I am happy to share this article that I wrote for the Display Case column in the September/October 2011 edition of the American Association of Museum’s Museum member magazine. You can find the hard copy on p.23 as well as in their digital edition. It is reprinted here with permission.
A special thank you to Elizabeth Merritt for first offering me the chance to post on the AAM Center for the Future of Museums blog, which led to this incredible opportunity, and to Susannah O’Donnell for her editing savvy. I’m incredibly appreciative to Modupe Labode and Jennifer Geigel Mikulay for their patient and thorough reviews which helped me make the article the best that it could be.
With 400 million unique visitors a month, Wikipedia is currently the fifth most visited website in the world. The online encyclopedia spans 281 languages, with more than 3.5 million articles in the English Wikipedia alone. It’s not just a way to find information, but to share it with a global audience.
Yet, in spite of this astounding reach, most museums keep Wikipedia at arm’s length. You might occasionally use it as a starting point to find basic information, but if your museum is like most, there are probably numerous concerns about contributing to a Wikipedia entry. Is it reliable and credible enough? Is institutional integrity at risk in an environment in which control of information is shared? What museum professional has the time to learn the codes, policies and inner workings of the Wikipedia community?
These are good questions, but misunderstanding, prejudice and outdated criticisms should not overshadow the benefits of distributing cultural knowledge through Wikipedia. More institutions should look to it as a means for freely sharing institutional resources.
News is never a 9 to 5 job.
Wednesday evening, with the news that Apple visionary Steve Jobs had passed away from pancreatic cancer, TIME managing editor Rick Stengel (center) decided to stop the presses on the issue the staff had just finished earlier that afternoon. Staff members poured back into the TIME offices for an emergency edit meeting, which left us just over three hours to produce a new issue, many of us working on the very Apple devices that Jobs created.
Thursday, we’ll announce our latest issue featuring Jobs on the cover for the eighth time.
| — | PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America | Techdirt (via arlpolicynotes) |
You have an inherent need to solve problems, visually and conceptually. There is enormous value in this, but you may be misplacing your talents.
The internet, at this time in history, is the greatest client assignment of all time. The Western world is porting itself over to the web in mind and…
UPDATED June 4: Enjoyed “Journey of the Universe” at #WED2011 at UN. Relevant to #wsf11 this film is an experiment in conveying scientific information, including vast unknowns, with the same sense of wonder that surrounded earlier creation stories. The film and forthcoming companion book were inspired by the ideas of the “geologian” Thomas Berry and created over the past decade by the mathematician and writer Brian Swimme and the historian of religion Mary-Evelyn Tucker.
While science itself is rooted in rigor and dispassion, its findings can inspire wonder, even reverence. I think the film is a great experiment. It is also beautifully filmed, and, refreshingly, largely a “woe-is-me/shame-on-you”-free zone.
I hope it gets wide viewing. There is a heap of valuable background online from a March conference at Yale.
| — | Ira Glass (via nefffy) |
Last Friday I posted a photo of these magnetic HTML5 elements from part of our homeschool curriculum, and several of you expressed interest in knowing how I made them.
It’s pretty simple: magnetic sheets that are compatible with any inkjet printer. I’ve used Avery magnet sheets…
Last Friday I posted a photo of these magnetic HTML5 elements from part of our homeschool curriculum, and several of you expressed interest in knowing how I made them.
It’s pretty simple: magnetic sheets that are compatible with any inkjet printer. I’ve used Avery magnet sheets…
Sencha Touch 2 Developer Preview, Available Now
This video shows a side-by-side comparison of the Kitchen Sink demo orientation change on an Android Motorola Atrix in Touch 1.1 and in our latest version of Touch 2. The new layout engine in Touch 2 is so fast we had to use a high speed camera to measure it. We shot this video at 120 frames per second, then slowed the video down to ¼ speed so you can see the detail.
Sencha Touch 2 features performance updates across the board — In load time, scrolling speed, and rendering (especially on Android). Additionally, we have a whole new documentation app, which is easier to use, includes more resources, and features 11 new guides. Lastly, this release includes Native Packaging in our SDK tools, allowing you to publish your web app to the iOS App Store and Android Marketplace.
Welcome to the Tumblr API, v2!
Want to know what’s changed and why? Read on. Just want to dive in? Head on over to the API documentation, sign up for a key, and get hacking!
New Features
Features on Tumblr evolve rapidly. With the API, we have not attempted to provide complete feature…
