Putting Knowledge to Work: Bringing Digital Assets to the Forefront and Fostering Virtual Communities

Deb Hunt, Senior Information Specialist, the Exploratorium

And

Principal, Information Edge

dhunt@exploratorium.edu

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Projects change, assets change, job titles change, technology changes, but special librarians and information professionals continue to serve the same function in their organizations, which is to collect, organize, analyze, and disseminate information. Lately, we now are beginning to re-purpose and actually create new content as well as foster connections between people.

 

This presentation will illustrate how we can remain valuable and marketable assets to our organizations.

 

Several projects at the Exploratorium demonstrate this process. But, before I tell you about the projects, let me tell you a bit about the Exploratorium http://www.exploratorium.edu/.

 

Housed within the walls of San Francisco’s landmark Palace of Fine Arts, the Exploratorium is a collage of over 500 interactive exhibits in the areas of science, art, and human perception.

 

The Exploratorium stands in the vanguard of the movement of the “museum as educational center.” It provides access to, and information about, science, nature, art, and technology. Over 600,000 people visit the museum annually

 

The Exploratorium was founded in 1969 by noted physicist and educator Dr. Frank Oppenheimer, who was its director until his death in 1985. The current director, Dr. Goéry Delacôte, a renowned French scientist, science educator, and public servant, was named executive director of the Exploratorium in February 1991.

 

Like many museums, the Exploratorium has on site professional development programs for educators. Our two major programs are the Teacher Institute (TI) and the Institute for Inquiry (IFI). The Exploratorium Teacher Institute has been a professional home for middle and high school science and math teachers for over 18 years. TI offers Summer Institutes and district-wide in-services for both new and experienced teachers. Summer Institute alumni may also attend a variety of Saturday and after-school workshops. The Institute for Inquiry provides elementary science educators interested in reform with inquiry experiences through workshops, on-line resources, follow-up opportunities, and a growing community of practice.

I've been at the Exploratorium since September 1995 and have stretched professionally since then and continue to do so. I love the work I do and the people I work with. I have learned to look at the world in a different way as my awareness of the world around me, both the seen and unseen, has increased dramatically. I can honestly say that I have learned more in the past 7 years about science than I ever did in a formal educational setting. Those who visit the Exploratorium feel the same way ---- science can be fun, awe inspiring, and easy to understand when presented in our unique way.

 

First I will talk about the Exploratorium Digital Assets Management project and then about our Educate website and educator virtual communities. Although these resources are targeted at both formal and informal educators, they are useful for special librarians and information professionals to know about as they can point educators to them.

 

 

EDAM (EXPLORATORIUM DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT)

http://www.exo.net/edam

While we have many projects going on at the Museum, one of our latest initiatives is to collect, digitize, index, and disseminate assets the museum has created. It is an ambitious project and will change the institution internally, as well as externally. My colleague, Rose Falanga, is the Project Coordinator, and I am grateful for the expertise she generously contributed to this presentation.

 

Most of you have heard about digital assets management or DAM. The Exploratorium DAM (EDAM) is funded by an I.M.L.S. (Institute of Museum and Library Services) http://www.imls.gov/ grant in which museum materials related to interactive exhibits and scientific phenomena, including still and QuickTime movies, PDFs, audio files, educational activities, Word documents, line drawings, and other exhibit-related resources, are digitally archived and made accessible to the museum's audiences as well as museum staff. EDAM archives the museum in partnership with the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. The Bancroft is storing and cataloging our analog originals, as well as our CD and DVD collections, making them available to researchers.

 

During our decades of creative programming, the Exploratorium has amassed a remarkable collection of over 100,000 analog resources. Preservation is a continuing worry, both of the artifacts themselves and information on their origin. From the beginning we relied on the memories of staff members for intellectual and physical access. As staff moved on, they took their knowledge and intellectual capital with them.

 

Chronically under-funded, as most nonprofits are, we always put more effort into production than into physical storage and organization. Items go in but they don't come out without a great deal of stressful and time-consuming searching.

 

Several years ago a team from the Exploratorium Learning Tools, Learning Studio, and Media departments realized that the time was long overdue to begin to preserve our resources, and improve staff access to them. We purchased digital assets management software, Canto Cumulus <http://www.canto.com>, and began to add assets into the new system in 2002.

 

The project's goal is to increase public access to science education by creating an efficient means of distributing digital assets to professionals in other museums, educators, researchers and the media.  We were selected to serve as a national model and will contribute to the museum and special library fields by continuing to investigate and document solutions to the institutional and technological problems faced by organizations in the midst of the rapid transformation to digital technology and Web-based communications. The secondary goals are to increase staff efficiency and to contribute knowledge to the museum and library fields regarding digital asset management in science centers and other exhibit-based institutions.

 

IMLS is supporting the publication of a web version of the Cumulus database, which will deliver assets to remote users' desktops. Finished assets, such as movies and PDF files, will be included as well as "pieces" such as images, diagrams, text and sound. We expect our two primary audiences, partner museums who have leased our exhibits and K-12 teachers, to create new resources to meet their specific needs. Museums will design their own shows and teachers will create pathways that they will use with their students before, during, after and, in some cases, instead of museum visits.

