"museums" entries

Four short links: 23 January 2010

Four short links: 23 January 2010

Wikileaks Fundraising, Internet Censorship, Unfree as in Video, and Museums Online

  1. WikiLeaks Fundraising — PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks’ assets. Interesting: they need $600k/yr to run.
  2. The Great Australian Internet Blackout — online protest to raise awareness about the Great Firewall of Australia.
  3. HTML5 Video: Problems Ahead — YouTube and Vimeo won’t support a free codec (file format). The web is undeniably better for Mozilla having entered the browser market, and it would have been impossible for us to do so if there had been a multi-million-dollar licensing fee required for handling HTML, CSS, JavaScript or the like. It’s not just a matter of Mozilla licensing formats such as H.264 for browsers and their users: sites would have to license to distribute content.
  4. History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC) — a radio show, telling the history of humanity in 100 objects from the British Library. Exquisitely high quality commentary (available in original audio and in textual transcript), hi-resolution images, maps, timelines, and more. It’s growing day by day as episodes air, and shows how a quintessentially offline place like a museum can add to the online world.

A Plea for Passion in Museums

This is a great post about passion for when we talk about our profession, about what we are all trying to do, whether we are librarians, technologists, publishers, or work in museums. It speaks to why libraries and museums often feel "dead." From Museum 2.0: Museums shy away from presenting passionate views. It's ironic that we expect visitors to…

Rethinking Libraries and Museums as "Living" Structures

The Living Library project flips the reader-book dynamic on its head by allowing library patrons to "check out" human beings, and then engage in a civil dialogue. Nina Simon from Museum 2.0 extends the Living Library structure to a reimagining of museums: How could visitors' stereotypes about museum behavior and the kinds of activities available in museums be exploited to…