Over on the Open Exhibits website, Jeff Heywood of Vancouver Aquarium has just shared a comprehensive field study on two multitouch tables in the Canada’s Arctic gallery space. The study was developed by The InnoVis Group, Interactions Lab at the University of Calgary.

We built the tables and worked with Vancouver Aquarium back in the summer of 2009 to create the software. The report looks at the “general experience of the digital tables”, including the form factor, and then it takes a closer look at the applications.

The study shows, as Jeff points out in his post, that “not everything was a success with the tables, but they are, overall, successful.”  Considering the emergent nature of these types of exhibits, we were pleased to see that the study was generally very positive.

Still, some things didn’t work as well we would have liked. There were significant usability issues with the early version of the Collection Viewer.  I’m happy to report that many of the issues cited in the report have been fixed in the newer version of the Collection Viewer that is available on the Open Exhibits site.  We built in the ability to easily change some of the design parameters via XML. For example, button size and spacing can be modified by changing the XML. In addition, we remapped many of the gestures, so that the Collection Viewer objects respond better to visitor interaction. Still, some issues remain and we’ll be taking a closer look at this report and making additional changes.

Studies like this are incredibly valuable (and far too rare in the field).  As designers and developers, we can only learn so much through testing and observation in the studio.  The museum (or aquarium) setting and the sheer number and range of different visitors provides us with a new picture of the exhibit.  You can download and read the full report on the Open Exhibits website, Interactive Tables at the Vancouver Aquarium.

I just posted a case study on the ExhibitFiles website. It examines the L.A. Zone multitouch table exhibit that we developed with California Science Center and details some of the design considerations we encountered in putting this multi-user exhibit together. You can read the complete case study here.

This custom exhibit was built using Adobe Flash with our Gestureworks multitouch framework and runs on our MT-50 multitouch table. There’s also more information about this exhibit on our portfolio page: “Visitors Explore Los Angeles in a Google Maps and Flickr Mashup.“

Tomorrow, Chris Gerber and I are off to Munich for Natural User Interface’s Multi-Touch Summit 2009. The meeting at the Adobe offices in Germany will focus developing multi-touch applications with Adobe Flash, Flex, and Air. We will be presenting in the afternoon and we’ll discuss our experience in using ActionScript 3 to create interactive exhibits. We’ll also be announcing some very important news (more on that later). A schedule for the summit is available on the NUI Website.

There’s more on the summit on the Natural User Interface (NUI)’s  Multi-touch Blog.

This week we will be exhibiting at the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting and expo. We will have a booth (#1830) and we’ll be showing our multitouch table along with some of the custom multitouch applications we’ve developed

In addition, I am the chair for a session entitled, Open Source for Museums: The Next Experiment in Museum Technology. We have a great panel and one that represents most of the major open source initiatives in the museum world. The presenters are: Scott Sayre from Pachyderm, Tom Scheinfeldt  from Omeka, Carl Goodman from CollectionSpace, and Bryan Kennedy from Science Buzz  who will explain how Drupal was used in development of their site. In addition to these direct connections, some in the group (myself included) are advisors on other open source projects such as Fluid Engage and Steve. 

Last year, I wrote an article for the National Association for Museum Exhibition’s Journal, Exhibitionist, where I interviewed most of the panel members about their projects.  The article was reposted in the Ideum blog see Open Source Software: New Possibilities for Museums. The article has also just recently been translated into Czech and appears in Muzeum, the magazine of the Narodni Muzeum in Prague.  

In the AAM session, I won’t be talking much about Open Exhibits, as we are going to focus on projects that are already fully underway. (We are resubmitting our proposal to NSF and we are are still looking for museum professionals to fill out our survey on computer interactives in museums.)  I look forward to seeing some of you at AAM in Philadelphia.

Update May 5, 2009: I will be posting PDFs of the slides presented during the session. Here’s the introduction to Open Source Software: New Possibilities for Museums (PDF 900K). It includes links to all of the projects mentioned and references.

