I spend a fair amount of time, mostly personal, online and while there, I am continually looking for museum people hanging out within various social media networks. I’m not having much luck with this. There appears to be a dearth of museum professionals using social media (and other Web 2.0 tools). I’m more than willing to admit that this perceived shortage is not really a shortage at all. It could be that I’m not looking in the right places. In order to find Minnesota’s online museum community, I think a more direct approach is needed, thus this post.

If you are a museum professional, do you use any of the following social media/Web 2.0 tools either professionally or personally?

Blog (WordPress, Blogger, other?)

Twitter

Facebook

MySpace

LinkedIn

FriendFeed

Feed Readers (Bloglines, Google Reader, etc.)

Other social media/Web 2.0 tools not on the list

If so, which ones to you use and where can you be found online? (Here’s your chance to plug your URL.) If you’d rather not answer this publically, you can send me an email at contactstaff (at) morrisoncountyhistory (dot) org.

Feel free to respond if you’re a museum professional outside of Minnesota, too. You’ll be helping us all to get hooked into the national museum community.

A popular concern with colleagues around the state has to do with handling large collections. Sometimes that collection is new as discussed in Digital Windfall, and sometimes the collection has been sadly neglected for far too long. In either case if a historical organization is to preserve the collection, that collection needs to be made accessible to the public. For those less experienced in processing large collections, sometimes both the unknown and the magnitude can be daunting. What words would you use to coach someone through a large cataloging project? What tried and true procedures to guide you do you use?

I would like to find out what other organizations use for registration and scheduling software for large school events.

Thanks,

Cheryl Finnegan

Collecting and applying user statistics can help your organization grow its program or make hard choices in lean times. What statistics do you track? How has what you learned shaped your program?