such as valves, typewriters, toilet paper, and (one of my personal favorites) shoes.

Media archeologist and scholar, Erkki Huhtamo was the first one who introduced me to the notion of the virtual museum.  His article, “On the Origins of the Virtual Museum” begins by pointing out that the term “virtual museum” is extremely vague.  Indeed, even a cursory web search demonstrates that the term is invoked to describe a broad set of digital practices and online resources.  As Huhtamo notes, the idea of a vast linked set of cultural documents was the key idea behind Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project.  In this sense, both the notion of the virtual museum and the virtual library were prefigured in Nelson’s vision.  Other precursors to the development web-based virtual museums include various CD-ROMs produced as supplements to traditional museums. (See for example: Virtual Museums: Uffizi)

Many of the virtual museums that exist online now began as websites for brick-and mortar-institutions.  According to one account, the first virtual museum was the EXPO created in 1993 as a guide to artifacts from the Vatican Library on display at the time at the U.S. Library of Congress.  The exhibit, “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture” included 200 artifacts from manuscripts, books and maps.  The digital guide, which might be more properly identified as an example of an online exhibit, consisted of a set of html pages that included textual descriptions and images of items on display.  Another early effort was the WebMuseum, an exhibition of artworks by begun in 1994 by a computer scientist at the École Polytechnique in Paris.  It too consisted of hypertext pages containing textual descriptions and images of artwork.

But for Huhtamo—who is a media archeologist after all—the precursor of the virtual museum was the development of “exhibit design” as a medium in and of itself.  He traces the origins of virtual museums to the experimental efforts of artists (such as László Moholy-Nagy, Frederick Kiesler, and Eli Lissitzky, among others) in the 1920s to redefine the viewer’s experience within the (art) museum setting.  He suggests that the idea of the virtual museum was explored and developed well before the technologies of the Web became ubiquitous tools within museums.  (On this point he also draws attention to in Jeffrey Shaw’s 1990 interactive work called “The Virtual Museum” in which visitors sat on a motorized rotating platform in front of a large screen and could “virtually” travel through images of galleries and museum spaces.)

Current efforts to track the use of the term “virtual museum” support Huhtamo’s basic claim that the term is used inconsistently.  Many of the lists annotated below—lists of “virtual museums"—actually consist of links to museum web pages even though the museum sites don’t refer to themselves as “virtual museums.” Moreover, many of the lists of “virtual museums” include not only links to museum websites but also links to virtual field trips, virtual tours, and other kinds of online learning resources.  See for examples: The Tramline site called Virtual Field Trips; the Homework Spot site with a field trip archive; and the list of Internet field trips sponsored by Scholastic.

(And of course we know that a “virtual museum” is not to be confused with the notion of a fictional museum such as the Flash Museum that appears in the DC comic superhero Flash stories or the Museum of Curiosity—a comedy game show on BBC Radio.)

Among the several thousand Google results are examples of virtual museums that consist of collections of digital representations of artifacts (images, sounds, texts) that do not exist as a collection anywhere specifically.  For example, the “virtual car museum” maintained by Phil Seed includes images of cars taken from his collection of automobile brochures as well as images contributed by other car enthusiasts.  While many of the “virtual museums” included on these lists are sponsored by formal institutions, others are created (and maintained) by people without any specific museum affiliation or background.  In this sense, the notion (and indeed the creation) of many a virtual museum is an example of the blurring of the boundary between professional and amateur when it comes to matters of knowledge production.  These sites are signposts of the pro-am phenomenon of creative participation in digital culture.

At the end of his 2002 talk on “The Origins of Virtual Museums,” Erkki Huhtamo offers a set of questions about the “historical challenges for creators of virtual museums.” For example, he poses questions such as:

• What is the role of tactility?  Can tele-tactility replace the physicality of touch?
• How does one make a distinction between a museum exhibit and an entertainment application?
• How should the physical museum relate to the virtual one?
• Can a virtual museum be a replica of the physical one, or should it be something radically different?