 

While medium resolution web versions of our assets are available free for educator audiences to use in classroom presentations, websites, and other educational activities, we also make high-resolution assets available commercially. Before EDAM, the permissions process was time consuming and cumbersome. Now with 5000 assets on the web that commercial clients are able to preview and select from, the outcome is greater efficiency and increased earned income.

 

This presentation is too short to go into all of the logistics of such things as creation of metadata, subject categories, image resolution choices, prioritizing what to digitize, intellectual property issues, and the actual search process to find the archived and cataloged assets. As you might imagine, as with any knowledge management project, getting buy-in from museum staff was a challenge. Communication, trust, training and asking for input from staff served to both publicize and promote the project. Additionally, staff were "sold" on EDAM once they began to experience the ease with which they could find an asset they needed.

 

Rose Falanga wrote an excellent, detailed article on this project, which appeared in the April 2002 issue (vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 14+) of Computers in Libraries. The article was entitled "Hidden Treasures: Managing Digital Assets at the Exploratorium".

 

 

EXPLORATORIUM VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

The popular Exploratorium website (winner of 4 Webby Awards) consists of over 12,000 web pages. Visitors to the site often find that it is so content-rich that they cannot locate exactly what they are looking for.  The Educator homepage

http://www.exploratorium.edu/educate/ launched in Spring 2002, is specially designed just for educators, whether they be in the classroom, at the local Boys' and Girls' Club, or home schoolers.  Its navigation bar helps them access the award-winning online resources, including Webcasts, activities, publications, and the latest information on professional development programs.

 

We've worked hard to meet the information needs of educators in order to enhance their teaching abilities, build their leadership skills, and foster online communities. We've been online since 1992 (ftp and gopher) and on the web since 1993 with listservs, message boards, webcasts, chats, online activities, online access to a circulating library collection, an educator enewsletter, and an online class. Our online teaching tools provide rich, free resources to help teachers and students climb out of their textbooks and dive into science.

 

Snacktalk

 http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/feedback.html

One of our virtual communities is offered as part of our online Snacks

http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/. Snacktalk is an online discussion group where any user can submit comments. They come in many forms:

·        Questions - "Is it possible to propel an aircraft using the gyroscope principal? Like "flying saucers" if they existed? "

·        Help needed - "Hello. I've decided to do one of your projects for my eighth grade science project. I understand the project, but I need some ideas on how to write my report, and maybe on where I can find more research on electroscopes. I also wanted to thank you for making my search for a better, fun science project easier.

A Curious Student "

·        Thanks/Kudos - "I am so happy that I've found your website about these science experiments because these experiments will really help me win the science fair that I am going to have. Keep up the good work!"

 

Pinhole

Other Exploratorium virtual communities include Pinhole, a listserv that provides an ongoing exchange of ideas, questions and answers for teacher graduates of the summer Exploratorium Teacher Institute (TI) http://www.exploratorium.edu/ti/Pinhole is an active listserv for Teacher Institute Alumni only that has archives going back to 1996. Topics range from job listings, to questions about how to find cow's eyes (and other organs) for physiology classes, to how to explain osmosis using gummy bears. There are about 250 subscribers to Pinhole.

 

EduNews
http://www.exploratorium.edu/educate/issue.html

EduNews, our free quarterly educator enewsletter, includes announcements about Exploratorium-produced Webcasts, museum events, print publications, new online resources, and provides updates about the museum's learning and teaching initiatives. It also highlights valuable non-Exploratorium resources. Anyone can sign up to receive EduNews at http://www.exploratorium.edu/educate/newsletter.html. The form allows subscribers to opt in to periodic announcements about upcoming museum events and webcasts. Many do opt in. We only send announcements that are timely and need to go out in between regularly scheduled issues of EduNews.

 

 

 

 

Subscriber Database

How do we stay in touch with the members of our virtual communities? We have created an Educator Database, which is currently a FileMaker file, that contains some 5000 individuals and their contact information. The list originally used as its basis the alumni of the Exploratorium teacher professional development programs. Over the last year we have added teachers and other educators (with their permission) who visit our booth at the annual conference of the National Science Teachers Association, those who sign up on our website, and others whose emails we receive who learned about EduNews from their colleagues. We are constantly updating and revising the database.

 

Future enhancements to the Educate website include "Teacher Talk" and "Educator Picks". Teacher Talk will be a web-based asynchronous interface that will allow teachers to share lesson plans, classroom activities, and more. Educator Picks will be a best-of-web format wherein educators can submit their favorite websites and others can rate them, much as readers write reviews on Amazon.com.  These resources will encourage educators to share their successes, challenges, and favorite Internet resources.

 

 

Conclusion

Creating digital assets from analog ones, organizing those analog and digital assets, and making them accessible to others via a web interface is one way we can put knowledge to work both for ourselves as librarians and information professionals.

 

Fostering and organizing virtual communities allow us to help our users and those we serve put knowledge to work in their professions no matter where they live or work.

 

As Bob Dylan once sang: "the times, they are a changin'". By keeping up with our users and even ahead of them, we will pave the way to into the future by doing what we have always done best: collecting, organizing and disseminating information.