Article appearing in the Sept. '95 issue of Spectra, the journal of the Museum Computer Network.
I would like to consider here the need for a museum to weave its digital access projects into an integrated whole based on intellectual access. Integrating access projects has the benefit of presenting a unified and intelligible spectrum of museum information to the outside user, and also has internal benefits in making the best use of museum time and resources. In consideration of this need, I'll propose a model for access to museum information, including thoughts on interactivity, and use some examples of UAM/PFA projects that are helping to implement this model for us.
One way to see access to museum information is as a continuum, having as its two ends the twin prongs of a museum's mission; stewardship and pedagogy. Most museums developed internal computer systems previous to ones intended for public use. Most of these could be considered to support the museum's charge of stewardship, from development and financial, to collection management systems. I will concentrate on public access, but one far end of the continuum lies here, especially in the collection management system.
Collection management systems are usually databases of item-level records and often, when modified or expanded to include public access, they come to resemble library OPAC's (online public access catalogs) as specific and detail-rich information resources. This is a natural place to start building public access to museum information, but is certainly not where all museums start; including the UAM/PFA. Some museums enter the public access continuum with a WWW site, or by publishing CD-ROM titles, which usually entail more historical, biographical, and other background information, making these context-rich resources.
The collection catalog is a good access point for researchers, who come with a project in mind. Looking primarily to fill in gaps in their knowledge on a specific detailed level, these visitors bring their own context to the museum information. They often already know the history surrounding an object; in fact they may be looking up an object to support research for a history or art history project.
The more pedagogical CD-ROM title or WWW site often gives the visitor a great deal of context, along with specific information. This level is good for the casual visitor interested in art and culture. But even this is not quite exact; one can also layer access in a WWW site to include general info, with hyper-links to much more specific information. A key question is, where do the links lead? At the one end we have a context-rich resource which can lead an interested visitor to a much more detailed level, and at the other end a collection management database of detailed records that could lead a viewer up to more contextualized resources. Linking these systems, though it may be far off in most museums' feasible plans, is an important example for planning intellectual access to museum information. Such linking will allow the museum to avoid duplicating many information resources, provide better information to visitors, and most importantly, layer access so that a visitor can access information at any point that is comfortable or useful for them, and slide along the continuum to any other point, without leaping over gaps in information so large as to prove insurmountable, or that make the visitor leave one access point and re-enter at another.
The library and archive worlds refer to "item-level" and "collection-level" records for objects. Ignoring for the moment the important specifics of a MARC record or archival finding aid, these can also be seen as "detail-rich" records and "context-rich" records. Detail-rich information is often found at the stewardship end of the museum's information continuum, as this type of information is most needed internally to manage and preserve individual objects which make up collections. Context-rich information serves obvious pedagogical purposes, bringing an object or even collection of objects to a visitor in an envelope of history and ideas. This public access continuum actually exists as part of a larger continuum; at one end is a level of detail about a specific object inappropriate or not of use to the public; insurance values or donor histories. At the other end, past pedagogy, are entertainment products, which contain vague generalizations, and not enough substantive detail to support meaningful learning or deeper exploration. Neither context-rich nor detail-rich is preferable over the other since both are needed to serve a museums dual mission, and from the visitors point of view, the amount of detail or context they want should be up to them. Layering access allows museums to best serve a broad audience, and further, allows that audience to develop by providing the pathways for continued exploration.
Format for Access Points
I'll leave the description of the continuum now to briefly explain why, for mostly pragmatic reasons, most museums do not start at one end of the continuum and build steadily toward the other, but may enter at any one, or multiple points. In considering access to a continuum of information, we run against the formidable obstacle of disparate technology formats - WWW, database, audio-guides, CD-ROM, etc. Making these pieces work together to create an integrated whole is certainly no mean technical feat. Currently the UAM/PFA is working with Visible Interactive to create a prototype of a hand-held digital gallery guide, using the Apple Newton as the base-unit. Right now these devices are stand-alone, but a definite avenue for exploration would be using the built-in infra-red transmission technology to turn these into hand-held intelligent "clients" to a centralized collection database. Central to making the pieces work together is using standards-based information formats whatever the hardware platform. Of special interest to the museum community will be projects that develop such standards where none exists, or that explore way of making different platforms relate in meaningful ways. Already we are making progress in relating certain kinds of collection level records to item level records, and there have been first tries at CD-ROM titles that can also access online resources where necessary.