The significance of the online museum—to institutions and to their audiences—has been debated from the Internet’s earliest days.  The second generation of Web tools has only intensified that debate. In the early 1990s, museum professionals worried about the role of the “virtual museum online.  Would it compete with the bricks –and-mortar museum for visitors, funds and programs?  Would it dilute the brand of the museum that monument to civic and cultural pride?  Would it demean the value of the collections by circulating tiny pixilated images? Could museums, with their commitment to “real” objects, protect the authenticity of those objects while developing Web-based programming? And what about visitors?  Would they want to see the real thing if they could see the digital versions of the collections online? (3).

As the book chapters demonstrate, current discussions among museum professionals now also need to address how the Web (and the creation of online museums) demands the development of new business models and requires collaboration among institutions.  Moreover, several authors mention the need to develop web-specific assessment methods for evaluating online visitor experiences, such that museums can better understand how their investment in the creation of web experiences (in terms of staff, technology, and creative energy) really contributes to the realization (or not) of core missions.

One of the questions not addressed in that book that comes up in other articles concerns the cultural politics of virtual museums.  Some museum professionals suggest that the virtual museum is an important vehicle for purpose of cultural repatriation (Resta, et. al. 2002).  Indeed, this is a point where the concerns of museum professionals and those of library professionals merge.  The special issue of D-Lib Magazine (March 2002) was devoted to the topic of “Digital Technology and Indigenous Communities.” Contributors included library as well as museum professionals who discussed issues of preservation, networking, collecting and the creation of digital representations of the cultural artifacts of indigenous peoples (Atkins and Holland, eds. 2002).  As might be expected, there was wide agreement on the value of creating digital archives; what wasn’t as strongly addressed in that volume was the need to provide sites of public access to those archives.  The first step was to simply ensure the creation of digital representations of important artifacts.  Clifford Lynch, in a 2007 Educause article pushes the argument to the next step.  While he doesn’t specially cite the advantages of creating a “virtual museum” per se, he argues that when artifacts are to be repatriated, it is vitally important that the process include the creation of digital surrogates of the cultural artifacts.  But he goes on to make the point that indigenous artifacts are also part of a collective cultural heritage.  For him the creation of digital surrogates serves not only to advance scholarship and research but also, equally importantly, maintain (collective) cultural memory (Lynch, 2008).  The broader point Lynch makes is that with the advances in digitalization technologies the quality of the digital surrogates has improved greatly such it is possible now to create highly detailed images and information records that virtually outstrip the original object in terms of its information capacity.  This points directly to one of the key cultural affordances of virtual museums:  the capacity to create media-rich information environments for the display of surrogate cultural objects.  The possibilities for the creation of complex narrative contexts and participatory story making (through the use of games and digital avatars) are the real cultural promise of virtual museums.

Creating Complex Virtual Museums, Exhibits, and Online Experiences

The development of virtual environments has spawned several interesting experiments in creating new forms of virtual museums and web-based exhibits that actively engage participants in creating new understandings about digitized representations of cultural artifacts.  Probably the most familiar and commonly cited virtual environment is Linden Lab’s Second Life.  But other environment such as WhyVille and Active Worlds are also serving as the platform for creative experiments in the design of virtual museum experiences.  In 2008, Paul Doherty and colleagues hosted a workshop at the annual “Museums and the Web” conference on the topic of Museums in Virtual Worlds.  They focused workshop activities on Second Life and offered a list of museums already established there.

• The Splo, Second Life’s oldest Science Museum founded April 1, 2006.
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Midnight%20City/175/60/26
• The Exploratorium has a sim with some exhibits, a model of an asteroid impact on Mars, and a Brownian Motion exhibit.
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Exploratorium/147/118/21
• The International Spaceflight Museum includes models of spacecraft from around the world, planetarium, rocket ride, and a tour of the planets.
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/48/83/24
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has two islands with interactive weather experiences.
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meteroa/116/143/54
• At the Virtual Starry Night site, Van Gough paintings are used to inspire 3-d constructions.
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Luctesa/105/127/26
• The Second Louvre: a collection of art created in Second Life.
  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tompson/153/97/100

