Group items tagged

Supplied (on-site device distribution) or privately owned

Native apps

Mobile websites

In terms of content this includes:

Applications (software designed for specific tasks

Podcasts (audio and video content

Other downloadable content (e.g. PDFs and ebook

the Library may look to harness the potential of these technologies to break away from the traditional broadcast-only website presence and move towards two-way conversations between the Library and its users, or conversations between the users themselves

the key objectives stated in the Information Technology Strategic Plan 2012-2015 include Online Presence and supporting “the needs of our users for easy discovery of, access to, and engagement with our services, collections and other information resources in the digital environment”

ensure equal access to our resources and services for all Australians.

facilitate equal access to Library resources for everyone.

Putting Library resources into the hands of users in their lounge rooms reflects a deeper understanding of the need to move beyond the desire to follow our users and instead reach out to them to “take them some place new

mobile will only continue to grow and overtake desktop internet usage within 2-3 years

building both infrastructure and a culture of engagement will pave the way to more efficiently and effectively meeting that need in the future

4         Strategic goals

Improve access to our collection and services for audiences, wherever they are, whether on-site or anywhere else in the world.

Equip staff to champion and drive the development of mobile services to improve access and productivity.

Adopt an evidence-based approach to service development and delivery

Modernise the Library brand to reflect relevance, accessibility and innovation.

Create opportunities for learning

Facilitate connections, conversation and overall engagement with national collection material.

Establish and expand the infrastructure and back-end systems required to support mobile initiatives, products and services.

Build, consolidate and share expertise

Adopt standards and best practices for interoperable mobile content and cross-platform data management.

A focus on strategic, audience-driven activity with a utility function.

Seek out and engage new technologies to achieve marketing and communications goals.

6         Recommended activities

activities provide a means to implement and ground the strategy with specific and measurable tasks

6.1      Governance and infrastructure

The Library’s IT Strategy Group will determine priorities

formalising the Web Committee’s role as an advisory body

Include requisite support for mobile content collection, preservation and access in the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement Project (DLIR

Information Technology Division to examine ongoing resourcing of development work, administrative models, and potential for partial cost-recovery

Adopt emerging Commonwealth requirements and advice pertaining to managing devices and content

Develop and review policy in support of the use of both enterprise devices and use of personal devices for work-related purposes. Identify

Investigate infrastructure and resourcing requirements for digital recording and distribution

Collections Management Division to keep a watching brief on any developments pertaining to the extension of Legal Deposit to include digital (and mobile) content

developing a statement of collecting intentions for the various categories of ebook titles within the context of revising the collecting policy for Australian electronic publications in general

Applications

Podcasts (audio and video content

Other downloadable content (e.g. PDFs and ebooks

3         Our mobile vision

Improve access to our collection and services for audiences, wherever they are, whether on-site or anywhere else in the world.

4         Strategic goals

3         Our mobile vision

4         Strategic goals

3         Our mobile vision

Improve access to our collection and services for audiences, wherever they are, whether on-site or anywhere else in the world.

4         Strategic goals

Adopt an evidence-based approach to service development and delivery

Equip staff to champion and drive the development of mobile services to improve access and productivity.

Modernise the Library brand to reflect relevance, accessibility and innovation.

Adopt an evidence-based approach to service development and delivery

Equip staff to champion and drive the development of mobile services to improve access and productivity.

Create opportunities for learning

Facilitate connections, conversation and overall engagement with national collection material.

Establish and expand the infrastructure and back-end systems required to support mobile initiatives, products and services.

Tactics

Equip staff to champion and drive the development of mobile services to improve access and productivity.

Adopt an evidence-based approach to service development and delivery

Modernise the Library brand to reflect relevance, accessibility and innovation.

Create opportunities for learning

Facilitate connections, conversation and overall engagement with national collection material.

Tactics

Tactics

Establish and expand the infrastructure and back-end systems required to support mobile initiatives, products and services.

Build, consolidate and share expertise

Tactics

Establish and expand the infrastructure and back-end systems required to support mobile initiatives, products and services.

Build, consolidate and share expertise

Adopt standards and best practices for interoperable mobile content and cross-platform data management.

Build, consolidate and share expertise

Adopt standards and best practices for interoperable mobile content and cross-platform data management.

A focus on strategic, audience-driven activity with a utility function.

Adopt standards and best practices for interoperable mobile content and cross-platform data management.

A focus on strategic, audience-driven activity with a utility function.

Seek out and engage new technologies to achieve marketing and communications goals.

Seek out and engage new technologies to achieve marketing and communications goals.

Recommended

6.1      Governance and infrastructure

Library’s IT Strategy Group will determine priorities

formalising the Web Committee

Information Technology Division to examine ongoing resourcing

formalising the Web Committee

Include requisite support for mobile content collection, preservation and access in the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement Project (DLIR

Include requisite support for mobile content collection, preservation and access in the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement Project (DLIR

formalising the Web Committee

Develop and review policy in support of the use of both enterprise devices and use of personal devices for work-related purposes

Investigate infrastructure and resourcing requirements for digital recording and distribution to ensure the long-term sustainability of online broadcast activity

Adopt emerging Commonwealth requirements and advice pertaining to managing devices and content

formalising the Web Committee

Information Technology Division to examine ongoing resourcing

Include requisite support for mobile content collection, preservation and access in the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement Project (DLIR

Adopt emerging Commonwealth requirements and advice pertaining to managing devices and content

Collections Management Division to keep a watching brief on any developments pertaining to the extension of Legal Deposit to include digital (and mobile) conten

developing a statement of collecting intentions for the various categories of ebook titles within the context of revising the collecting policy for Australian electronic publications

Adopt emerging Commonwealth requirements and advice pertaining to managing devices and content

Develop and review policy in support of the use of both enterprise devices and use of personal devices for work-related purposes

Thomson Reuters OpenCalais

OCLC's WorldCat

Before we began our work on the Commons on Flickr, some museum colleagues were concerned that engaging with the Flickr community would increase workloads greatly. While the monitoring of the site does take some work, the value gained via the users has far outweighed any extra effort. In some cases, users have dated images for us.

In subsequent use of the Flickr API, we appropriated tags users had added to our images, and now include them in our own collection database website (OPAC). We also retrieved geo-location data added to our images for use in third party apps like Sepiatown and Layar.

In our case the purpose of creating an API was to allow others to use our content.

So consider the questions above not in the context of should we or shouldn't we put our data online (via an API or otherwise) but rather in the context of managing expectations of the data's uptake.

Steps to an API

several important things which had to happen before we could provide a public web API. The first was the need to determine the licence status of our content.

The drive to open up the licensing of our content came when, on a tour we conducted of the Museum's collection storage facilities for some Wikipedian

This prompted Seb Chan to make the changes required to make our online collection documentation available under a mix of Creative Commons licences. (Chan, April 2009)

Opening up the licensing had another benefit: it meant that we had already cleared one hurdle in the path to creating an API.

The Government 2.0 Taskforce (http://gov2.net.au/about/) was the driver leading us to take the next step.

"increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information"

the first cultural institution in Australia to provided a bulk data dump of any sort.

The great thing about this use is that it exposes the Museum and its collection to the academic sector, enlightening them regarding potential career options in the cultural sector.

I will briefly mention some of the technical aspects of the API now for those interested. In line with industry best practice the Powerhouse Museum is moving more and more to open-source based hosting and so we chose a Linux platform for serving the API

Images are served from the cloud as we had already moved them there for our OPAC, to reduce outgoing bandwidth from the Museum's network.

Once we had the API up and running, we realised it would not be too much work to make a WordPress plug-in which allowed bloggers to add objects from our collection to their blogs or blog posts. Once built, this was tested internally on our own blogs. Then in early 2011 we added it to the WordPress plugin directory: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/powerhouse-museum-collection-image-grid/

One of the main advantages the API has over the data dump is the ability to track use.

It is also worth noting that since the API requests usually do not generate pages that are rendered in a browser it is not possible to embed Google Analytics tracking scripts in the API's output.

y requiring people to sign up using a valid email address before requesting an API key we are able to track API use back to individuals or organisations.

Concerns that people would use the API inappropriately were dealt with by adding a limit to the number of requests per hour each key can generate