Update May 6, 2009: Two more presentations in PDF form here. Omeka: Open Source Web Publishing for Museums (PDF 2Megs) by Tom Scheinfeldt and Museum Open Source: Make or Break – Pachyderm Retrospective (PDF 740K) by Scott Sayre.

After months of prototyping, we’ve finally released our multitouch table. It has been quite a process as we’ve gone through several iterations to develop a version of the touch table that is exhibit ready. The final table has a high-resolution display (higher than Microsoft Surface) and it is built rugged, so it can handle just about any environment, including hands on science centers. In fact, we tested the table at the Don Harrington Discovery Center in Amarillo, Texas.  Here’s a picture of the table in the Ideum studio. (You can see all of the specifications, a press release, and short video on the MT Table page.)

For our first multi-touch application we are creating a mashup using Yahoo! Maps and Flickr. This mashup is being developed with the Don Harrington Discovery Center and Vulcan Park and Museum (located in Birmingham, Alabama).  They’ve been great partners as we’ve worked through the conceptual and design challenges that a multitouch, multiuser application presents. You can learn more about this multitouch mashup project on our portfolio. We’ll be installing the tables in March.

We’ll be showing the table and the mashup application in April at Museums and the Web 2009 in Indianapolis.  We will have an exhibit booth and we will be holding a full-day workshop called, “Make It Multitouch.” We hope to see you there.

Paul Lacey and I will be conducting a full-day workshop on multi-touch and multi-user exhibits at this year’s Museums and the Web Conference. We’ll be bringing along our multi-touch table as well as some gesture enabled desktop computers.  This should be an interesting day of activities and discussions. Here’s the introduction to the description of the workshop…

“Multi-touch and multi-user exhibits have the potential to fundamentally change the ways in which visitors interact with computer-based exhibits in museums. Through the use of intuitive gestures, visitors are saved from the need to learn graphic tools or figure out how to activate responses. These exhibits allow designers to move away from traditional graphical user interfaces and toward a set of more natural and intuitive controls.”

See the full description of Make It Multitouch on the Museums and the Web Conference page.

Update February 4, 2009: We’ve released our multitouch table you can check out a video and get the full specifications.

This article appears in the most recent print issue of the National Association for Museum Exhibition’s Journal Vol.27 no. 2.

Open source software designed specifically for use by museums has appeared on the scene in just the last couple of years. While commonplace in other domains, it’s just getting started in the museum world. The Internet is largely powered by open source software. Most servers run using Apache open source software, and millions of bloggers use WordPress. Many more millions of Web visitors use Firefox, the premier open source browser, to surf the Web. Museum open source software counts users in the thousands and developers in the dozens, but the movement is growing.

Wikipedia (2008) defines open source software as “a development methodology, which offers practical accessibility to a product’s source.” In other words, the source code is open to a community of developers who can modify it or add their own code. There are a handful of open source software packages designed specifically for museums, such as Pachyderm, Omeka, and OpenCollection. We’ll examine these projects, along with other planned initiatives, and provide some practical advice on utilizing open source software in museums.

Custom or Open?
Most interactive computer-based exhibits are developed using custom software. These exhibits are generally very expensive, quickly dated, and rarely shared. Open source software could eventually revolutionize the way in which computer-based exhibits are developed—with exhibit creators sharing their innovations and source code, as well as their expertise and effective practices.  Open Source Initiative (2006), provides background on the topic and offers this encouraging view on the promise of open source: “better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower costs, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”

The Bernoulli blower exhibit. Photograph by Lily Rodriguez, © Exploratorium

A similar movement has already taken place in the museum field. In the 1970s, hands-on science centers began sharing “recipes” for exhibits. The Exploratorium Cookbook series, for example, shared the instructions for developing hundreds of exhibits. The Bernoulli Blower, which appears in the Exploratorium Cookbook II, 1980, is found in science centers all across the world. This spirit of community, which includes the free sharing of ideas, is central to the open source software movement.