On March 19, 2009, the Smithsonian Museum opened its virtual doors to three Second Life “islands” of the Latino Virtual Museum (LVM). The effort is described as a pan-institutional digital initiative that highlights the vast and rich collections, research and scholarship, exhibitions and educational activities of the Smithsonian Institution as they relate to U.S. Latinos and Latin America.  The aim is to use the latest media and communication technologies (i.e., Second Life) to provide access to information and resources and to facilitate the increase and diffusion of knowledge to local and global online audiences about Latino/Hispanic history, heritage and American experience.  The website description claims that it is an example of the Museum Web 3.0—the creation of an educational virtual world environment

Other virtual world environments are also serving as platforms for innovative museum experiments.  WhyReef is a coral reef in Whyville—a virtual world for younger children.  Created and operated by the Chicago Field Museum, WhyReef includes a game that engages children in identifying marine animals.  Launched in March 2009, the site has had more than 150,000 visits since.  (For more information on the project see the MacArthur Foundation Spotlight Blog posting by Audrey Aronowsky.) The New York Hall of Science has created a virtual museum space within Active Worlds called the Virtual Hall of Science (VHOS).  The VHOS project is virtual space within the Active Worlds Universe in which the New York Hall of Science intends to create interactive exhibits through a collaborative process involving the contributions of Hall staff, Hall Explainers, participants of the Hall’s camp programs and casual visitors.  The first phase of the VHOS project involved a group of 18-23 year olds who participated in a four-day camp to learn how to navigate and build in the Active Worlds environment, research a STEM topic of their choice, learn exhibit design from and expert, and finally design their own exhibits in-world.  Prior to the camp, a team of Explainers (the Hall’s equivalent of a docent) went through a series of AW trainings in order to help camp participants realize their designs. At the conclusion of the camp participants completed a draft of their exhibit designs.  Currently in its third phase, the VHOS project is focusing on methods to develop richer content as part of virtual exhibits.

Probably the most ambitious and impressive interactive virtual museum that exists entirely as an interactive virtual space is the Museo Virtual De Arts El Pais (MUVA).  It is the most fully realized vision of a graphic and spatialized virtual museum. The site is accessible in Spanish and in English.  It is a media rich virtual museum that invites visitors to spend time exploring the space.  It rewards the long visit.

Museo Virtual De Arts El Pais (MUVA).

Other noteworthy projects include:

• The Creative Spaces Web Project is a joint effort by nine British museums that creates a place for people to curate a collection of photographs/videos of items from their famous collections.  It is a complex multi-institutional collaboration that has sparked interesting discussion about the the nature of authority and cultural information.  (See the blog posting on jon pratty/machine culture.)

• In the U.S., a consortium of telecommunications related museums and archives in the U.S. have banded together to provide educational and entertaining on-line exhibits that make use of their individual collections. The Telecommunications Virtual Museum involves materials from the Capehart Communications Collection (TX), Rye Telephone Company (CO), SNET Archives (U of Connecticut), Telephone Museum of New Mexico, and Telecommunications History Group (CO and WA).

• This Old Habitat created by the Chicago Field Museum is a hybrid field trip and interactive game.

• The website for the Museum of Tolerance to be built in the heart of Jerusalem includes a 3-D representation of the proposed physical museum.

In 2008, the Institute of Museums and Library Services released a “National Study on the Use of Museums and the Internet.” The results of the study provided solid evidence for what many museum professionals had already suspected:  that the amount of use of the Internet is “positively correlated with the number of in-person visits to museums.” This suggests that we will continue to enjoy the development of new virtual museums.  The following sites maintain lists of Virtual Museums, online museum tours, or web-based museum collections.

The Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) is a project sponsored by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) that includes links to WWW services offered by various museums around the world.  The current VLMP site includes pages of links to international museums, galleries, libraries, and Wikipedia pages on museums. The original VLmp site was founded in 1994 at Oxford University.  Page notes indicate that the original page hasn’t been updated since September 2006.  On a list of the mirror sites for the page is a description of the reorganization of the project.  Here we learn that the project evolved from being maintained by a single person and organization (Jonathan Bowen and the ICOM) to one that was to be expanded and maintained by a distributed group of self-identified volunteers.  It is unclear at this point how extensive is the group of people who contribute to the links list on the site.  The WWW Virtual Library mirrors the VLmp page.  It includes links that were first added in the mid-1990s.  While the links to the 1995 sites (such as to the Ontario Science Center) now point to contemporary sites (that announce 2009 events for exmple), the early list of links would be valuable as a resource for anyone studying the history of the development of virtual museums.  The WayBack Machine doesn’t have pages from the earliest sites (1995), but would be a useful archeological tool for the other early attempts by museums to create a web presence.

The Museum of Online Museums (MoOM) is a delightful site created by the Chicago design firm, Coudal Partners.  It includes a long list of links to museum websites, online exhibits, and virtual museum experiences.

MuseumSpot is a portal to web-based information about museums.  It serves as a directory of museum website links that enable users to search by topic, by country/state/city, or by type of resources.  It includes articles and activities for children.  An editorial team selects the information listed on the site.  Links from this site include:  MuseumStuff.com that provides a directory to museum websites organized by state (in the US), country, or type and MuseumsUSA MuseumUSA that offers a comprehensive list of US museums.

The Virtual Museum Exhibit….Museum on Demand site include links to different topics of virtual exhibits sponsored by museums across the globe.

Museumlinks’ Museum of Museums:  This site began as an effort to share online resources among Illinois museums in 1997.  The website boasted that it would eventually contain links to every “museums on the planet, from the world’s largest to the most obscure.” As of 2009, its list of “virtual museums” includes 59 links.

Virtual Free Sites includes a page of links to virtual tours of museums, exhibits and special points of interest.  There are 45 links to virtual tours of museums; 17 tours of virtual exhibits; 83 tours to places of interest (including a tour of a domestic violence shelter); 23 tours of “real-time” adventures; and 20 virtual reality tours.

The Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC) provides an interactive space that offers activities and experiences based on Canadian museum collections.  It includes links to virtual exhibits and tours, but also creates new online activities that span the collection of different museums.

A list of Online exhibits throughout Australia is provided by the Australian Libraries Gateway site.

The Association of Science-Technology Centers maintains a site called Try Science that includes interactive experiences and activities created and hosted by its member organizations. 

The Exploratorium maintains an extensive set of web pages that provide online science/technology related activities and experiences.  The Exploratorium Digital Library is a rich resource for photos, videos, learning activities, and web casts. 

The Teachers Tap is a free professional development resource that helps educators and librarians find useful online resources and activities.  It maintains a page on “Digital and Virtual Museums” that includes briefly annotated links to 32 online museum sites across the globe.  The site also includes a long list of links to virtual field trips that were ONCE created by the Apple Computer Corporation’s Learning Interchange Team, but are no long available.  The list of dead links remains useful though for those doing research on the history of interactive educational efforts.

A page called “Oldies and Goodies: The Grand List of School Virtual Museums” announces that as of 2006 it is no longer up-to-date.  As of its last update, it listed 45 “museums” that were created by elementary school classes.  Almost all of the links are no longer active, but one example persists:  The Deer Creek School “Our Town” project to create a museum about the Gold Country (Nevada Count) of California.  As the site explains:

This community project provided hands-on experiences that involved students while they learned the history and geography of Nevada County. The outcome of student participation included publishing a book of Community Treasures for Thomas Brothers’ Maps Educational Foundation and developing a web site about Our Town using state-of-the-art technologies. The book will be on display at the California State Capitol in Sacramento in conjunction with the California State Sesquicentennial celebration this coming year. At a later date, Thomas Brothers Maps Educational Foundation will take the books on a tour of the United States on horseback along the old Pony Express Routes to share California communities with other children.  The process involved fifth grade students and high school mentors who met one day a week after school for an enrichment class. They formed cooperative teams and selected subject areas to study. Each team made appointments to interview and videotape local people and historical experts.

The Library of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies includes a page with links to more than 40 sites about Jewish museums or exhibits.

