Cultural Heritage

Sebastian Chan, Powerhouse Museum, Australia, and Jim Spadaccini, Ideum, USA presented a paper entitled “Radical Trust: The State of the Museum Blogosphere” at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference. In the paper they provided an overview of use of blogs in the museum sector. They stated that “As 2006 began, there were less than thirty known museum blogs” and then went on to add that in 2007 “there are well over 100 blogs exploring museum issues, from a range of institutions and individuals across the globe“.

I recently noticed that a blog post entitled Museum Blogs and Museum Podcasts Directory Sites published in December 2008 on the Ideum blog announced that “The Museum Blogs directory site has been revised and relaunched“. And looking at the directory I find that there are now 286 museum blogs listed.

There’s clearly been a significant growth over the past couple of years. And yet I also suspect that there are many museums around the UK which don’t have a blog, perhaps because they don’t feel that blogs can provide many benefits, are concerned at the resource implications, don’t feel they have the technical experience to set a blog or writing expertise to write blog posts.  Or perhaps there are museums which would like to set up a blog, but are prevented from doing so by the powers-that-be – the local authority, perhaps, the board of trustees or maybe in-house barriers such as resistant from managers.

UKOLN has sought to address such issues. We have run a blogging workshop on a number of occasions (both as a half-day workshop and, more recently a full-day workshop which provided an “Introduction To Blogs And Social Networks For Heritage Organisations“). I should add that a number of reports on the Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Organisation workshop that myself and Mike Ellis facilitated at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference were published which contain useful feedback on the session and the discussions which took place. In particular I should mention the reports published on the LibraryTechNZ and The Butterfly Net blogs together with brief notes on the session published on the Museums and the Web 2008 conference blog itself.

We have also published a series of IntroByte briefing documents on a variety of aspects related to blogs and blogging, including An Introduction to Blogs, Use of Blogs in Museums, Developing Blog Policies,  Planning Processes for Your Blog, Quality Processes for Your Blog, Launching Your Blog, Building A Blogging Community, Evaluating Your Blog, Technical Issues For Your Blogging Service, and, last but not least Addressing Barriers to Blogging.

Now I don’t believe in forcing people (or institutions) to blog if they don’t feel that blogs can tangible benefits. But I do feel that, in light of the growing numbers of museums which are using blogs, institutions should explore the potential benefits.  I hope the documents listed will provide an insight into the various issues which need to be explored. And if any organisation (a regional body, perhaps, or a national event) would be interested in hosting a blogging workshop, please let me know.

Alternatively if you have any thoughts on the role of blogs in the museum sector, feel free to add a comment to this post. Perhaps you’ve a success story you’d like to share, or hit unexpected problems. Or maybe you’d like to challenge the view that blogs do have a role to play.

Different Types of Museum Blogs (thanks to Nina Simon)

And maybe you could suggest blogs and blog posts which provide further insights into use of blogs by museums.

One blog blog I found to be of particular relevance to museums thinking of engaging with blogs is the Museum 2.0 blog and, in particular, the post on What Kind of Blog is Right for Your Museum?

This post includes a graphic which provides a great visual summary on some of the issues which you may have to address. I’ve included the image in this post – and would like to give acknowledgments to Nina Simone for making this available.