Dear List Members, I've been overwhelmed by the number of requests that I've received off-list for our report on museums' online access to collections. The report will not be ready until late this year or early next but I thought you might be interested in some details of our work. We will definitely announce when it becomes available on mcn-l.
For those of you who asked for more details about our survey: Over a 4-year period, we visited each of the AAMD members' sites (plus another dozen or so or European and non-art museums) each year at the same time, focusing on how each provided on-line access to their collections. If a museum provided on-line access to its collections (surprisingly, an amazing number of major museums do not), we spent an average of 7 hours testing and reviewing each element as well as capturing screen images and annotating these with comments. We looked at over 50 separate elements. This meant that each year's survey entailed about 700 hours or more of work adding in the time to record our findings and mull them over. We decided on a multi-year approach as museums we contacted at the start of our survey indicated their sites were in flux. Additionally, in the first year of the survey we found that more than 1/2 of the AAMD members' web sites did not offer any access to collections, not even a "highlights" display, and we knew this would change over time. Interestingly, though many changes and upgrades have been made to the AAMD members' sites over the past 4 years, most of the flaws that were there to begin with are still there. This includes sites using the "out of the box" software provided by cms vendors that dovetails with their systems, as well as sites that have invested in customized solutions. For example, if a site offers the ability to "sort by artist name" on the results of a search, many sites sort on what we assume is an underlying single field wherein the artist name is recorded in natural order so that the results not only are sorted by first name rather than last -- Edgar Degas before Paul Cezanne -- but also "Attributed to Gilbert Stuart" comes up under "A" for Attributed. A second widespread problem that has persisted over the years is that museums that provide a "search by keyword" feature are using too many data fields in their indexing specification with the result that when a user searches on "Picasso," he/she may get dozens of hits, none of which is by Picasso or has anything to do with Picasso. The word "Picasso" does not appear in the several fields that display for a record making the user believe he/she has made some sort of an error. If you dig deep enough, though, you'll find "Picasso" buried in the description but not relevant to the object or in bibliographic records, etc. And don't get me started on the pointlessness (is that a word?) of providing a user with a "List of Our Artists" and then giving him/her a list of hundreds of artist names, one to a line, beginning with "C" (and then you have to return to the first screen to select a different letter) without any nationality, life dates, or hints of the type of art produced (painting, sculpture, prints, furniture, etc.) not to mention that when you click on some of the names, the system returns "0" hits. Or a "category" pull down list containing over a hundred categories. Or a "Help" menu item that pulls up a 100 page help manual, starting on the first page. But I digress .... Another survey currently underway investigates how easy or hard it is for a visitor to find out key information such as hours, fees, address, phone number of an institution they wish to visit. On some AAMD members' sites, it takes more than 10 minutes to track down this information which ideally would be on the first screen. What IS now on a number of first screens though, is a very noticeable solicitation for donations which we believe most online visitors find off-putting. Particularly those online visitors that have to labor to find out when the museum is open or where it is located. Lenore Sarasan CEO Willoughby Associates, Limited 266 Linden Street WInnetka, Illinois 60093 lsarasan at willo.com On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 2:26 AM, Richard Light <richard at light.demon.co.uk>wrote: > > > On 25/10/2011 02:53, lenore wrote: > >> You might be interested, though, in a survey of the 200 >> or so AAMD websites that Willoughby has undertaken over the past 3 years. >> This survey has focused on the online access to collections offered by >> museums and, disappointingly, almost all of the online access to >> collections >> offered by these museums are replete with flaws, both conceptual and >> technological. If you'd like a copy of the report (which includes a >> critique of the problems as well as suggestions for improvements) -- it's >> scheduled for publication later this year or early next year -- please let >> me know. >> > Lenore, > > I'm sure that the whole group would be interested in this report. Please > tell the list when it's available. > > Do "failure to publish as Linked Data" and "failure to tell stories" > feature in the critique? > > Best wishes, > > Richard > -- > *Richard Light* > > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >
