Daniela Büchten cand.phil.
Head of exhibitions and events National Library of Norway Henrik Ibsens gate 110 0203 Oslo
daniela.buchten@nb.no Tel. +47 23276177
Abstract
The vision of the National Library of Norway is to be the memory of the nation. Nevertheless, its multimedia collection is not very well known. In June 2011, we initiated the project of a crowd-curated exhibition. One hundred eighty objects were shown on the web, 1500 people voted, 132 of them composed their own web-exhibitions. In the campaign period, we tried to reach people that were not familiar with the National Library. Via social media, we
successfully involved for example fan bases for Donald Duck, pop-bands and the meat industry.
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What is the memory of the nation?
From web vote to exhibition - an experiment
Daniela Büchten, National Libray of Norway
What is national memory?
1972, 25th September: The whole nation is sitting in front of the TV. The referendum about membership in the European Community is finished and the votes are counted. The arrow in the graphics is swaying between 48 and 52 %. People hold their breath. A long night finished with the result of 53.3% against membership. There is no doubt that the result had a divisive impact on Norway. Undoubtedly, this TV-event is essential in the collective memory. But where is the broadcast? At this time, NRK, the only TV-broadcaster, used their tapes several times and recorded over this tape. There exists one little clip from a Danish broadcast, the rest is lost forever. This painful loss illustrates how important it is to preserve.i
Memory is, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, “the encoding, storage, and retrieval in the human mind of past experiences”.ii Whereas “nation” is defined as “a crowd form of political organization under which a relatively homogeneous people inhabits a sovereign state;
especially a state containing one as opposed to several nationalities”.iii The vision of the National Library of Norway is to be the memory of the nation. It shall be the main source for information about Norway and Norwegian culture. On the one hand, memory is thus
understood as the sum of media stored and conveyed. This underlines that it is not intended to be a normative concept but accessible to everyone interested in Norwegian matters.
On the other hand, the memory of the nation consists of a potentially infinite number of personal memories. Some of them will be common for a great number of people, depending mainly on to which generation they belong. The radiobroadcast from 1950s, which all
children listened to, the pictures of ten thousands protesting against a racist murder in 2001, a postcard with cars waiting for a ferry in a Norwegian fjord from 1970 – these objects will arouse memories for many. With our project we tried to find out which of those memories were important to people.
The National Library of Norway and its collection
One of the widest legal deposit acts in the world “gives the National Library a mandate to collect, register for retrieval, and preserve for posterity Norwegian published production of knowledge and culture from all media and in all forms and formats.”iv
The Library manages several unique collections:
- Unique manuscript collections (handwritten manuscripts and personal archives of persons of the cultural life)
- rare books
- music collections, including pop- and rock archives - radio broadcasts from the 1930s up to today
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- TV broadcasts - film collections - theatre collections - map collections - posters
- small leaflets and brochures - photographs
- newspapers - magazines - books
One should think that its collection is relevant for everyone living in Norway. Nevertheless, the National Library and its digital archive are not very well known. In 2011, University in Oslo celebrated its 200-year jubilee. As the University Library formerly owned the collection of the National Library, we wanted to use the jubilee as an opportunity to draw attention to the collection, the institution and its history. Already in 1989 a branch of the National Library was established in Mo i Rana. It was first in 1999 that the University library moved from the building at the Solli Place in the centre of Oslo to the University campus at Blindern. The National Library exists also in two parts, which is not always easy to understand. Many people still associate the building in Oslo with its former function as the University Library.
There are temporary exhibitions in the Oslo building on a regular basis, and in 2010, we decided to show a broad selection from the whole collection.
Why should we encourage participation?
In her book The Participatory Museum (2010), Nina Simon stresses the need to modify the way museums convey content to people. Web 2.0 has changed our way of participating forever – we are used to comment, change and publish content. In the introduction of her book, she asks how cultural institutions can reconnect with the public and demonstrate their value and relevance in contemporary life.v Museums are often tempted to underline their authoritative power of defining what is right/good/important – and what is not. They tell stories based on their own interests and give no room for diverse perspectives.
The situation of the National Library seems to be quite similar. A huge collection, potentially very relevant to everyone is waiting to be detected of the huge public. The regular exhibitions take up subjects that we wish to convey, and normally in a way which does not invite to participation. Nevertheless, there is one critical difference: In contrast to museums, the National Library shall not decide, which objects are worth collecting and in this way
contribute to define a certain view of history (the only exception are the unique collections).
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Our main task is to carry out/manage the legal deposit act, without asking if certain objects – like the countless commercials which are collected every single day – really are worthy of preservation.vi
The vision of the ”memory of the nation” is therefore an open concept that is partly implemented. By means of a digitalisation program established in 2006, the process of preserving the collections long-term in digital form has started. Depending on clarification of copyright, only parts of the collections are given access to on internet. At the same time, the whole collection is available to everyone who wishes to study it on place (especially original documents). In contrast to museums, libraries and archives in general have always had a more liberal policy to convey collections to everyone who might be interested.
