Museums and Web 2.0 – an illusion of access?

During my online search I found this interesting research proposal by Lena Maculan, PhD candidate at the department of Museum Studies of the University of Leicester (UK): Museums, Web 2.0 and the illusion of access: The divides and challenges of the new publishing and broadcasting models of communication for Europe’s digital culture.
http://www.impala.ac.uk/projects/museumstudies.html

In this abstract Lena Maculan reflects about how museums could make their collections more accessible. Her research aims to extend existing theories on interactivity, accessibility and user empowerment. Furthermore, she wants to theorise the shift from the traditional museum to a web 2.0 memory institution. In this context, the author questions the notion of access: “Over the last years many cultural heritage institutions have undergone extensive digitization projects. Every day more and more information from and about museums, is uploaded to the World Wide Web. Yet, it seems that the massive amount of digitized cultural content, produces an illusion of access.”

Maculan has a particular interest in podcasts as a new communication medium for cultural heritage institutions. In Web 2.0 times users have increasingly diverse options as to where they retrieve information from. In addition to that, information retrieval becomes increasingly mobile, as more and more services are offered on mobile phones and PDAs. This allows the audience to be more selective about when and how to access information.
This brings me to another interesting experiment about podcasts in museums: I came across the art mob project of a student group of the Marymount Manhattan College in the United States. They are creating, unofficially, audio guides for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
“MoMA of course already offers audio guides (for a nominal fee), but we want to make our own, and to invite others to do so as well (…) we are democratizing the experience of touring an art museum; we are offering a way for anyone to “curate” their own little corner of MoMA. I’ll give you a taste: One of our audio guides captures the smart, irreverent banter between a student and an art history professor as they view works by Chagall and Picasso. Others offer music composed and performed by student musicians inspired by several art works.” (David Gilbert, member of the Art Mob group)
For more details check here: http://mod.blogs.com/art_mobs/
These podcast interventions are a way of “remixing” shows with different opinions, soundtracks or also critical questions. This opens a new perspective on the role of art history and the general theoretical approach towards artworks – and provides a genuine 2.0 experience.