Note: This blog post originally published on LinkedIn.
When I first arrived at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
in 2011, I was undertaking a newly-created leadership position with
responsibility for all things technical and digital. Rather than rush in
with guns blazing, I realized that I needed to spend some time really
understanding the needs of the organization. Of course, I found there
were many. It was during this initial “listening tour” that I first
heard about the mystery of the missing map, and that’s the story I’d
like to focus on here.
Once upon a time, a museum hired a graphic artist – at great expense – to create a beautiful digital design for a large map of continental Africa, to be applied directly to the wall in a gallery. The effort was a smashing success. The map was visually impressive, told a great story, and brought the nearby collection to life for visitors. Of course, like all museum installations, this was a time-limited experience. Soon the walls were repainted as the institution marched forward. Then, perhaps five years later, another project came along that could re-use that expensive and gorgeous map. A call went out across the realm: bring forth the map! The response was … crickets. Then the whispering began. Who had the map? Who had that file? What was it called again? Did we save it anywhere? Staff contacted other staff, who then contacted more staff. Investigations branched out across several different operational units. Soon, a number of employees had dropped their work and were digging through old network shared folders, boxes of CDs, and even local hard drives, searching, searching, and searching for several days. Finally, the frustrated and exhausted group gave up. Another graphic designer was hired, and the effort and expense were repeated.
The mystery of the missing map became a metaphor for a long-standing approach to managing digital assets: ad hoc. In fact, the story became a sort of proxy for an entire body of recent digital work that had essentially disappeared. Sound familiar?
To those of us in the information management professions, this is the kind of thing that makes our blood boil. When you layer in the fact that my area – the non-profit cultural sector – typically operates with limited funding and limited staffing, it really adds to the frustration. We simply can’t afford to lose the digital assets that were painstakingly produced to fulfill our mission.
Now, I want to be clear about something. I’m not blaming anyone. Staff who work in cultural sector organizations are diligent, hard-working, incredibly sincere, and very smart. They do their best, day after day. What they often lack are the tools needed to improve the WAY they do their work. And many times that staff has limited or no exposure to best practices in other industries, and thus never knows to question the methods they use in their own workplace.
I think we can agree that 21st century audiences demand unprecedented access to meaningful and portable content. This had led many sectors to transform, to see themselves as vast digital publishing enterprises. The cultural sector is no different. The need to craft and share stories, engage funders and provide inspiration to audiences - new and traditional - has never been greater. We are producing, and will continue to produce, a veritable flood of digital content. Are we equipped for this transformation?
As an organization, we were able to rally around the missing map metaphor and begin to establish better working models. Perfect? Well, not yet, and maybe never, but certainly improving. Our challenges are many:
As a sector, we will be more likely to succeed when we learn from each other, share our wins as well as our stumbles, expand our professional networks, and set the stage for continued dialog. Let's put our heads together and look to the future, one without any more mysterious digital disappearances.
Once upon a time, a museum hired a graphic artist – at great expense – to create a beautiful digital design for a large map of continental Africa, to be applied directly to the wall in a gallery. The effort was a smashing success. The map was visually impressive, told a great story, and brought the nearby collection to life for visitors. Of course, like all museum installations, this was a time-limited experience. Soon the walls were repainted as the institution marched forward. Then, perhaps five years later, another project came along that could re-use that expensive and gorgeous map. A call went out across the realm: bring forth the map! The response was … crickets. Then the whispering began. Who had the map? Who had that file? What was it called again? Did we save it anywhere? Staff contacted other staff, who then contacted more staff. Investigations branched out across several different operational units. Soon, a number of employees had dropped their work and were digging through old network shared folders, boxes of CDs, and even local hard drives, searching, searching, and searching for several days. Finally, the frustrated and exhausted group gave up. Another graphic designer was hired, and the effort and expense were repeated.
The mystery of the missing map became a metaphor for a long-standing approach to managing digital assets: ad hoc. In fact, the story became a sort of proxy for an entire body of recent digital work that had essentially disappeared. Sound familiar?
To those of us in the information management professions, this is the kind of thing that makes our blood boil. When you layer in the fact that my area – the non-profit cultural sector – typically operates with limited funding and limited staffing, it really adds to the frustration. We simply can’t afford to lose the digital assets that were painstakingly produced to fulfill our mission.
Now, I want to be clear about something. I’m not blaming anyone. Staff who work in cultural sector organizations are diligent, hard-working, incredibly sincere, and very smart. They do their best, day after day. What they often lack are the tools needed to improve the WAY they do their work. And many times that staff has limited or no exposure to best practices in other industries, and thus never knows to question the methods they use in their own workplace.
I think we can agree that 21st century audiences demand unprecedented access to meaningful and portable content. This had led many sectors to transform, to see themselves as vast digital publishing enterprises. The cultural sector is no different. The need to craft and share stories, engage funders and provide inspiration to audiences - new and traditional - has never been greater. We are producing, and will continue to produce, a veritable flood of digital content. Are we equipped for this transformation?
As an organization, we were able to rally around the missing map metaphor and begin to establish better working models. Perfect? Well, not yet, and maybe never, but certainly improving. Our challenges are many:
- Accelerating digital media production.
- Workflows established for print-production being misapplied to digital.
- A plethora of metadata models.
- Lack of cataloguing staff.
- Myriad digital asset management system software packages – too many choices.
- Our big “elephant in the room”: how are we to deal with the wave of born-digital contemporary art joining our collections?
As a sector, we will be more likely to succeed when we learn from each other, share our wins as well as our stumbles, expand our professional networks, and set the stage for continued dialog. Let's put our heads together and look to the future, one without any more mysterious digital disappearances.
