Abstract:

Ever wanted to collect stories, reflections, images, or other digital items from your visitors through the web, but you did not quite know how to plan and launch a site? In this proposed session participants will discuss the steps required to build a friendly and easy-to-use digital archive that encourages public contributions. Sheila Brennan has considerable experience building digital archives and collecting sites, and will share her experience with the group and will encourage others to talk through the challenges they are facing at their own institutions as they try to launch online collecting sites. Other topics that may be discussed include vetting, privacy, content management systems, project outreach, and sustainability.

Session Info

• Type: Unconference session
• Keywords: digital archive, collecting, tagging
• Relevance: The session relates to the conference theme by demonstrating how museums can invite the public to create content and add to a museum's digital collections. Creating an online collecting site provides another means for a museum to encourage participation from its broad range of publics. Outreach and publicity for these types of sites are as critical to their success as building the site itself, all of which will be covered in this proposed session. This session may interest museum technologists, outreach specialists, curators, and educators.