Museum Blogging: A Resource for Professionals

The mission of Museum Blogging is "to provide the best information on how museums and related institution...can use blogs and other online tools in support of outreach. In short, it's a blog about blogging.

Created by Leslie Madsen-Brooks, a consultant whose firm, TerraFirma Creative Group, designs websites and blogs for museums, Museum Blogging offers ideas on ways such institutions can best utilize the internet. One great example is her wonderful five-part series, "Percolations: Museums and Social Networking Sites," in which she discusses some of the advantages and drawbacks of using several well-known websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Madsen-Brooks offers examples of several institutions and their foray into this medium, including the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's MySpace page and the MoMA's Flickr project. She outlines in detail which sites offer the best features and tools for a particular demographic, often comparing and contrasting the sites to emphasize her point. The MySpace vs. Facebook debate found in Part II of the series includes a link to the interesting essay "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace."

Museum Blogging offers links to many other museum and history sites, several of which can be found on the link lists of my previously-discussed blogs. The lists do not mirror each other, however, and I've discovered several great sources of information.

A Look at Archival Blogs

I'd like to start looking at some of the archival blogs, but first I'll do a quick review of some of the blogs I've discussed so far. Unfortunately, Public History and pastime haven't been updated since my initial posts. The Attic doesn't disappoint, however. They offer information on a few upcoming conferences, including "The Best in Heritage" the theme of which, "Reclaiming Cultural Property," will offer a forum for representatives of heritage organizations and experts to discuss the ways in which "illicit traffic of cultural property can be prevented and how a new understanding of universal cultural heritage may reshape the approach to questions of exclusive ownership." This is another example of the advocate role the authors of the blog have taken on.

Through his blog, Reading Archives, Richard J. Cox, a Professor in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, offers "critical observations on the scholarly and popular literature analyzing the nature of archives or contributing to our understanding of archives in society." To the great benefit of anyone interested in archives, Dr. Cox posts on a regular basis. Somehow, in addition to his teaching responsibilities and the fourteen books and countless journal papers he's published in this area, Dr. Cox also manages to read and review many other books, often offering his critiques several times a week.

Reading Archives does not offer a linklist to any other blogs or websites (aside from Google News). Occasionally, Dr. Cox will provide, within a post, the link to a site he considers of interest, but it appears the main source of the information he discusses are old-fashioned published materials that are specific to the topic of archives.

I loved Reading Archives and now have a very long reading list that I look forward to conquering!

The Attic: A Museum Studies Research Blog

After taking a second look at my chosen list of blogs, I've realized that several of them are not updated on a regular basis. Public History: digital history on a budget, which I discussed in the previous post, provided the links to several good sites, so I've added a few of them to my list.

The Attic is one blog from my original list that does stay pretty current. This is probably because, unlike others I've written about, this blog is a group effort, in this case, one by the Department of Museum Studies' research students at the University of Leicester. In addition, contributions from any student of museum studies are welcomed.

It's obvious from just a quick look that The Attic is for the academic community. Every other post is an announcement for a conference or symposium. I particularly liked their coverage of the university's Research Seminar Programme and the Museum Crawl, both which provide something the other blogs have not: lots of photographs! Like Bryan Andrachuk and Suzanne Fischer, the contributors are strong advocates for museums and public history and they try to rally support for various causes they find worthy.

For the most part, The Attic writes about and relies upon the information found on other museum or academic websites and blogs. Occasionally, they will discuss stories that are being covered by the mainstream media, like the BBC or The Guardian. In neither situation do I see much criticism or commentary on the sources themselves. The Attic has a few blogs in common with Public History, but most of them I've encountered here for the first time.

I hope to find the time to look over all of these great resources in greater depth.

Public History from the Field

Like Bryan Andrachuk, Suzanne Fischer focuses much of her blog on digital history. But instead of the musings by a student of the profession, Public History: digital history on a budget offers a glimpse into the day-to-day life of a public historian. Despite his recent internship at History Television, Andrachuk doesn't have much real world experience, so much of his blog focuses on many theories in the practice of public history.

Fischer works for the HCMC Museum, a small medical history museum, and her blog centers around the various projects in which she's involved. As much as I like to learn about Public History in an abstract way, I'd prefer to find out what the typical day in a museum is like, and Fischer provides many examples. She posts about what appears to be a typical donation in the life of a medical museum and discusses the software that many in her profession utilize.

The layout of Public History is pretty much the same as that of the pastime of past time. Neither blog includes much in the way of extra' such a videos or pictures. Fischer does provide a great index of categories, which makes finding posts on specific subject matter very easy. I also really like the snap shots she provided for the hyperlinks. The link list contains many Public History websites and blogs that I was not aware of and did not find on pastime.

Fischer updates her blog several times a month, sometimes several times a week, and I commend her for her dedication. In addition to her museum work, Fischer is finishing her PhD and contributes to another blog where she posts on her dissertation.

the pastime of past time: inital observations

This cleverly-titled blog is the creation of Bryan Andrachuk, a Public History M.A. student at the University of Western Ontario. He initially started the blog, ironically, as an assignment for his Digital History class. He writes often about the process of blogging and his impressions of other blogs.

The objective of the class was to examine the nature of the internet and how it can be utilized in the field of Public History, and Andrachuk offers his thoughts of several websites on the subject. Some, like The National Council on Public History, are from long-established organizations that predate the world wide web by decades. Others, such as Digital History, are obviously products of the invention. The sheer volume of the websites and blogs devoted to this fairly specific subject matter reflects how exhaustive the resources are for any given topic.

But Andrachuk does not limit himself to websites centered around Public History, even though he rarely strays from the topic. He uses a wide away of sources, including national newspapers like The Globe and Mail and some of the more mainstream sites including imdb and wikipedia.

As I mentioned, Andrachuk pretty much sticks to the topic at hand. Unlike other blogs that seem to veer off into other directions, the pastime of past time is devoted almost solely to Public History, which is something I liked. Maybe I just haven't been able to appreciate where the other bloggers have been veering, but they tend to ramble way off course.

It's not surprising that Andrachuk is a graduate student. The majority of the blogs found on the blogroll are those created by other Public History students. Likewise, the link list is comprised primarily of history resources at UWO. The frequency of Andrachuk's posts also reflect his status as a student. During some months he will update his blog seven times, but in other months he will post only once. But because his posts usually contain a wealth of good information, I'm happy with quality over quantity.

the pastime of past time has a pretty simple format. There are few pictures or other elements found in other blogs, such as videos or ads. I do appreciate the word hyperlinks he provides and I've decided to do the same throughout my blog whenever possible (although it is a time-consuming process).

As I continue to examine other blogs, I will periodically come back to compare them to pastime and to each other.

Sociology of Mass Communication Blog Assignment

I've chosen to blog about the subject I plan on pursuing as a major: Public History. A brief search of Technorati and Google Blog Search turned up several blogs on the topic, including one by a student from UNC-G. In fact, I found several blogs created by Public History students, so I included the links to these sites under a separate heading. Archival management is something I'm particularly interested in and have included links to several blogs on the subject. It's obvious that many people have dedicated a lot of time to blogging. This will be a great opportunity to learn more about both Public History and the world of blogging.