Late to the Game
When it comes to technology, museums are usually behind, and it should be no surprise that this is the case with open source software. A fair number of museums are using more general open source software packages such as WordPress for blogging, or even Open Office for management and productivity. Most museums use open source software for their Web servers, but so far, only a handful have utilized software packages created specifically for museums. This will most likely change as the available open source software continues to improve, their communities expand, and more open source initiatives get off the ground. The following are some examples of available open source software that IT staff in museums should begin to explore.

Pachyderm – http://pachyderm.nmc.org
Pachyderm is a multimedia authoring tool designed for people with little experience in authoring computer-based exhibits. It uses Web forms and allows authors to upload their own media (images, audio, and video clips) to assemble exhibits. A series of templates allows authors to easily publish Flash-based presentations for the Web, CD or DVD-ROM, or an exhibit kiosk.

Scott Sayre, the Chair of the Pachyderm Governance Council explains that Pachyderm’s users are not necessarily just museums. “In many cases, faculty and teachers are using it as a building block, taking advantage of museum content. Both audiences (educators and museums) are key to the success of the project,” (S. Sayre, personal communication, June 26, 2008). On the Pachyderm site, visitors can view its showcase, which contains a number of projects developed by students and faculty. Its ease-of-use makes it appealing for exhibit developers who are just beginning to develop computer-interactive exhibits.

A Web form for a Pachyderm template.

As stated on their Website, Pachyderm (2008) is “as easy to use as filling out a Web form.”  The featured templates allow authors to create multimedia presentations. Pachyderm can easily handle audio and video files, and it has a pan-and-zoom feature for images. While it is extremely easy to use, some may find the template-based environment limiting. However, more experienced developers (who can modify the open source code) can use Pachyderm to create custom computer-based exhibits, essentially building new features or custom templates on top of the Pachyderm platform.

Omeka – www.omeka.org
The word “omeka” is Swahili, meaning “to display or lay out goods or wares; to speak out; to spread out; to unpack,” (Omeka, 2007). The name is well chosen, as Omeka is a platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Web-based, Omeka (2007) is designed to facilitate “community-building around collections and exhibits.”  The application is rich with Web 2.0 features such as a blog and Web feed (RSS), and it supports tagging.

Omeka began in the fall of 2007, but the roots of the project go back much further. As Omeka’s Executive Producer Tom Scheinfeldt explains, “Back in 2000, we found that museums had one group developing Websites, and another cataloguing and managing collections. No one at the museum was engaged in building rich interactive experiences,” (personal communication, June 25, 2008). Omeka is designed to fulfill that need, bridging the gap between Web experiences and collections.

While Omeka can be used to manage collections and is very well suited for small ones, “it is not a full-featured collections management platform,” stated Scheinfeldt. “Its real strength is in Web publishing, as a way to take a collection online and build rich narratives around the objects,” (personal communication, June 25, 2008).  So, Omeka is not a replacement for collections management, but rather a tool for developing collections-based online exhibits.

Like other open source initiatives, Omeka is counting on contributions from its growing community. So far, most of the development has been done internally, but this is changing quickly as developers are beginning to have an impact. The software’s structure, which relies on plug-ins and separate “themes,” allows designers and developers to easily modify existing resources or create new ones.

The project’s online showcase contains a number of projects that have used Omeka software. For example, Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (2005) contains a collection of first-hand accounts from people who were affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The site contains photographs, audio and video, along with written accounts.

OpenCollection – www.opencollection.org
OpenCollection is a collections management application designed to handle large digital collections. The software “is intended as an alternative to expensive proprietary software solutions that have traditionally been used for collections cataloging and publishing by museums, archives, libraries and other organizations,” (OpenCollection, 2008). The administrative functions are completely Web-based, allowing the cataloging of items to be distributed and conducted on any platform. project’s roots go back to 2003, but the project wasn’t publicly released as open source until August 2006.

