Project delivery and outcomes for “MY DIGITAL MUSEUM”

INTRODUCTION

One analog man in a digital paradise, taken out of the relative comfort of managing large operational facilities and thrust into the digital world of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Having absolutely Zero experience in the extent this digital world has to offer no one would have ever thought of this analog man being capable of Website design and delivery…until this Semester.

Project DELIVERY – Summary and Aims

This project was to provide a vision for a future online Australian Federal Police (AFP) Museum website to immediately support the relocation of the existing permanent display and supplement the new displays as they are brought back online.

The entire collection on the current AFP Museum is made up of images, photographs, objects, stories and gathered information all relating to the history of the Australian Federal Police. The current location of the museum is no longer available to the AFP at the end of its lease forcing the museum to relocate to a new home, constructing a digital online museum is one way of maintaining public access to the collection.

The actual museum contained objects and artifacts collected or donated from a variety of sources and curated by the Australian Federal Police Museum team given the potential vastness of the display it was an obvious choice to limit the initial presentation for this project to a reflection of the first 30 years of the Australian Federal Police.

Project DELIVERY – lessons learned

Throughout the course of this project I was introduced to many new and interesting ways to search for information and present the information found, some weeks there was just too many new things to try and even though attempts were made at all the tasks presented in the class notes and lectures many of these I could not incorporate into the final project.

Creating the website I found to be very interesting and my project is looking quite good for a first attempt, adding links and undertaking secondary research for supplement the primary museum object on display went well. The main difficulties remained in the incorporation of the tools presented to us into the website, for this I believe that more could have been done and over the next couple weeks I’ll continue to work on improving the site just to prove to myself that it can be done.

Permission to use the images has been granted by the AFP Museum team with limitations that the website does not contain certain keywords which may identify it as an official AFP site. (AFP Museum Team, 2016),  I underestimated just how long it would take to get the permissions needed to undertake this project using the medium chosen.

Project DELIVERY – assessment against project plan goals

The outcome of this project is to display some of the current collection and the associated history to a website designed to serve as a temporary space until a new, more permanent facility is realized. This project differed because the museum contains tangible and intangible records of the triumphs and tragedies that Australian Federal Police members have faced historically through actions locally and internationally, it is something that rarely has general public visibility.

Throughout this project, the plan was to achieve the following;

• To identify a need to provide access to the AFP Museum collection for the General Public
• Develop a site for the short term, interim requirement with the ability to be drawn on for use when planning a bigger website for the long term.
• Use the knowledge gained in class to expand the collection by adding links each of the 30 online displays presented as part of this project.

Against the goals, I believe each of the outcomes were met, though further improvement could still be made.

 

Project DELIVERY – Extensions to original plan

The project is planned to be used by the AFP Museum team as a platform for the future museum displays and events. The specific needs focus on keeping the museum accessible to AFP staff for training and members of the public to enhance the knowledge and understanding of what role the Australian Federal Police play and how they have contributed to events on a local, national and international platform. Focus on this project has initially commenced with the presentation of the first 30 years of Australian Federal Police history linked through local, regional and international online resources to support the story presented with each artifact.

With a near endless opportunity to expand the existing site, the biggest constraint was time followed closely by experience, both I plan to expand on even after this semester’s assignment period is complete. I had a plan to include a virtual tour of the existing museum space before it was dismantled for storage, unfortunately, time was against me and the museum space was already partially dismantled as a requirement for the relocation. My second thought was to include displays that are currently on loan to other agencies or AFP buildings and this can still be incorporated though not in this time period.

The initial site with basic template commenced during the planning phase as http://liesegangr.wixsite.com/digital-museum , this evolved through project delivery to a better site that was easier to present and locate via Google search.

This new site is now called http://www.mydigitalmuseum.com/.

Project DELIVERY – conclusion

Overall I believe this project was a success, having achieved a website that is visible on several platforms that presented artifacts of a heritage and historic nature that is flexible enough to expand as more items are included in the collection.

The site has a good positive feel with links to displays made easy to use for the majority of the intended visitors.

 

This week I continued to work on the website, it is starting to look quite good

From a Lesson perspective we were back onto the website console again and this week we just copied and pasted some content to change the view of the site to say ‘All your secrets are belong to us’ on the ASIO website.

Not happy intil I tried it myself I altered the script and tried it in both ASIO and ASD websites (and then there was a loud knock on the door…fortunately it was just pizza!).

 

Thank you, Tim, for a great semester!  It was certainly a challenge to get my old Analogue head around some things but I enjoyed the Digital world challenges and overall it was an enjoyable experience.

This week I have the final images and stories ready for uploading to the website, once done I’ll then start the process of testing all the links and making sure it all works, it has run live now for about a week.

Our class notes this week have us looking at archiving tools available to use to archive collections, digital records, files or just about anything found useful on the web. From a Commonwealth perspective, there are a few systems available for digitising available from the Australian Government web archive http://webarchive.nla.gov.au/gov/ and Pandora http://pandora.nla.gov.au/ to some smaller projects like the National Archives of Australia digitisation project for digitising it’s paper archive http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/agency/create-capture-describe/physical-records/index.aspx .

Whilst a fully functional digital archive is a great tool, they are expensive to operate and maintain with any use they provide being that of providing the intangible support to the tangible objects that nay still exist in the collection.

Digital archiving is here to stay, its success will depend on its flexibility and capability to support the cultural displays or records management programs in the future.

