Entirely Virtual: The Museum of Afghan Civilization

The Museum of Afghan Civilization is scheduled to make it's debut in 2010. This museum is going to be completely virtual. Online exhibits are nothing new, but the idea of creating an online building to house these online exhibits is fairly novel.

The Museum of Afghan Civilization employed an architect, museum professionals, and artists, to design and assist in the creation of the virtual museum. Users will be presented with the museum against it's virtual background the Bamiyan caves. Users will be able to view the 'outside' of the museum from all angles, in an attempt to make it more realistic.

The proposed interface of the museum is designed to emulate an actual museum visit. Various multimedia 'pavilions' will exist for users to explore. The pavilion's interfaces will change based on which exhibits are being featured, similar to physical temporary exhibition spaces.

The virtual museum will feature images from various existing institutions, including MOMA and the Louvre. The museum also plans on featuring images of works which have been destroyed or disappeared in recent years. There is also thoughts of eventually asking Afghan citizens for contributions of photos of their own culture.

There is hope that eventually a physical version museum of Afghan culture will exist. In face of the current instability of the area, this virtual museum allows for Afghanistan's culture to be displayed without placing physical objects in danger.

I am looking forward to seeing the finished product of this venture, and feel that it is yet another step toward the further integration of technology and heritage. The notion of an entirely virtual museum also leaves me with the question: Are physical exhibit spaces necessary to call something a museum? The name of this virtual institution the "Museum of Afghan Civilization" suggests otherwise.

Mishaps in a Machine Readable World

The Canadian history magazine The Beaver recently announced that the publication is changing its name. This name change is based in the desire to be more accessible to the online community. Currently the magazine's title is often caught in spam filters due to the title's possible sexual connotation. This name change is just one of the many examples of the importance of naming with machines in mind.

One of my personal favorite examples of names in a machine readable world is the band Live. Googling 'live' or 'live+band' in an attempt to find more than a Wikipedia entry on the band is an exercise in futility. On the other hand, such a common name makes it difficult to download the bands music. Depending which side you're on, the inability to easily download their music could be considered a great thing or a horrible thing.

Both of these examples highlight the importance of naming schemes being machine readable. Names can no longer merely be catchy, they need to also be searchable. I'm just waiting until children's names are picked with machines in mind....

Upcoming Projects

With all the New Years resolutions floating around I decided it would be valuable for me to record some of my intentions for the upcoming months. Below is a rough list of projects I have on the go or plan on beginning in the new year.

Presentations:
-OLA Super Conference, Toronto, February 2010. "Community Digitization Program: Collaboration and Capacity Building." This presentation will be highlighting the ongoing Community Digitization Program. It will be a panel discussion of the various experiences of the staff and organizations involved, focusing on resources, knowledge gained, and overall experience.
-OLSN North Conference, Sudbury, May 2010. This presentation is still in the early stages of development, but will most likely be similar in format to the OLA presentation.

Projects:
-Recipe collection project. As a Christmas present I received a "Recipe Keeper", which is essentially a template for creating a scrapbook of recipes. Working with the recipe keeper I plan on collecting various family recipes as well as some of my own. In addition to the traditional scrapbook I plan on creating a digital counterpart. The digital counterpart is based on my desire to preserve things for longer than their physical lifespan, and on the fact that so many of my recipes are already saved/annotated using zotero.
-Completion of the Digitization Handbook I've been working on. This is intended to be a guide for the organizations I am currently working with. It includes how to establish policies, workflows, administrative guidelines, and various templates for creating a sustainable digitization program.
-Renewing/relearning CSS/html skills. I recently used some of my CSS knowledge while working on a digital photo exhibit project. However my skills are pretty rusty at this point, so in the upcoming months I plan to use them more frequently on similar digital photo projects, this blog, and my personal site.
-In a similar vain to the previous project, I haven't done any programming in processing or java in sometime. In the upcoming months I would like to work on a project which allows me to keep using these skills. Specifics have yet to be decided on.
-Researching and assisting in the writing of a history of Knox Presbyterian Church, Alliston Ontario. This will be a community commemoration project and is in the very early stages of conception.