Thus, the National Library shall certainly not decide what ”memory of the nation” is. It is up to public and their way to use, perceive and interpret the collection to fill the concept with
content. The fact that our collection encompasses the present enhances the relevance and usability because everyone will find TV-, radiobroadcasts, commercials, books or magazines that are important for them. Therefore we decided to try out a concept which would make it possible for people to involve themselves and create their own version of the ”memory of the nation”.
Why – and how – to make a crowd curated exhibition?
The most important goals for the exhibition were to make the collections better known and to reach groups that were not familiar with the institution at all. How should we face this
challenge? How can we get people involved? By means of a traditional ”Treasures from the collection”-presentation? This was not likely. Inspired by the crowd-curated exhibition Click!vii, a photography exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008, we chose to try out a web vote – both because we hoped to engage another public as usual and because the subject
“memory of the nation” requires contribution of the users.
The selection process, in which a huge number of staff members were involved, had to take into account several criteria. Subjects we knew were important in Norwegian history and society should be represented, such as the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian Union, the vote about membership in the European Union, certain events in sports and culture and so on. In addition,
• the objects should represent all unique collections of the National Library,
• they should be chronologically and geographically diverse,
• there should be both known and unknown objects,
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• the objects should be rare and special, precious and ordinary, amusing and
surprising.
One hundred eighty objects from the whole collection were shown on the web. We
underlined that the selection by no means was intended to be representative. Pictures, film- and radio clips were accompanied by short texts from about 50 staff members. One of our goals being a stronger involvement of the staff, we tried to encourage them to write personal texts. In this way, we wanted to stress the point that there might be different reasons why a certain object was perceived as important. Nevertheless, with the exception of some few texts, the commentaries turned out to be mostly factual. We were conscious about subscribing the commentaries – in contrast to texts on our website or exhibition texts in general – by the name and professional title. We wanted to focus on the diversity of the competence within the institution.
From 10.-26. June 2011, 1500 people voted on which objects they wanted to see in the exhibition. Before voting, one had to register age and gender. There were ten categories of objects: books, newspapers, magazines, music, film and theatre, advertising and posters, radio and TV, maps and photographs, original manuscripts and photographs and emigration to America. It was possible to vote on all objects, but to vote twice or more on one object it was necessary to start once again.
Up until 2011, the few crowd-curated exhibitions had been often photo- or art-exhibitions, where the objects were presented just with artist, title and year, like Click! of the Brooklyn museum or the 50/50 exhibition of the Walker Art Center from 2010viii. Another project, Nieuw Groeten Uit... was a photo-exhibition in Arnhem, Netherland, in July 2010, where people could send in their proposals for postcards with contemporary motifs.ix In contrast to this, the objects in our exhibition required explanation of the historical background. A map with sea-monsters from 1598 from the North is not understandable without explaining that it is
produced of Wilhelm Barents, Netherland, and shows undetected island Svalbard for the first time. Whereas younger people will not necessarily know about the Alta controversy in the late 1970s and 1980s, which concerned a hydroelectric power plant in Finnmark in Northern Norway, older people will be surprised by the rock group Datarocks’s newest album release on a memory stick formed like a diamond in 2010.
Both because of the high number of objects and the necessity of explanations, a crowd-curated exhibition on the web did not seem to be a very suitable model for participation. We were conscious about the fact that people might get tired quite soon. We discussed several other possibilities but ended up with that we wished to try it out anyway. Unfortunately, it was not possible to comment directly on the objects but people could keep their range. One
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hundred thirty-two composed, stored and named their own web-exhibition by choosing their favourite objects. Fifteen hundred people submitted 15000 votes, which means in average 10 votes per person. As many of the stored web-exhibitions consist of between 20 and 100 objects, many people must have voted once or twice before quitting the process. Three hundred seventy-seven people shared the exhibition on Facebook and 48 tweeted about it.x The hundred objects that received the most votes in each category (film, music, books etc.) were showcased in the exhibition, and on the web, together with the statistics of the vote (http://www.nb.no/nasjonenshukommelse/). As people had to register with age and gender before voting, we have now a detailed statistics who voted for what. In contrast to web votes in general, 59% of the voters in our project were women, and they submitted twice as many votes than men.xi The unlike preferences between woman and man are striking, as well as differences in the vote between the different groups of age.
How did we work with social media?
