Exhibition Index Re-Launch, New Collection Features and Tagging Update
The most exciting thing we’ve got going online this week is the re-launch of our Exhibition Index. The original index (below, left) has been online for some time, but had been limited to a listing format linking to basic pages on our Library server. With the recent launch of our Collection online, the time seemed right to grab this exhibition data and migrate it fully into the online Collection.
The re-launch (above, right) allows this resource the same features as our Collection including a more visual layout, community-driven comments and Posse favs—yay! I get to favorite Click!. Some records may seem a little sparse at times—especially for the older exhibitions dating back to the 1840′s where we don’t always have photos or complete dates, but we will be working with Angie Park in our Archives Department to scan and OCR historical press releases. Over the next several months, we hope to add these to exhibition records to fill-out information and give some additional context.
In addition to the exhibitions, we have a few new features going into the collection this week. Related audio and video can now be embedded right into the collection interface (example). We’ve just implemented a way to add related links to display on any object record (example). Lastly, we’ve established a method to display gallery label copy on records (example), which provides some nice context for objects (thank you Francesca & Erin). While none of these additions are earth-shattering, all three allow us to maximize the time and effort that went into existing content and integrate all of these elements we’ve been working on for a long time.
Now for a quick update on the state of tagging (a.k.a., our Posse is awesome). The collection has been live for roughly two months and in that time we’ve seen a lot of participation. In looking at the 3,772 records with images, 76% of those objects have been tagged by Posse, while another 19% have been tagged anonymously. At this point, only 5% of our records online (again, those with images) have no tags. In terms of tagging sources, we’ve seen:
- 7,498 tags contributed by Posse using the collection interface
- 12,623 tags contributed by Posse using Tag! You’re It
- 3,821 tags contributed by anonymous taggers using the collection interface
The quality of the tagging has been impressive—I’d suggest browsing the top tagger profiles to see what I’m talking about. We’ve received some great feedback worth noting, so take a look at the comments on this record and this one for examples of various conversations surrounding tagging issues.
Nina Simon:
September 26th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I finally joined the posse today. I LOVE the tagging game–a great way to get people energized around this.
A few comments:
1. as a person without much art knowledge, I don’t have a lot of skills looking at art, and therefore, I felt nervous that I might be putting on the “wrong” tags. I would love prompts (maybe optional?) with questions you’d like me to answer, like “what colors do you see?,” “what emotions does this make you feel?” so I know the kind of thing you are looking for. I know tagging should be free-form, but since I don’t have a specific use case for the tags I’m providing, I don’t feel well-directed. When I tag things on delicious, I’m doing it so I can find them later. When I tag things on your collection, I have this hazy sense I’m doing it to help other future visitors find things they’ll like… but I’m not really confident about what would be most helpful to them. I want your guidance.
2. It would be awesome to have live presence via chat or similar with others who are “playing” at the same time as you. I’m not used to looking at art alone or often. I tend to do it as a social experience and this could be a great way to connect with strangers around the collection.
3. It wasn’t clear to me whether I was playing real-time with others or just passing their all-time counts. When I got to the final screen about the matches, it wasn’t clear whether those were matches during my session or for all time.
Shelley:
September 26th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Hey Nina,
Thanks for taking this for a whirl!
Starting with #2 – The tagging game is specifically designed the way it is because we don’t have google-like traffic. In other words, it’s pretty rare to match people up in real time, so we don’t offer ways to do that – it would be pretty frustrating to have a chat feature with no one at the other end
If our Posse gets really big, that will change and then the dev time would make a lot of sense (hey, I can hope, right?) Our next step is simple communication stuff like easily following threads in comments, which we don’t have now but need to implement. #1 is an interesting idea – I’m slightly hesitant on it because too much direction infers what people should be seeing and we want the opposite – whatever they do see, but some direction is a good point and it seems worth trying to find a middle ground that would help give some direction without too much leading. #3 that’s an easy text fix that we can get in next week! Thanks again for giving this a try -
Daniel:
October 7th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Still love the idea of posse. Brilliant.