Paper title: Steve in Action: Tools and Applications for Social Tagging

Presenter: Kyle Jaebker (Application Developer, Indianapolis Museum of Art) 

Abstract:

Steve in Action is a collaboration of museum professionals and others who are interested in using social tagging to enhance access to cultural heritage collections and engage visitors with collections. Social tagging can provide users with additional methods of object discovery and can create connections between works across many different collections. Funded in 2008 by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Steve in Action grant has been building software tools that make tagging a reality for any institution. The goal throughout the development process was that tagging should be easy. Not only should tagging be easy for the end-users but also for the museums putting the Steve software to work. With the use of Javascript widgets and a robust REST API, Steve offers multiple options for embedding tagging tools in existing websites. For museums that do not have an existing online collection, Steve provides a simple solution that can be customized to give it a look and feel specific to the institution. In this presentation we will explain the many different ways that the Steve software can be used to provide tagging tools for museums. We will also explore some of the current implementations to show how museums are currently leveraging the Steve tools to provide their users with tagging capabilities.

Session Info

• Type: Individual Paper
• Keywords: social tagging, steve, web
• Relevance: Museum professionals interested in learning about Social tagging and how the Steve in Action software can be leveraged to provide an easy tagging environment.

Presenter

Kyle Jaebker (Application Developer, Indianapolis Museum of Art)

Kyle is a new member of the IMA team but has been involved in professional software development efforts for the past eight years.  He has worked on many different projects during that time including web survey tools and satellite ground systems. Kyle is also proficient with many different technologies including PHP, Javascript, MySql, Oracle, Java, ColdFusion, and others.  Early in his career Kyle found that working on the web was where his passion was. To continue to grow that passion Kyle became involved as a developer with the PHP content management system MODx where he has been a core contributor for the past five years. Over that period Kyle has developed many add-on components for building menus, searching, and generating tag clouds. This passion for the web led Kyle to his current position at the IMA. At the IMA, Kyle works as a developer on the Steve.museum social tagging project. With this project Kyle is developing software tools to provide museums a way to allow online tagging of their collections. 

Co-authors

Name: Charles Moad
Email: cmoad <at> imamuseum <dot> org
Title: Assistant Director IMA Lab
Organization: Indianapolis Museum of Art
Bio:

Charlie leads the application development team towards providing open-source and reusable solutions for the IMA and the cultural community as a whole. His diverse programming background has helped the IMA provide internal solutions and bypass the communications barrier often experienced with museum consultants. He has been deeply involved in the integration of the museum's collection and digital asset management systems with other frameworks, including the IMA's main website. Before coming to the IMA, Charlie was an Associate Developer for the Scientific Data Analysis Lab, a Pervasive Technology Lab of Indiana University. There he worked on visualization and web service applications in the bioinformatics and life sciences realm. Charlie holds a M.S in Computer Science from Indiana University.

Name: Ed Bachta
Email: ebachta <at> imamuseum <dot> org
Title: Application Developer
Organization: Indianapolis Museum of Art
Bio:

Ed Bachta is a software developer who enjoys designing and implementing effective and engaging interactive online experiences that empower website visitors to explore and learn about the world around them. At the IMA he has developed exhibition websites (e.g. To Live Forever), interactive features (e.g. Virtual Rome for Roman Art from the Louvre, mummy CT-scan interactives, the ArtBabble video player), and tools (e.g. project management tools, Term Review for the Steve tagging project) as part of the IMA’s in-house development team. In graduate school he specialized in computer graphics and virtual reality, and then worked in the field of scientific and information visualization before entering the museum community. Ed is experienced in collaborating with specialists from diverse backgrounds, from astrophysics to archaeology. In addition to being fascinated with earth science, Ed is also interested in Edo-period and modern Japanese culture and studied abroad in Japan for one year as an undergraduate, acquiring a functional level of proficiency in Japanese. He is also concerned about environmental sustainability, and collaborates with the museum's sustainability team on projects covering topics from power monitoring and conservation in the machine room to environmental awareness in the Art and Nature Park.