twisted preservation

Last year I heard a talk by Frank Vagnone. I found out about it from an email update from Museums and Galleries NSW. The talk was looking at historic house museums, and the ideas were of relevance to many other sorts of organisations as well.

The label photographed shows a feedback mechanism which was used to explore how people saw historic houses. It was a way to learn about what people liked, did not like and their ideas for change. This is a way to encourage people to suggest ideas.

For more ideas go and read Anarchist's Guide to Historic House Museums by Franklin D. Vagnone, Deborah E. Ryan.  It is a really interesting book with some great ideas about looking at history (and the need to be inclusive). I am thinking it is time for me to read it again too.

Natural History Museum London, and the science being done

The Natural History Museum in London has a visualisation showing the global distribution of the Museum's zoological specimens with digital records.  This is an impressive way of helping people understand what the collection covers. When you go to the data page to search, they tell you that 

2,927,322 of the Museum's 80 million specimens are now available online.  I really like this because it lets me know there is a lot of information I can find online, but I won't find it all, and that it is being added to all the time.  Specific data set numbers for zoology, botany, mineralogy, palaeontology and entomology are also listed. The data sets can be downloaded and are also available by an API.

If you click on the our science link, the museum website informs you of the number of scientists and of their collaborative publications, so that we understand that the museum is about current science work, as well as so many other areas.

They have developed some very interesting lists on Twitter, bringing together the work of their scientists.  There are many other amazing areas of this website to explore.

I find the different ways they describe and share information very interesting, and with some ideas libraries may think about too.

Museums and interactivity, part 1

Boott Cotton Mill Museum had some very interesting features. They were part of a national park hashtag promotion


They also had an area with comfortable seating where you could explore books about the area. These books were also available for sale in the museum shop, but it was nice to have this area to have a read.

Denver Art Museum has a very interest mix of museum interactivity, with many of their exhibitions having spaces (just after the exhibition), to explore the ideas to try out creative responses and to make things. One of the art works was added to by the visitors. This was a high degree of interactivity. Some of it was targeting children, but some of the making and learning was targeting adults.
This area was for children and was connected to the Miro exhibtion

This art work could be added to

This was an area to make a post card,


This was a different kind of touch screen

This space followed and exhibition of American Indian Art

This one was connected to a textile exhibtion

and you could explore weaving

You could also play with Hieronymus Bosch puppets

This museum was providing lots of space to think about the area you were seeing, as well as to have a better understanding of how it was made, but also to see some of the inspirations for the art. Some of the interactions were digital , but many more were with marbles, paper, or wool. This is something to consider for libraries too. It was also great to see so many opportunities for adults to make and interact. There were also places to read about art

Visiting the Australian Museum

I recently visited the Australian Museum and was really interested to see the new work there.

They are still great at letting you know how to connect on social media




The new gallery looks amazing - and I was not sure how I would react, but the brilliant light and impressive arrangement was actually really powerful.

My photographs in no way do it justice.
The mix of technology was good. There was a big range in the ages of people exploring the space and taking photographs of it.
They are also telling a really interesting story about the history of museums and collecting in the Long Gallery.

I had a fun time at the museum.

American Textile History Museum

This part of the museum was encouraging children to explore the traits which made changes in the mill industry and gave examples from individuals.


They also could do a video to pitch their idea.

You can see more images here.

Cooper Hewitt

This made great use of touch screens


You can see more photographs here.

Denver Art Museum

This museum was impressive, not simply for its collections, but how interactivity was being encouraged for adults as well as children.  There were several spaces for reading and thinking about exhibitions, but there were also things to do.

This show some of the set up for children for the Miro exhibition


This space was next to a textile exhibition You can see more photographs here.

Biblioteca de Filatelia de Oaxaca

This was a lovely accidental discovery, inside a charming museum.



more photographs of the library and museum are here.

Science Museum tours on twitter.

This came to my attention because I follow Medium, and read this article about Museum tours on twitter by Will Stanley.  It is a good idea to read the article before reading this post.

The Storify is beautifully done, because it records the twitter tour and it bring the comments about it to the stream as well, highlighting the conversation.  I like the use of the Science Museum twitter account, and that the curator being identified as leading the tour.  This is lovely.  This could be done for so many local studies events and location.  Imagine tweeting a walking tour, so that someone could do the tour by following the tweets or be able to able to see the tour without being there.  It would be great to highlight collection items, the way the Science Museum has. It would also work well for local festival (to help record them for local studies).

Have a look at more of the use of Storify from the Science Museum.

Celestial City

I am yet to go to see this wonderful sounding exhibition at the Museum of Sydney, and yet, it has already given me much pleasure as I have walked past the museum and seen the installation of the garden out the front.


It is lovely, and I appreciate the information which is being made available in this way, before I even visit the museum. It is a promotion, but it is also a story, and that is impressive.

Share your story

The Defence of Darwin Experience is an impressive museum.  I am not a regular visitor to museums about war, but occasionally will go to see how they are telling the story.

This museum was very impressive, and highlighted the diversity of the population of Darwin both then and now.

There was excellent use of archival information, with different ways to access the different kinds of stories.  You really could see the Defence of Darwin from a whole lot of angles.

They also had this booth, at the end of the exhibition, where you could add your story.  There were simple instructions and you could obtain help of you needed it.




It seemed a very interesting way to capture oral history information, and to let people know that their stories were of interest.



I was also impressed with their free wifi, which when you accessed it, encouraged the downloading of the museum app (which was also mentioned on the sandwich board outside the museum).

They were making it really easy in the museum to find out about what was available online.

The art of video games at the Smithsonian

This looks like it is an amazing exhibition.  
Photograph by Blakespot

 I really like that from this one page I can access so many ways of interacting with the exhibition. It is followed with a description, and useful links to public programming, book and USA national tour of the exhibition.  The Smithsonian are making it really easy to connect with this exhibition, and give various social media connections too, as well as highlighting media coverage of this exhibition.  You can also find out about other things the Smithsonian is doing.

I really like this way of getting a lot of information across in a short space, in a way which makes sense.  I am highlighting this example, because it shows what should be possible from every museum, library, archive and gallery, every time.

National Museum of Play, Rochester, NY

This was an amazing museum.  A branch of the local public library was spread through out it and it houses the International Centre for the History of Electronic Games.



To see more photographs of the museum either look at the slideshow below or follow this link to read descriptions of the photographs.