A number of museums have begun to use OpenCollection. Some are using it internally for staff only, such as the National September 11 Memorial Museum, but others have collections visitors can visit for themselves. The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York has their collection online (http://collection.parrishart.org) and their audio archives available as well (http://audio.parrishart.org). A partial list of users can be found on the OpenCollection site.

Seth Kaufman, the technical lead for OpenCollection, explains that the project got started when, “We were building custom systems for everyone and that didn’t make sense. We’ve always been committed to open source software. So, it seems natural to do it. When we work with clients, we stipulate, and our clients agree, that whatever gets built goes back into the software,” (personal communication, June 20, 2008). This continual development allows for the addition of new features, making OpenCollection more competitive with its proprietary counterparts.

Along with developing software, OpenCollection supports a community. As Kaufman explained, “You can’t just make available open source software and expect people to use it. You need to support it. We try to help people to get rolling with software. Our goal is to get as many people to use the software as possible, to have them give us feedback, so we can improve OpenCollection software,” (personal communication, June 20, 2008).

Recent Initiatives
The time seems right to break from the custom software model, build a platform for innovation, and try to reach science museums and other informal science education venues that have not yet connected with any of the existing open source initiatives.  Ideum’s interest in open source software has led us, in conjunction with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), to submit a proposal to fund and develop Open Exhibits (www.openexhibits.org), an initiative to create Adobe Flash- and Flex-based modules and templates for exhibits on the Web and the floor.

Another new initiative is CollectionSpace (www.collectionspace.org), a community-driven project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by the Museum of the Moving Image. The University of California at Berkeley, University of Toronto, and Cambridge University are partnering with the Museum of the Moving Image on this new open source collections management initiative. Carl Goodman, the Senior Deputy Director of the museum and the project leader for CollectionSpace, stated that they hope to have their software available sometime next year (personal communication, June 30, 2008).  New and more options for digital collection management will most certainly be welcomed, as proprietary collections management software can be expensive and sometimes slow to adapt to technological changes.

The Future of Open Source
Evaluating which software package or technology to use on any given computer-based exhibit or digital collection is a complicated task and, initially, open source may only muddy the waters. Still, there is great potential and some “real” projects that are taking advantage of these new tools for exhibit development and collections management.  With only a few active open source software packages to choose from, however, there may be cases when the software will not do what clients need it to do; the need for customized software won’t disappear anytime soon.

There are also questions concerning support and long-term viability of these initiatives. When approaching the development of a new exhibit or digital collection, these are considerations that are not normally factored in when looking at proprietary software, though perhaps they should be. Yet, even with these issues, the future of museum open source software seems bright. With each initiative the range of choices expands. At the same time, existing open sources projects continue to improve as their communities of both users and developers grow. All of this leads to better software, more features and innovation, and expanded options for museums.

Another important development is that the initiatives themselves are beginning to communicate with each other. Discussions have already begun that might eventually lead to interoperability between projects. In the future, it might be possible to take the pieces of one project and combine them with another. With a limited community of users and developers, the success, sustainability, and perhaps even the survival of museum open source initiatives may come down to working together.

The more museums and developers participate in these projects, the better the software will become. Each project potentially builds on the last, while new features are added, improvements are made, and new ideas are expressed. How often can people say that their project will benefit the larger museum community? That’s yet another reason to consider open source software for future projects.

References
Firefox Browser. (2008). Number of Firefox Users. July 16, 2008, from
http://www.mozilla.org/about.

Hipschman, R. (1980). Exploratorium Cookbook II: A Construction Manual For Exploratorium Exhibits. San Francisco, CA: The Exploratorium.

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. (2005). Collecting and Preserving the Stories of Katrina and Rita. July 19, 2008, from http://www.hurricanearchive.org.

