Thursday at PICNIC 08 played host to “a marathon on museums, media and innovation”. This seminar on the “open museum” focused on new media developments in the cultural heritage sector– developments that could improve the way in which a museum interacts with people online or offline. This is a topic that has been current for some time now, as many “traditional” museums have to cope with falling visitor numbers in this brave new media world that we live in. Centuries-old institutions like the Dutch Royal Library have started making their collections accessible online, both to improve information provision to scholars and to foster interest in cultural heritage among the modern public.

One of the speakers Thursday was Seb Chan, web services manager at the Powerhouse Museum of science and design in Sydney. Chan focused on the idea of turning a museum into a hub of information. The site of the Powerhouse Museum clearly reflects this idea; it has many informational and educational “online resources” that are designed to teach children new things. Among the resources are sites about the odds of losing money at gambling, and even games teaching children how to be a successful innovator. That latter game is actually quite fun, and I was tempted to pick up a cold pack of Foster’s and just kick back playing.

The question of whether this sort of online content creation should be at the core of a museum’s activities probably varies from institution to institution. Holland, for instance, has got some really world-class museums whose primary aim should be to conserve the cultural heritage contained in their priceless artworks. And just managing even that can be a challenge in the twenty-first century, when most of Amsterdam seems to have been turned into a construction yard. Still, ideas to innovate museums (like those on the Powerhouse website) are really important to keep those dusty repositories of cutural heritage interesting for next generations.

The author would like to thank the PICNIC 08 organisers for not posting security personnel at the entrance to this session.

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