Though I have an academic background in history, I feel like a bit of an outlier in this crowd as my career has been spent in museums.  At the National Museum of American History where I work, the role of my little group is to extend the museum experience online as well as develop a range of digital products both inside and outside the museum.  One can find both marked similarities and differences between what museums do and the work of academic institutions, but I can see already that I will find much interesting food for thought by hearing about the work of you all – especially in the area of open-source, reusable toolsets as we are always seeking to do more with less.  For my part I bring an interest in, and focus on, audiences and how to engage them in history.

Museums are unique, highly-valued places of learning—literally and figuratively, temples of knowledge.  When it comes to the online space—where museums compete with innumerable other sources of information and users call all the shots on when, where, how, and for what purposes they interact with museums, their objects and content—it is no surprise that museums find themselves somewhat at a loss.  Do they become just one more source of online information to be appropriated, used, and remixed (no doubt for nefarious purposes)?  How (if at all) do museums distinguish themselves in the online space?

On the other hand, when one considers the proliferation of information online, perhaps museums do possess a few virtues which might be useful: as focal points of community and lifelong learning; as sifters and interpreters of subject matter; as preservers of cultural heritage.  We are accomplished at doing these things in physical space—should we attempt to fill the same role online?

In a recent talk by the well-known historian Patricia Limerick to museum professionals, she pleaded with museums to “help” academics learn to speak to a broader audience and provide more opportunities to reach the public.  It seems to me that more conversations should be happening about how to take all the great tools and content being created by academic institutions and perhaps leverage the exposure and expertise found at museums to widen the audience for your work—not to mention figuring out how to preserve it for the future.  Is this something we can talk about at THATCamp?