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Research Methods and Findings for an Online Scholarly Catalogue

Page history last edited by dmitroff@... 13 years, 6 months ago

Please note: this session has been canceled.

 

 

Abstract:

 

In 2008, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) received a planning grant from the Getty Foundation as part of the Online Scholarly Cataloguing Initiative project. The goal of this multi-institutional, multi-year initiative is to explore the potential for scholarly collection catalogues in an online environment.

 

SFMOMA chose to focus on 85 objects by Robert Rauschenberg in its permanent collection and to develop an online resource for the scholarly and academic community. The catalogue promises to be the most in-depth repository of Rauschenberg research available on the Web, and will serve as a vital resource for the field. Our primary goal is to produce rigorous scholarship and layered multimedia resources, presenting them seamlessly and flexibly via a technological solution that allow for future research and newly catalogued objects to be easily incorporated.

 

We partnered with the experience design firm Hot Studio for the research, strategy, and visual design phases of the project. At the time of this submission, we have completed extensive user research and are developing our design strategies. This paper and presentation, co-developed by SFMOMA and Hot Studio, will cover the assumptions we held going into the project, how we conducted research with the scholarly and academic community, and what we learned in the process. Our research methodologies and findings are relevant to any institution that is considering developing a new online resource for a targeted audience.

 

In our paper and presentation, we will describe how we conducted qualitative, contextual interviews in order to identify primary user needs and requirements and answer some fundamental questions. For example, we wondered if SFMOMA would need to present its collection in unique way, revealing previously unpublished and unique primary source material, for it to be a valid and useful destination for our target audiences. We learned that they do want access to the scholarly work that SFMOMA creates, particularly content that in the past has been inaccessible. If we offer this type of unique content, they would consider this catalogue an authoritative addition to the existing body of scholarly work.

 

One of the other findings we will discuss is that academics and scholars do not desire to use our online Rauschenberg catalogue as a destination to dialog and debate about the subject matter. They already have extensive personal (and often live) networks where this already takes place. Hence the development of a web 2.0-type community does not make sense for a project like this.

 

Our paper and presentation will share details on the research activities we conducted, describe our resulting findings, consider how those findings might impact museum methodologies and management tools, and share some of our initial design strategies. We hope that sharing what we did and learned as part of this project will be useful and informative to other cultural institutions that are building and developing online resources for target audiences.

 

 

Session Info

  • Type: Individual Paper
  • Keywords: digital catalogue, online resource, permanent collection, scholar, academic, research, online collection, asset management, SFMOMA, Rauschenberg
  • Relevance: In this uncertain financial climate, with many institutions downsizing print budgets, many of us are exploring how to migrate more materials online. We learned that creating online content for an academic community requires a different approach than for our general audience. Our paper and presentation, therefore, is relevant for any institution building and developing new online resources for a target audience. We will share techniques and methods that any institution can use to validate hypotheses and develop smart design strategies.

 

 

Speakers

 

Dana Mitroff Silvers

Head of Online Services

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third Street

San Francisco, CA  94103

http://www.sfmoma.org

 

Dana has worked on the design and production of large-scale, educational websites since the early days of HTML. Among the sites she has worked on are the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley Interactive University project, and Computer Curriculum Corporation. Dana led the multi-year redesign of sfmoma.org, and oversees all aspects of the public-facing SFMOMA website. She is on the international program committee of Museums and the Web and presents regularly at that conference, and has also presented at the annual meetings of the Museum Computer Network, American Association of Museums, IMLS Web Wise, and the National Museum Publishing Seminar. Dana has taught and lectured at both the undergraduate and graduate-level for numerous Bay Area institutions, including the University of San Francisco and JFK University. Dana holds an MA in art history from the University of Chicago and a BA in journalism from the University of Southern California.

 

 

Renee Anderson

Director of User Experience

Hot Studio, Inc.

585 Howard Street, First Floor

San Francisco, CA  94105

www.hotstudio.com

 

Renee is a Director of User Experience at Hot Studio, Inc., an experience design firm based in San Francisco and New York City.

For over a decade, Renee has worked in solving digital design problems for the web and mobile space, and more recently, for touch and gestural interfaces. She is currently involved in implementing a service design practice at Hot, looking beyond the digital interface to include all touchpoints - online, offline and person-to-person interactions - users will encounter in their relationship with a company or institution.

Renee has worked on projects for clients such as the United Nation's UNHabitat, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Zinio, and Architecture for Humanity. She has spoken on user-centered design methodologies and processes at DUX 2007, The Wallace Foundation Conference 2008, at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, and at Museums and the Web 2009.

 

 

Layna White

Head of Collections Information and Access

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

www.sfmoma.org

 

Layna is Head of Collections Information and Access at SFMOMA. Her department is responsible for managing the advancement of the Museum's collections management system; creating and maintaining visual documentation for works of art; managing inquiries related to intellectual property; and fostering information sharing about the Museum's collection. Degrees in art history and library and information science complement her interest in museum practices for description and documentation, as well as meeting pluralistic and changing needs for access to and use of digital content.

 

 

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