SMK DIGITAL 1.0

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THIS BELONGS TO YOU 3. We are undermining our own raison d’etre as public

cul-tural institution.

My encounter with the anecdote related here reinforced my awareness that museums must rethink and reinvent the way we handle our digitised collections.

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ration for the process. The board members came from a range of museums that had inspired our own visions for digital museum practice. By getting the board involved, we gained direct access to a range of digital museum professionals that we regarded as lead-ing figures within the field. [19] The concept for SMK digital that had prompted Nordeafonden to sponsor the project was inspired by overall tendencies towards user involvement and participatory design described by Nina Simon in her influential blog Museum 2.0²¹; tendencies that Shelley Bernstein had turned into tangible practice in the groundbreaking exhibition Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, just to name one prominent example. [20]

With their experience and expertise, the advisory board opened up a wide range of doors to new methods and practices we could employ. But which of these were suitable for SMK? The board encouraged us to get to know our users by taking a very practi-cal, hands-on approach: Defining target groups, talking to them, listening carefully to what they said, and of course acting on it.

Exciting suggestions came flooding in. We were encouraged to integrate user comments and creative contributions on the mu-seum website and in the galleries, to involve audiences in the display and hanging of the collections, to use game mechanisms when designing learning activities, to make daily rounds of the museum to speak with users, and to do it all right now instead of putting it off for later. A new, user-centric focus emerged. As did a growing sensation of a pressing urgency as we observed what was going on at fellow museums internationally – an in-creasing awareness of the fact that the digital field evolves a great deal faster than we were accustomed to in museum work. [21]

At the time when we received the funding for SMK digital, the museum was still in many ways thinking and operating in broadcast terms. Even though people in various parts of the organisation had begun to pick up on and be inspired by new forms of museum practice, a general shift in mindset and ev-eryday practices was still required before the many ideas could be prioritized and put into actual practice. The introduction of

[19] At the launch of SMK Digital the international advisory panel com-prised the following members:

• Allegra Burnette, Creative Direc-tor of Digital Media, MoMA

• Angela Spinazze, Information Ar-chitect, ATSPIN consulting

• Frankie Roberto, Web Producer, Science Museum London

• Johann Holland, Research Engi-neer/Consultant, Institut de Re-cherche et Innovation, Centre Pompidou

• Nina Simon, Designer/Resear-cher of Participatory Museum Experiences, Museum 2.0

• Robin Dowden, Director of New Media Initiatives, Walker Art Center

[20] “Click! is a photography ex-hibition that invites Brooklyn Mu-seum’s visitors, the online com-munity, and the general public to participate in the exhibition pro-cess. Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial col-umnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click! explores wheth-er Surowiecki’s premise can be ap-plied to the visual arts – is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts?” https://

www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibi-tions/click/

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SMK digital offered an opportunity to hire project staff with specific digital qualifications in multi-media productions and website design. However, no manager with expert qualifications within the digital field was appointed. The overall management of SMK digital fell under the museum’s existing managers. SMK digital was launched with great ambitions and intentions, but at the same time with a lack in the organisation of professional insight into the digital field.

One of the advisory board members, Angela Spinazze, gave us this piece of advice: “Experiment! Make mistakes!”. While this may sound obvious, the phrase embedded itself firmly in the programme’s collective consciousness, giving us the courage to begin work on the challenges we were facing, experimenting as we went along and learning from our mistakes.

[21] The international advisory board of SMK digital gathered for workshops at the

museum in October 2009. Frankie Roberto is presenting. CC BY 4.0 SMK.

In November 2008 SMK digital launched Denmark’s first digital museum strategy, collecting and combining objectives within digitisation, education, and communication activities.²² One of the strategic objectives stated that “SMK digital is a catalyst for the users’ creativity” – an objective that revealed a growing awareness within the organisation of the new role that SMK wished to play. The strategy stated that this objective would be reached by getting to know our users and by working systemati-cally on incorporating users in the planning and production of the museum’s communication and education activities.

From the outset emphasis was placed on learning processes, sustainability, and accessibility, building bridges between the physical and the digital museum, and – most of all – emphasis was on the users. A consistent preference for open standards was formulated, and during the initial stages a number of important decisions on this issue were made – aided by our international advisors. We chose to build a new website using an open source Content Management System. We decided to join the develop-ment of CollectionSpace, an international and open source-based database system for museums.²³ This process proved more time-consuming than originally anticipated, and over time this would also affect the rest of SMK digital due to a fundamental lack of a consistent digital infrastructure – a condition I will return to.

Last, but by no means least, we made a commitment to being open to the world around us; we wanted to maintain an ongoing dialogue with our users and act as a catalyst for their creativity.