hacking arts & culture by linda ellis
DESCRIPTION
Over the last two years 4 museum service and 4 archive services within the Black Country have been working together to provide online access to item level collections information. The data is made available via a website, as a feed to Culture Grid and also an an API feed. In April 2011 we held a Museums hack day and invited web developers and open data enthusiasts to play with our data.TRANSCRIPT
Black Country Museums Hack Day
Linda EllisWolverhampton Arts + Heritage
Black Country Collections OnlineMLA funded project 2011 - 12
Black Country History website
Black Country History website
• 8 partners; 4 museum services, 4 archives• As of May 2011 contains 146,000+ records – 28,000+ records with images– 24,000+ museum records
• MySQL based repository contains XML and provides OAI target
• SOLR based indexing, qualified DC, matches CultureGrid schema
• Rate limited API layer over SOLR
Data fed into Culture Grid
Why a Hack Day?
• To meet local developers• To find out developers views on our data and
our project• To generate new ideas• To start to create new uses of our data
Fun• Attendees had to make their own badge• Brought along some handling objects• Small prizes – Easter egg for the best
badge, Amazon vouchers for the best hack• Lunch, sweets and drinks provided
But also hard work
Hacks• 5 hacks created on the day: • Go Fish – type in a keyword > 9 random images,
user creates a story• Pairs game – 20 images, user has to find the
pairs• Around here – mobile app that displays images
based on users location and location data associated with an image
• Connections – 16 images, user has to identify sets of images and the link
• Black Country fashion – user selects a hat, top, skirt / trousers and shoes to make up an outfit
Go Fish
Black Country Fashion
Lessons learnt
• Crucial:– Good, reliable Wi-Fi– Venue– Lunch
• Keep it informal• Doesn’t have to be a whole weekend • Great for generating new ideas• Technical support• It’s fun!
What next?
• Would like to take 2 or 3 of the hacks and progress to finished resources
• Would like to hold more hack days in the Midlands to generate:– interest in our data and our collections – new ideas for digital resources that could be built
• BUT we don’t have the funding to do this at the moment
Get in touch• Linda Ellis– [email protected]– Twitter: @wagwebteam
• Black Country Museums– Twitter: @BCMusuems– Black Country History website:
http://blackcountryhistory.org