How can museums take advantage of social media to get in touch with new user groups? In the campaign period we tried to reach people via social media (mainly Facebook and websites, the National Library had no twitter-account at this time). First, we asked all the contributors at the library to share the vote on Facebook. We asked groups/organisations we knew would be interested in certain objects to encourage their public to vote, both on
websites and on Facebook. At the same time, we spread information via email-lists to museums, archives and libraries in Norway. We informed all media being presented in the exhibition, for example newspapers or magazines, NRK for radio- and TV-broadcasts. In general, we might say that information sent to media was not very successful at the time of the vote, with the exception of some local newspapers. In contrast to this, the response in media was significant when the physical exhibition opened in august. This might lead us to the conclusion that web-projects do best in using web-channels.
On websites and Facebook, we sent an email about the vote to different groups and asked them to publish the information on their own side. This resulted in several small articles and posts on pages of IKEA, the farmers’ organization in Norway or Donald Duck Norway. But in a few cases we also tried out the more direct (and maybe less correct) way, to post about the vote directly on Facebook-pages which had accepted us as ”friends”. After having become a
”friend” with ”Nature and Youth”, ”NO to the expansion of the oil-industry to Lofoten”, the tram in Oslo and a radical group of cyclists the question of personal integrity became crucial to me as a curator. I would certainly not like to be a friend of the Progress Party (the Norwegian version of the Tea Party) even if the political memoir of the party founder’s wife was one of
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the objects we promoted in the exhibition. How and when do we as staff member act as private persons and as representatives for the institution?
This illustrates the general question how we behave as professionals on the web. Social media not only invite to personal comments, but a personal style and content is crucial for successful use of it. Institutions that try to open up for personal views and allow their employees to publish on their pages seem to get more response as institutions when staff members stay anonymous.xii Many museums use social media just as information tool.
Nevertheless, a better strategy may be to involve museum staffers that are able to contribute with a genuine interest or competence on the field of social media.xiii
There were different reasons for why we did not provide the same effort on all objects. Often, we did not found any relevant “pressure-group” or we did not succeed to engage them. For example seemed publishing houses not very interested in promoting their books that were presented in the vote. Personal commitment of the members of the project group played also a role. In short – the lacking representation of the selection was still reinforced by selective lobby work. However, the point was not to find out something “objective” about the memory of the nation this did not represent a real problem.
What result did we obtain with the lobby work?
The result of this lobby work seems to have been successful. Donald Duck – with a story about the two Norwegian languages “bokmål” and “nynorsk” – won the poll sovereignly with 255 votes, followed by a poster which advertises for sausages (in connection with the Norwegian National Day 17th May) with 208 votes. Together with the 1979 IKEA-catalogue with pine furniture on the front page, these were objects where lobby work had probably contributed to their high scores. Among the top ten, we find the TV-broadcast about the 1972 vote against the European Union; a knitting pattern for the most iconic Norwegian “Marius-“
sweater; a popular children’s book about the sea-serpent Ruffen; the first-page Norwegian newspaper article about women’s right to vote from 1913: and quite surprisingly, Free Jimmy, a 2006 animation film about a junkie elephant; and the memoirs of Eli Hagen, wife to the founder of the Progress Party.
We see also other results of lobby work: in the category “newspaper”, we find the front page of the local newspaper Bladet Vesterålen in position five – as one of two local newspapers that succeeded to be a part of the exhibition.xiv Besides the low edition, 8200, the newspaper obtained 112 votes with the article about the protest movement against the establishment of the oil-industry at Lofoten.xv As mentioned before, not only the newspaper itself
recommended the vote, but also the Facebook group for the movement against oil production in Lofoten lobbied for this item. In contrast to this, the article in the Trondheim
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newspaper Adresseavisen, the local paper in the hometown of the actual winners of the ski world championship in 2011, just achieved 36 votes. This was one of the results that really astonished us because the ski championship was widely promoted and engaged the whole nation. Do we see here the strong impact of presence in (social) media?xvi
The voters and the memory of the nation
The project Click! wished to explore if the online community would be as “wise” at making decisions as expert individuals, which refers to experiments that James Surowiecki examined in his book The Wisdom of Crowds (2004). He found out that group decisions often were better founded than decisions made by individuals. At the same time, he stresses the importance of “diversity and independence in the group (…) because the best
collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise”xvii.
In contrast to this, we were in our project more interested in how people perceive “the memory of nation”. We get an impression when we look closer at the 132 web-exhibitions that were stored at the website. What do they tell us about the users’ dedication? Thirty-five titles contained words related to “memory” or the age/generation of the one who created the exhibition, like “1950-generation” or “Memory with Relevance”. About 20 titles directly related to Norway, as “A Section of Norway”, “The Norwegian Rucksack”, “Norway, my Norway” and
“Norway, of good and bad”. Twenty-seven users had chosen titles with (probably) their own
“Norway, of good and bad”. Twenty-seven users had chosen titles with (probably) their own