what will the museum of the future be like?

Museum Blogs - What are your favourites?

Hi everyone, my name is Amelia and I am currently at the University of Sydney undertaking a Masters in Museum Studies.

I am researching for an essay about museum blogs and I was wondering if anyone knew of any great museum blogs? They don't have to be Australian, anywhere in the world is fine.

I am specifically looking at how blogs contribute to communication and education of visitors and how a blog can extend a museum's audience and encourage contribution from everyday people.

I have only just joined this site and there is so much to see! If my question has already been covered somewhere else I apologise, if so could I please have a link to it?

Many thanks.

Tags: blogs, museum

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Angelina Russo on March 31, 2009 at 6:11pm: Hi Amelia and welcome
The right hand panel on this site links to a number of museum based blogs, and they, in their own right, link to other well-known blogs. I'd start there and no doubt you'll have more blogs than you can read very quickly!
Cheers and good luck with the Masters. BTW - your topic is very relevant to our discussions here. You might be interested in some of the Museums and the Web papers too.
Cheers; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Amelia on March 31, 2009 at 6:57pm: Hi Angelina, thanks for your reply!

I stumbled upon the Museums and the Web conference website, what a great resource! It would be handy if they offered the papers as a .pdf file to download as well as web-based text.

I have to write my own question for this essay which I always find difficult, and managing the scope can be tricky. One thing I have noticed is the relatively low levels of public participation in most of the blogs I have come across so far. I am wondering whether to integrate Facebook as part of my essay in terms of a method to reach a greater audience as the Powerhouse's Australia in the 80s blog and the Australian Museum's All About Evil blog both have Facebook groups which seem to have a higher level of participation than the blogs.

Anyway I suppose that's all part of the challenge. Thanks again!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Angelina Russo on March 31, 2009 at 8:42pm: It's not unusual to have low participation rates in blogs. In some ways, they are more Web 1.5 in that the person who runs a blog is often seen as an expert and so people don't necessarily feel comfortable commenting. I think the NIng format is actually much better for participation. You can get to know people at your own pace. You can follow the discussions that individuals start and you get a good sense of what they do the rest of the time. Darren Peacock and I have written an article on participation for the Museums and the Web conference this year. I can't send you the actual paper yet as it has yet to be published but you can see the link on the Museums and Web site. Let me know if you want to have a chat. Good luck with the masters.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Amelia on April 2, 2009 at 12:27am: Your help and offer to chat is very much appreciated, I will be in contact.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Tanja De Vleeschouwer on April 23, 2009 at 2:17am: is this paper in the meantime published??
I'm looking forward reading it... could be useful for my thesis as well...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kate Stone on April 1, 2009 at 8:49pm: Maybe your essay could examine the qualities of blogs that attract a healthy engagement with people posting comments and those that do not. One that definitely gets good comments is Brooklyn Museum's blogosphere which has so many contributors, is so extensive but well indexed it is almost Ning-like.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Amelia on April 2, 2009 at 12:21am: Thanks Kate, that's really helpful!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Megan Sheehy on April 1, 2009 at 11:45am: My two fav's are Seb Chan's Powerhouse Blog fresh + new(er), and the Australian War Memorial blogs. I hear the Sydney Observatory one is also good.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Amelia on April 2, 2009 at 12:25am: Great! I heard something today about the Observatory blog having some significant statistic worldwide... should have written it down! Seb Chan seems to be pretty influential as a museum blogger. I found the War Memorial blog a bit difficult to navigate but have heard positive things about it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Liz Holcombe on April 3, 2009 at 9:33pm: Hi Amelia - I'm the web manager at the War Memorial, and I would love to hear about what you found difficult about navigating the blog, as then we can see if we can improve it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Amelia on April 5, 2009 at 12:33am: Hi Liz,

I have sent you an email through ning. Thanks for joining in!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Liz Holcombe on April 8, 2009 at 5:48pm: And thanks for the email - it has lots of good suggestions in it. We are about to do an upgrade, so will look at implementing at least some of them then. Some we have been wanting to do for some time, so it was good to hear some one else suggest what we had been thinking.

Liz; ▶ Reply to This