The Dittrick Medical History Center at Case Western Reserve University maintains a list of medical museums and thematic virtual museums.

Midge Frazel collated a set of links to web museums and virtual field trips as a resource for teachers; the site also includes a toolkit to help teachers create virtual tours and field trips.

L.S. King has compiled a list of virtual field trips, museums, and tours for use in home schooling activities. 

Philip Harland maintains a site that offers educational
virtual tours of archeological museums.

The Pygoya Webmuseum, also referred to as the Pygoya Museum of Cyber art or the Pygoya Web Art Museum, is a creation by Hawaiian artist/dentist Rodney Chang, who claims that his “Truly Virtual Web Art Museum” was one of the first websites of internet based cyberculture.

References

Atkins, D. and M. Peterson Holland, eds. 2002.  “Digital Technology and Indigenous Communities.” D-Lib Magazine 8.2 (March).

Din, H. and P. Hecht, eds.  2007.  The Digital Museum: A Think Guide.  New York: The American Association of Museums.

Falquet, G., J. Guyot, and L. Nerima. 2001.  “Design and Analysis of Virtual Museums.” Museums and the Web Conference.  Seattle, WA.

Hazan, S. “Cultural Institutions take on a (second) life of their own.” http://www.musephere.com/about/IJDCE-SL.html

Huhtamo, E.  2002.  “On the Origins of the Virtual Museum.” Virtual Museums and the Public Understanding of Science and Culture: Nobel Symposium (NS 12).  May 26-29.  Stockholm, Sweden.

Jones-Garmil, K., ed. 1997.  The Wired Museum: Emerging Technology and Changing Paradigms.  New York: The American Association of Museums.

Lynch, C.  2008.  “Repatriation, Reconstruction, and Cultural Diplomacy in the Digital World.” EDUCAUSE Review 43.1 (January/February): 70-71.

McTavish, L.  2006. “Visiting the Virtual Museum: Art and Experience Online.” In Janet Marstine, ed. New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction.  New York: Blackwell.

Newhouse, V. 1998.  Towards a New Museum.  New York: Monacelli Press.

Rayward, W. B., and M. Twidale, 1999. “From Docent to Cyberdocent: Education and guidance in the virtual museum.” Archives and Museum Informatics, 13, 23-53.

Resta, P., L. Roy, M.K. de Montano, and M. Christal.  “Digital Repatriation: Virtual museum partnerships with indigenous peoples.” Proceedings of the International Conference Computers in Education.  3-6 (Dec. 2002): 1482 –1483.

Rothfarb, R. and P. Doherty, 2007. “Creating Museum Content and Community in Second Life.” Museums and the Web Conference.  April 11-14:  San Francisco, CA.

Stock, O. and M.  Zancanaro, eds.  2007.  PEACH: Intelligent Interfaces for Museum Visits.  New York: Springer.

Thomas, S. and A. Mintz, eds.  1998. The Virtual and the Real: Media in the Museum.  New York: American Association of Museums.

Tsichritzis D, and S. Gibbs. 1991.  “Virtual Museums and Virtual Realities.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums.  Pittsburgh, PA.

Urban, R., P. Marty, and M. Twidale.  2007.  “A Second Life for Your Museum: 3D Multi-User Virtual Environments and Museums.” Museums and the Web Conference.  April 11-14:  San Francisco, CA.
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/urban/urban.html



Author Bio:

Anne Balsamo directs the Interactive Media Division’s Co-Design Lab in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.  She teaches courses in design across the curriculum, public interactives, and culture and technology for the Interactive Media Arts and Practice program, the Interactive Media Division, and The Annenberg School of Communication at USC.  She is also a freelance museum exhibit developer and curator who has created interactive exhibits for the International Museum of Women, the San Jose Tech Museum, the Papalote Children’s Museum in Mexico City, Liberty Science Center, and the Singapore Science Center.  Her new research effort called “The Tangible Culture Research Project” investigates the design of evocative (mixed reality) knowledge objects and the role of tinkering in a digital age.  For more information about her current work and new transmedia book project, Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work visit http://www.designingculture.net (to be launched August, 2009).