Digital Content - why it's important to us

[Angelina Russo]

Strangely enough, at a recent museum conference, a colleague turned to me and asked why there had yet to be a clear definition of the relevance of 'content' as opposed to 'collections' in the sector. After listening to Lynda Kelly's presentation where she neatly summarised what audiences wanted from a museum visit, I put this model together. I'd be interested in your thoughts:

Collections, the mainstay of cultural institutions, are contextualised through their association and provenance with communities. Yet, as Pearce, Hooper Greenhill and many others have shown, collections + communities is not enough. For audiences to ‘make meaning’ of cultural content, interpretative techniques were developed in the sector. These took the forms of exhibition panels, text labels and later, interactive kiosks and public and educational programs.

The rise of online activity in the sector brought with it the opportunity to create digital content which linked collections and communities though compelling stories told by/and or for audience members. Digital content increasingly took the form of communicating the compelling stories which enabled audiences to ‘make sense’ of exhibition material. In doing so, digital content recogonises audience experiences, providing opportunities for personal stories to form significant part of the process of interpretation.

[Amelia]

That's great Angelina! I must do some actual essay writing and get some concrete ideas about blogs as digital content in the museum context.

[Angelina Russo]

Mia has an interesting question on the point of museum's placing their collections online. You can find it at http://openobjects.blogspot.com/2009/09/whats-point-of-museum-colle...