Omeka. (2007). Omeka.  July 3, 2008, from http://www.omeka.org.

Open Collections. (2008). The Open Source Collections Management Software. July 3, 2008, from http://www.opencollection.org.

Open Source Initiative (OSI). (2006). The Open Source Definition.  July 16, 2008, from http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd.

Pachyderm. (2008). Pachyderm Services: Multimedia Authoring for Peanuts. July 3, 2008, from http://pachyderm.nmc.org.

Weber, S. (2004). The Success of Open Source. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wikipedia. (2008). Open Source Software. July 16, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software.

Tomorrow, I’m headed to Philadelpia for the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) annual conference. On Saturday, I’m presenting Web 2.0: A New Crossroads for Science Centers with Bryan Kennedy (Science Museum of Minnesota),  Kevin Von Appen (Ontario Science Centre), and Nina Simon (Museum 2.0).

This our third year looking at issues concerning science centers and Web 2.0.  We’re mixing up the format this year, to make the session more participatory.  We will have a brief presentation with much more time for questions and contributions from those attending. There are some starter questions which Nina posted on her blog. We’re also posting bookmarks on del.icio.us with the tag astcweb2.

On Sunday I’ll be at the ExhibitFiles brunch. We’ll be talking about what we’ve learned in the year and half since the ExhibitFiles community site launched.  There’s more on the ExhibitFiles in our portfolio. Hope to see you in Philadelphia.

Tomorrow, myself and Chris Gerber, our top Flex developer will be presenting at the New Mexico Internet Professionals Association’s (NMIPA) monthly meeting.  We’re going to discuss Adobe Flex and how we’ve used it in recent projects. For example, the video player on the Open Exhibits Website was created with Flex, as was the Media Player and Web widget for RSS Mixer. We even created a interactive exhibit for NASA using Adobe Flex.  (It will be released in October, and we’ll add it to our portfolio, then.)  If you’re local, join us. There’s more about the event at the NMIPA website.

On Monday, at the American Association of Museums (AAM) conference, I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion entitled, “Can and Should Small Museums Be Technological Leaders?” We’ll primarily be talking about Web-based technology and I will be drawing on some of the results of a survey we’re conducting for Open Exhibits, a proposal for the National Science Foundation.

In filtering the responses we’ve received thus far, there are some interesting findings with respect to computer-based exhibits at small vs. large museums.I filtered 90 responses by operating budget. Those with an annual operating budget of less than one million US dollars I’m considering small (29 responses), while large are those with a budget of more than a million (61 responses).There are some interesting preliminary findings with respect to the number of computer-based interactive exhibits produced at these museums and their overall capacity to develop them.

There is a dramatic difference in the number of computer-based interactive exhibits that small and large museums produce. More than half of small museums (56%) produce no electronic exhibits at all, while only 14% of respondents from large museums reported that their institutions produced no electronic exhibits. Interestingly, 20% of small museums produce computer-based exhibits in-house, a slightly larger percentage than large museums (18%). Most large museums (56%) use a combination of in-house and outside resources to develop computer-based exhibits, but only 18% of small museums use that combination of resources.

There were also some significant differences in small and large museums’ capacities to develop computer-based interactive exhibits. Most small museums rated their ability to produce computer-based interactive exhibits at either “no ability” (30%) or just one notch up the scale (30%). No representatives from small museums responded with a 6 or 7 (“very capable”). Those representing large museums, however, had more varied responses which were spread across our seven-point likert scale from “no ability” to “very capable.”

If you haven’t yet done so, please take the survey. We’re going to keep it open through May. It is open to museums, science centers, and other informal education venues of any size. We’ll share the complete results with you once the survey closes at the end of next month. If you’re headed to AAM, perhaps I will see you in Denver. You may also want to check out the complete AAM 2008 Media and Technology Committee Sponsored Program Schedule. Update: May 16, 2008 – The survey was closed on May 10, 2008.