Small API update

A couple of small advances on the API front (again, see here)

• fixed a bug on the geo thing. For some reason an imbecilic code error wasn't breaking the script on my machine, but did on the web server. Now fixed.


• a CDWALite-lite output for individual object records (example). There's more to add, glitches to fix, and ideally a better solution to the URL, but it's a start. Next thing is a search interface but that depends upon agreement within the Museum. A good solution may be to combine CDWALite and OpenSearch-style RSS, with the records enabling users to find the data end-point, as well as the HTML rendering. In due course I'll probably add tags to HTML record pages to point at data like this, or I may do it with some POSH.


• the photoLondon website data now has a basic API, which I'll put on the live site next week. It returns basic person details and search parameters include: surname, forename, keyword, birth year, death year, "alive in" year, gender, country of origin, photographic occupation and non-photographic occupation. I'll work on the search result format soon, as well as the person details.

National Collections Online: why, what, how...in fact, ?!?

Friday afternoon we gathered at the Science Museum's Dana Centre, perhaps two dozen people sampling a variety of disciplines but all, for one reason or another, interested in the National Collections Online project. This was a workshop for the feasibility study being run by Flow Associates (Bridget McKenzie and Mark Stevenson) following up the discussions they've had with, presumably, all or most of those there. NMSI and the V&A had good representation, not just techy and new media but curatorial and from the collections data side. The National Maritime Museum, the third museum partner in the project, had a couple of representatives too. Culture24 is another partner, and Jane and Jon were there. The NMDC, who I take to be the initiating partner, had no direct representation but wil hopefully learn the lessons anyway. The rest of us included e-learning experts, a couple of people from other museums and the Wellcome Trust, Ross flying the flag for academia, Ben Hayman of Lexara that for the commercial sector, Nick of Collections Trust, Jill Cousins from EDL (which I thought was brilliant, unfortunately she couldn't stay until the denouement but I have a feeling that her presence may have swayed some sentiments in the direction of EDL), and finally Tom Steinberg, director of mySociety. A very interesting crowd.

The biggest problem with the session was, I guess, exactly the same as that which it was trying to address, and perhaps will have helped us to break through it before the next gathering. That problem is the vagueness of the project, which made it almost impossible to talk incisively about it. Someone mentioned a 10,000lb gorilla at one point; all I could see was a big cloud in the middle of the room, who knows what was at the heart of it. I've not talked about NCO before so I should do the basics: Flow's inquiry is into the "viability of an online resource to integrate national museum collections", and perhaps we can orient ourselves as to what this might mean by the well-known points of reference that they have mentioned: CHIN/CCO, CAN, culture.fr, Artstore, Powerhouse. It seems that many people said "not a portal", which was the common response at the session too. Given this, we both needed to decide what we were talking about if not a portal, and know that in advance to make much progress on questions like whether a "single point of access" would be of use to various audiences. This isn't a criticism of how the session was run, it was sure to be tricky as a natural consequence of the fact that, even before the project properly starts, it maybe engaged in a major change of direction (and this is the time to do it!).

Anyway, it was a useful process and it did seem to bring out a good degree of consensus on the unsuitability of an old-skool "portal" approach. I took away a couple of key points though, including a useful reminder:

1. Fiona Romeo made a remark that inspired a "doh!" moment in me: why not talk to Google about them ingesting our content directly? This time last year we were talking about this very prospect at the UK Museums Semantic Web Think Tank, and it still seems like a really good plan (Yahoo! too, especially since they seem at least as keen on adopting semantic technology). Still, somehow, I'd stopped thinking about this line of attack having been concentrating on the opportunity (or threat, if done badly) offered by EDL. And in the session I didn't shy away from pushing EDL as the obvious place in which collections data should be aggregated, so as to scale to all museums and not duplicate efforts. I argued that NCO should wait for this to firm up before deciding what to do that would compliment or build upon it. However when Fiona mentioned the prospect of working with Google, I realised that over the last 6 months of talking to EDL about how to make sure that it wasn't seen as irrelevant by museums, I'd started to forget that it needn't be the only path down which we go to achieve our goals - just the one that grabbed my attention late last year. I think that the two approaches can be complimentary, and in fact EDL itself would be well advised to talk directly to the search providers about their ingesting structured data. NCO could, in theory, provide something of a breakthrough that would be genuinely extensible and scalable. This would also put the lie to one of my contentions, which was that there was little point in doing something that only involved a small number of nationals. On the contrary, if it opened a very wide door for cross-collection search as this approach might, it would be very worthwhile.
   