Reflections for Week 10

My project is coming along having received an actual domain name (url), images and works being positioned suitable for both PC and Mobile device viewing and even with my very limited experience, it is starting to look good.

This week we looked at digital heritage through the realm of virtual reality, augmented reality, 3d imaging and 3d printing and was another great lesson in the use of technology  for the betterment of cultural heritage (though my attempts to recreate a 3D version of an old school bell resulted in something more akin to works by Salvadore Dali).

In areas like Iraq and Syria, this  technology is currently being used to document as many culturally significant objects, artefacts, landmarks and museums before the are lost forever due to war and acts of wilful destruction by extremist groups. These projects are described in greater detail on the internet through sites such as UNESCO, and there is a great article http://theconversation.com/preservationists-race-to-capture-cultural-monuments-with-3d-images-53536 ,  on the race to capture and preserve as much of this significant cultural heritage before it is destroyed by the IS extremist group.

Regarding future accessibility, it is a great digital program to record these sites in the greatest detail possible before they are lost forever. From a “Joe Public” view these collections will then have the capability to be made into exhibits for those who may not have the physical ability,  time, finances or simply just live too far away to now experience museums that they may have an interest in personally or professionally.

After some initial panic and a few hours of further study on website development courtesy of Lynda.com, my website is starting to come together, chalking this one as another successful week.

This week the lectures had us looking at new technology that would benefit the field of cultural heritage (and our lecturers continual attempts at poking the bear- ASIO…seriously he won’t be at class one day because a couple black vans have double-bagged him and carted him over to the Ben Chifley Building for a …. discussion about the true purpose of redaction).

We looked at facial recognition technology with several different facial recognition systems considered, all being able to match a face with a database of faces to find its owner including facial detection where a computer scans an image and finds the basic features of a face within.

If technology is going to keep growing in use and advances as it has (and will) then people just need to understand that early attempts of large-scale facial recognition (such as projects undertaken by Google and Facebook to link every face on its system with a name) will not always produce correct results and may even get it very wrong. Looking to more dedicated professional, commercial grade facial recognition systems, often incorporate retinal detection, thermal imagery and other features of the person to confirm a match.

The future is here; it is used in airports and casinos daily to target “persons of interest” and with advances in camera and digitising technology the accuracy is improving at a rapid rate.

Why did I choose to build a website? I figured that if I could build a car or put together a critical piece of plant and equipment, how hard could it be….

I was mistaken…

Reflections for WEEK 7

This is it my project plan is complete and submitted (even though I left out a whole section I prepared on analytics and the use of Google Analytics as a tool to track website attendance).

This week’s class information I enjoyed looking at the many different uses for maps and the variety in the quality of cartography used to produce maps we use every day. One of the highlights of this week’s lesson data included the geo-rectifying of a map of 1865 Melbourne.

I also thought the process of geo-rectifying historical maps was very clever, we were introduced to this type of cartography during the Cultural Heritage Field School as a tool to verify spots of cultural heritage interest.

This was another busy week, approval to use images vital for the completion of my project were received this week and while it does not affect my ability to complete the initial plan it does have an effect on the final project.

This week we looked at data visualisation and some of the tools available that can be used in a digital heritage context. Using Plot.ly for creating graphs I created a stacked and group bar chart showing attendance at cultural institutions by gender (2013-14).

It tells a story about categorical data such as institution type, traffic volume and visitor gender but to be useful the graphs also need to show why and how they achieved the attendance numbers (general visitors, special event, new movie release, etc.).

In support of creating graphs that tell a story, two of the site I found that did this quite well were the Timeline of Earth’s Average Temperature and Mapping Police Violence.  Both are aided further by graphs, charts, and other visualisations of data and both left you with a feeling that a story was told, though the further research into the why and how were still needed.

In conclusion, every graphic should be able to explain the data simply and in a way that a common answer or theory is visualised regardless of who reads it.

This was an interesting week, the subject of differing types of analyses appealed to my normal drive for solving complex problems (both at work and in class!). My project has life and apart from any setback with receiving the necessary approvals to use some information (even though it is freely available on the internet), all is currently looking good.

Research in/and on the subject of Commonwealth Policing has its limitations (i.e. Commonwealth Police were transferred to the new Australian Federal Police in 1979) any searches for historical information on this topic from 1979 will require the addition of both Commonwealth and Australian Federal police to yield the best results.

Using Google Ngram it confirmed my search for books relating to either Commonwealth Police or Australian Federal Police had to be further defined or risk my final project looking cluttered and difficult to navigate.

Back to the day’s lessons Voyant and Wordcounter offered some fun and is a great tool to run your own speeches or class presentations, using the outcomes as a guide for better speechwriting (no one likes to hear the word UMMM!)

Voyant Tools – Julia Gillard Speech

For the “dirty” work search words I chose Samuel L Jacksons favourite “motherfucker” its resurgence since the 1980’s I’d like to think is contributed to Mr Jackson’s colourful use of language.

Thankyou Tim, this was another great lesson.

Looking at the varieties of data and how they can be used to support a specific project or outcome in the Cultural Heritage field can be quite daunting, the results of any data based exercise, including data mining, rely primarily on the data being complete and verifiable by several independent sources.

I really liked the visual outcomes and flexibility of plot.ly it is a tool I will use back in the office for data visualisation (labour usage/frequency, energy consumption).

As for the data repositories, there were many I had never used, and in visiting them, it was apparent that these repositories are for specific data, managed and verified by the government agencies and organised to enable faster access for specific analysis tasks.