Workshop Slides

Outline

Recap
- What happened in 2017
State of the Data
- How much is out there? Quick overview of what’s out there now
What’s the Point?
- Discussion: Is natural history more connected than cultural? Why?
What’s the Difference?
- Discussion: Are aggregation practices and standards keys to success?
Putting it in practice
- Survey results from Nik Honeysett
- Collections dashboard / EMudata from FMNH (if we have time)
What next?
- Looking forward and how to participate in the CoP

How much is out there – natural vs cultural history?
NH Records are kept in a variety of repositories (gbif, idigbio, etc.)
CH records are kept institutionally, or aggregators
- Order of magnitude difference from institutions to aggregators
What’s the Point? Why are we or should we be doing this?
- Why can NH institutions get things out more efficiently then CH institutions
- NH has well defined goals and purposes for getting data out there
- Specific stipulations on what NH institutions must do with their information (Convention on Biological Diversity)
WHAT ARE THE EQUIVALENTS IN THE CULTURAL WORLD (discussion/Question posed to audience)

Accessibility, making common connections across our collections
Why? Educational component, stuff that people cant see, expanding the reach
Support and sustain our mission
Public institution – who owns the data
What we really stand for, modern contemporary museum
- SFMoMa, discussing how social injustice (gun violence in schools), students standing up for what they believe, what do institutions believe in and what do they stand for
Accessibility, access to collections, bringing in new audiences, helping current audience find what we have
Let the public access the collection broadly, fundamental to allow access and leave doors open (physically) 9-5, allow access all the time through online collections portal
Interest in online collections can bring people in
Democratizes the collections
Meeting donor expectations, most donors expect to see collection on exhibition which isn’t always possible physically, but can be accessed online digitally
Communities out in the world, that are stakeholders in online collections decision making (not all internal)
Driver to unlock collections, making collection available beyond the walls of the institution
Distributing data to create a wider body of knowledge
Promotes a strand of a window shop view to the institution, promotes the commercial aspects of the collection as well

To connect, share information about artists, and promote education
Proliferation of knowledge, our work fuels scholarship and from this, more scholarship is developed
What’s happening in academic and how it can help others beyond that
People expect to know what we have, remaining relevant
Research, access for teachers and educators
Having reach beyond the walls of the institution
Research in a broader sense, curatorial research across institution – virtual repatriation of resources. People across the globe can see collection information even if they can’t travel to institution
Open movement: discussing the difficulty of putting both natural and cultural history collections online together
We want people to connect with collections, but we also want to connect with institutions

Providing materials to artists and their projects
Felt it was the institutions goal to make collection available to the public
Education and accessibility
Get something back from sharing information
Maybe it’s not possible due to copyright reasons to put in public domain, could you devise a quick way to get it out there (concept of digital loan system)

Promote collections, accessibility and education across collections
History shows that NH and CH were collected together – allowing that relationship to be maintained and presented online
Scientific culture (quantitative concept of big data) which drives this community and sharing of information
Different driver towards what is put online
What we make accessible aligns more with the stories we tell about ourselves, online collections allow us to share different stories – promotes diversity of stories when discussing objects and materials that may be in storage rather than on display at the museum

NH World – GBif, Atlas of living Australia
What are the aggregators in the cultural domain
- Europeana, EU platform for digital heritage
- Virtual museum of canada, federal initiative
  - Administered by the Canadian museum of History
  - How it requests input – rather than uploading all records, they produce virtual exhibitions requiring narratives to be shared about the collections
Standards: DwC, CIDOC CRM (linked data community)
Who is best placed to be the aggregator?
What would an ideal aggregator look like?
What kind of standards should/would be enforced?
Can/should Natural History and Cultural Heritage share?
API utilization to share data
Getty thinks they are in the best place to be an aggregator
- Getty portal, digitized art history books
Libraries do this very well, digital library of california (not really a library aggregator, shares cultural history information)
Art museums: concern that everything be vetted by an expert, within collections data – europeana can do what they do because there isn’t the obstacle of vetting regarding the data
Aside from dealing with copyright, also dealing with website that can support API and backend development – funding and development is an issue in cultural sector
API – many people know what it is, only one person can use it, but difficulty is that IT staff don’t necessarily know the collections data (need that crossover)