In bringing our museum information to the public we had to consider a few issues, including format. Being a university museum, we are fortunate to be able to share the university's resources, from it's established methodology for information access to its network infrastructure. We chose to "go online" with our WWW site first for this and a couple other reasons. Compared to CD-ROM, a WWW site has the benefit of being current and extensible. For research purposes both of these are crucial. For a researcher, connecting to a site and being able to access pertinent information from anywhere across that site is preferable to trying to search across the equivalent information stored on several dated CD-ROM's. WWW access also does not, yet, follow the market model of disseminating discrete packages of information for a fixed price either. It is primarily a service; but that is changing as commerce models develop for the WWW. We also saw that the information standards used for online formats ( HTML, SGML, relational databases) promised better longevity and flexibility of our information over putting it into MacroMind Director or other formats commonly used on multimedia CD-ROM's. Putting our information on the Internet also assured the widest possible access to our information as well. However, this initial choice does not mean one format is better than the other; these issues merely place our decision to go public in a WWW form at one point on the continuum. CD-ROM, and in-house multimedia kiosks for that matter, are equally of value. Both are capable of presenting, currently, much more engaging forms of multimedia for presentation, and CD-ROM in particular has as it's advantage the flip side of one disadvantage - it is a discrete object which can be sold (though I'd be happy to learn of museums that are making a profit on these so far), and it makes a perfect souvenir of an museum experience, something tangible, educational and engaging for visitors. Online vs. in-house vs. CD-ROM is just a matter of initial emphasis; our decision merely reflects our available resources and the concerns of serving one of our closest constituencies; academia. The intellectual integration of access is more important than, and will inform the decision of, which formats to use for access points.
Interactivity
The UAM/PFA has initiated the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive Online project, which will create a multimedia online resource focusing on the archive and conceptual art collection of the artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. The project will use the method of the Berkeley Finding Aid Project of the UC Berkeley Library, to create an SGML encoded finding aid to this collection. One particular function of the larger Berkeley Finding Aid Project is to explore the relation between the collection level and item level records. Another purpose we will be putting this project to is exploring "interactivity" as a description of our ongoing relationship with our audience.
Interactivity at its worst is button-pushing, but can also be a way for the viewer to enhance the learning process by taking a path of interest to them, or appropriate to their level. In addition to considering this type of interactivity for the whole of a museums information resources, a museum can also engage the viewer in other long lasting ways. The UAM/PFA will incorporate a newsgroup/bulletin board as part of the online Cha archive, as a way of allowing viewers, students and researchers to discuss among themselves, unmediated by the museum, the material presented there. The newsgroup will also help us keep abreast of research projects arising around this artists work. There is interest in using Theresa Cha's work for education but it was previously very difficult to access. We hope that putting this archive online will promote scholarship and discussion related to Cha and her art. We can then take the best of that scholarship and re-invest it in the archive, making it a living archive that creates a cycle of increasing knowledge and involvement.
This level of long-term "interactivity" and the other level of creating a continuum for museum access to information are both interests a museum may not share with a commercial developer. They may not be as interested in how co-developed CD-ROM title X relates to your WWW site, kiosk information etc. It is up to museums to plan how to best serve their audiences. If the plan is broadly implemented, commercial interests will come in with products and services to help fulfill it.
Conclusion
I have only addressed the integration of information vertically, at a single institution, but another goal is to horizontally integrate resources from many institutions, so that a researcher may do a query against one database and obtain replies with pertinent information from many resources, geographically scattered or existing on different platforms. Hyperlinked WWW pages show the early signs of what is possible in this arena too, but are just a beginning.
The initial effort required to develop such integrated systems will be great, but it will save museums in the long-run from having to duplicate information for different output platforms; a very labor intensive prospect. Luckily, there are currently projects in individual museums, and consortiums like CIMI and RLG that are attempting to develop standards and cleave the technical barriers to integrating information systems. Likewise, museums can begin planning for holistic intellectual access to our information based on knowledge of our collections, our audiences, how our information is used, and how the parts relate to the whole in the context of art, science, history, etc. Whether through developing this general model of a detail-to-context continuum or some other model, this planning will be an important step. We can begin by asking ourselves "How will this multimedia project relate to that database project? What knowledge gaps exist between them? How will we fill the gaps, if not now, then later? Do they overlap in potentially helpful ways? If we don't have access to the technology to truly integrate them now, how can we design them so they compliment each other conceptually, and sets them up for later integration?"
Integrating access along an intellectual continuum instead of undertaking a disjointed series of individual projects allows a museum to maximize its resources in the long run and to serve the broadest possible audience. It lets a visitor access the museum's resources at any point, swim up or down the information stream of context and detail, move between subjects and institutions, and emerge from a journey unlimited by the storage capacity or thematic focus of one CD-ROM or WWW site.
- Richard Rinehart