2. I had a moment of clarity, which followed on from the recent hooha on the MCG list concerning the disappointment or otherwise of the NOF Digitise programme. One of my arguments was that it would be better to make distinctions in projects between those that do digitisation, those that build functionality, and those that build user experiences. I realised that I'm talking basically about slicing funding differently, changing from vertical to horizontal slicing, and that it's not unlike talking about markets. I'm going to post separately with more thoughts on that.
3. We had useful input from Tom. Though he was kind of preaching to the converted about the idea of making our content as widely available as possible, it's not surprising, and he also furnished us with some useful parallels and metaphors. From our later chat at the pub it's clear enough that he's as keen on the lightweight dissemination of semantic data as I am (albeit sceptical about the Semantic Web - but then in a sense so am I, it's semantic technology that is making the headway, and there are riches to be found there that do appear to be speeding us in the general direction of a more semantic web in any case)

The shape we're in (with a musical digression)

Today I'm still making the most of the quiet to dig into my vinyl and I'm working to the sounds of the german underground, mainly circa 1970-75. Right now, though, Phew (1981). This just so blows my mind. Can fans must have it, and they can get it on CD now (perhaps I will too, it's so hard to get at my LPs most of the time). Given that I've been writing about what our organisation needs to do to get its digital act together perhaps its good that the previous listening has been pretty calming: Alpha Centauri, Tone Float and Outside the Dream Syndicate (not that mellow, actually, the last one). Phew has lovely peaceful moments (like Dream, now), but a driving, anxious motion to some tracks too (Signal). The legendary Roger of defunct Revolver Records in Bristol sold me my copy, I don't think I've thanked him enough and probably never will, but thanks anyway, Rog.

I've been thinking about the holes in our policies (notably concerning the preservation of UGC - we may not want to bother, but we have to at least formulate a policy towards it), and I've been looking back over the 6 years I've been there and thinking about how our responsibilities have developed. We need to work up a business case for a larger team, and perhaps one of a different shape. Frankly it's a no-brainer, but the case needs to be made and it's a good exercise to outline those changes. We also need to work out with the Godot-like web committee (I'm sure it will be along any day now, with purposeful stride and a keen sense of what needs to be done) quite what role we want the web folk at MoL to have. There is a wide range of things we could be doing, and right now we try to do most of them, with some key exceptions like web design and rich media work (Flash, video), which we always farm out. But we do too much and can't always do it properly, and I feel the need right now to consolidate, to work on our infrastructure. If we can decide on exactly what we should be done in-house, and what can be effectively handled out of house, then we can get and give a clear idea of just what resources we need. Right now we have our content manager Bilkis (the one net gain since 2002), Mia, who does a lot of web work as well as various databases, and me, essentially just web.

Personally I reckon we need more people in the team, but there are alternatives, even if they're idiotic: the Museum could decide to draw in its horns and use our expertise just to commission, integrate and manage third party work, as well as content. We certainly do plenty of advising on this at the moment, and most of the vendors we've used recently have done great work for us (please drop me a line if you want to know whose work was not up to scratch), but I'm one of those who think the core work of a museum web team must also include taking care of the plumbing and probably building/running the core CMS too. Perhaps when I've finished my musings I'll post a proper list here of what functions I identify, what I think we should take into our remit, and what I think we should hand out. Best get on with it, then.

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