Here is a blatant quote from Mike Ellis‘ electronicmuseum.org.uk, but since he has such a simple and straightforward conclusion of MW2008 I wanted to copy it entirely.

Ellis just spent 7 years working as Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry, UK, which comprises the Science Museum in London, Media Museum in Bradford and Railway Museum in York. He now calls himself a «Solutions Architect», working for the Professional Services Group at Eduserv.

Please visit his site, he is an authority on many things, and might even come from the future.

This is Mike’s «direction of travel gut feel for what actually went on during the week:

• We’re doing some very cool stuff using some great new approaches and technologies.
• We’re starting to see the benefits of open access to our content, both in terms of Creative Commons and programmatic access via API’s or syndication.
• We’re - at last - worrying less and doing more.
• We’re beginning to see the benefits of community, not just the coolness.
• Finally: we’re up for collaborating and sharing in more open and positive ways than ever before.»

The keynote speaker of last week’s Museums and the Web in Montreal Michael Geist is looking back at the conference with a critical article in the Toronto Star. In short, Geist summons Canada’s museums to remove fees and contractual barriers to Canadian heritage.

«The dozens of presentations at the conference highlighted the remarkable transformation in how museums display their collections and interact with the public.»

He goes on to say that «(m)any museums are using online video, social networks and interactive multimedia to pull content from diverse places to create «virtual museums.» So, the museum community has emerged as a leading voice for the development of legal frameworks to facilitate digitization and avoid restrictions that could hamper cultural innovation.»

Yet, according to Geist, who holds the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa faculty of law, «some fear the advocacy and actions of museums in embracing the Internet are not consistent, particularly in their policies on works for which copyright has expired.»

According to documents obtained by Geist under the Access to Information Act, the National Gallery of Canada appears to be treating public-domain works as a profit centre.

«(T)he gallery often added hundreds of dollars to the total cost of fulfilling a request, despite the fact that the images were in the public domain. In fact, the permission costs for such works were actually higher than those for works still subject to copyright. The gallery reasoned that the copyright holder would apply additional charges.»

Read his full article (Toronto Star, April 15, 2008)
Visit Michael Geist’s homepage

The final day of the conference is on its way. This morning we had quite a rewarding demonstration of the n8 strategy, explaining our on and off line activities. It is interesting to see so many institutions working with all these interesting and intelligent tools, but not many working collectively in a city or region, like we do in Amsterdam. I would be keen to learn from other organisations that develop plans together. The collective of over 40 museums in Amsterdam have founded the n8 as an innovation platform for youth marketing, event organisation and new media development. Our annual Museum Night is by far the most known of the projects we do, but the Museum in MP3 portal is getting some good feedback, amongst others from the kind people at MoMA and ICA Boston. I would love to discuss this more in depth with attendees of MW2008.

Day two of MW2008 began at 8 am this morning, with the ‘Birds of a Feather’ breakfast. Our self-created table ‘Enhanced Museum Events’ inspired an interesting dialogue with Jonathan Bowen, who is presenting Wiki Software and Facilities for Museums in the midday session. Before that, I visited talks about Web 2.0 Metrics by the ever enthusing Seb Chan, and Web 2.0 tools by David Greenfield from the Loyola Marymount Universit.

The afternoon schedule brings a much anticipated and needed discussion on openness, by ’solutions architect’ Mike Ellis and Brian Kelly. Hopefully there will be time for lunch and more in-between-the-lines-discussions about the Semantic Web, public-private-ventures and enhancing actual museum visits by means of ultranew media.

Due to rather unfortunate circumstances I have not been able to send in my paper to MW2008; however the organisation has been kind enough to give us a slot at the demonstrations on Saturday. If you are interested to hear about the Amsterdam Museum Night, physical museum events and interactive media, social networking in the context of a museum festival and other ‘interreality’ examples, join us tomorrow at 9.30 am at booth 16.

The 12th edition of the annual Museums and the Web conference has started today. Keynote speaker Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law, had an interesting talk at the opening plenary, stressing the need for museums to take responsibility for shaping the future Web.

Like every year, the conference is as cluttered and complex as the topics it addresses. Chairman and MW evangelist David Bearman admits it himself, advising visitors to ‘browse’ the lectures instead of fanatically trying to absorb all of its contents. This mornings’s program consists of sessions entitled ‘Personalisation’, ‘Engaging Museum Audiences’ and ‘Theoretical Frameworks’. After lunch, themes are a.o. ‘Mobile Computing’, User-Generated Content’ and ‘What to do with New Media Art?’.

MW2008

Both editors of MuseumLab are currently attending the Musee 2.0 symposium at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Speakers include (a.o.) Peter Weibel (director ZKM, Karlsruhe), John Stack (director, Tate Online, London) and Alain Depocas (director Fondation Daniel Langlois, Montreal). You can watch their presentations via a live feed on their website.

Scene from the trailer for ‘Script’ at the Centraal Museum in the Dutch city of Utrecht, which mixes history, fashion and interiors within a continuous filmic experience.    

Presenting masterpieces from the history of fashion and interiors within a continuous filmic experience, the permanent display ‘Script’ at the Centraal Museum in the Dutch city of Utrecht, mixes historical dresses and contemporary fashion by designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood with cabinets and sofas as well as modern furniture by Gerrit Rietveld. Costume dramas from the last twenty years are the inspiration for film-sets displays, resulting in a new interpretation of the museum’s unique period rooms.

In the films that are the starting point for ‘Script’, furniture and fashion represent important historical and cultural developments. Within ‘Script’ highlights from the museum’s Rietveld collection are placed within an extraordinary modernistic environment. ‘Script’ is designed by designers Concern and Darlaine Heitinga and not only situates highlights from the collection within film sets, it also invites the visitor to step inside various sets and be photographed. Visitors can assume a role in such cinematic classics as the silent movie ‘Man with a Movie Camera’, the costume drama ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and the science-fiction film ‘Blade Runner’.

 Scene from the the science-fiction film ‘Blade Runner’, which was used as one of the sources of inspiration for ‘Script’

Watch the trailer
Visit the Centraal Museum website

The Royal Library in Copenhagen has expressed the wish to house controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad which were published in a Danish newspaper in September 2005 and created a wave of global protest in which more than 50 people were killed. “It would be natural for us to have them at the Royal Library,” Jytte Kjaergaard, a spokeswoman for the Copenhagen- based library, said by telephone today to Bloomberg. “We don’t perceive them as works of art. We don’t have any view on their substance or content. Our view is that they hold a place in our cultural heritage. The cartoons have become a part of Danish history.”

Critics state that the library risks opening old wounds, causing an unnecessary provocation towards the Muslim world. “We don’t need to be reminded of the cartoons. We need to forget about them and build bridges between people, rather than dig ditches,” said Kasem Said Ahmad, a spokesman for the Islamic Community in Denmark.

Der Spiegel writes that “according to Danish law, two copies of everything published in Denmark — from bestselling novels to local newspapers — have to be deposited at the Royal Library, making it the country’s most important repository.” The Danish institution is considered to be Scandinavia’s leading library, with rare treasures like Sören Kierkegaard’s manuscripts, one of 48 copies of the Gutenberg Bible known to exist and “Out of Africa” author Karen Blixen’s diaries.

The Danish Media Museum in Odense has also expressed an interest in the cartoons. “If the library acquires them, we would like to show them together with media reports about the publication and the protests against it,” says its director Ervin Nielsen in the Guardian.

The artists are willing to collaborate, writes the Times. “We have generally agreed that we want a museum to have the works, but everyone still has to take a final decision for himself,” Claus Seidel, one of the cartoonists and head of the Danish cartoonists’ association, said. “Nobody wants to make a lot of money, some of us are even willing to donate the works,” he said.”

Read the article in the Times (January 30, 3008)
Read the article in the Guardian (January 30, 2008)
Read the article in Der Spiegel (January 30, 2008)
Read the article at bloomberg.com (Junuary 30, 2008)
Visit the Web site of The Royal Library
See the timeline of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy on Wikipedia

Update February 1:
Read the article in the International Herald Tribune (January 30, 2008)
Read the article in the Art Newspaper (January 31, 2008)

Museums and the Web is an annual conference that deals with “the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of culture, science and heritage on-line.” It is an inspiring four day event held in North America. This time it will take place in Montreal, from 9-12 April 2008.

Next year’s programme has just been published online. Amongst its participants are delegates from museums worldwide, such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Tate Modern in London, and MoMA in New York. MuseumLab editor Juha van ´t Zelfde will also be present, for a second consecutive year. He is scheduled to give a presentation in the Technology - Mobile Computing session, on the findings and results of the Amsterdam Museum Night.

Museums and the Web is organized by Archimuse. See who attended the conference in 2007.

“Water Lilies” is the second-most-popular cellphone wallpaper sold by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which opened a new digital-images shop in September. This so-called ‘On the Go’-service is only the latest future-shock innovation at the museum, a civilized institution that has nonetheless adopted what one tech reporter scarily described as a policy of “aggressive digital-capture.”

Having taken high-resolution photos of 350,000 works in its collection, and having magnanimously made almost all of them all searchable on its Web site, the M.F.A. now has one of the biggest image databases of any art museum in the world.

Read article (New York Times, December 2, 2007)