Wordle Wordle Wordle

It's amazing what you can find and/or learn when you're surfing the web on a whim rather than as a means to an end.

Sandra's mention of Twittersheep today in Digital History got me thinking about Wordle, a similar tool that I discovered a few months ago. Like other word/tag cloud generators, Wordle takes any given text (from a website, a blog or a list you input) and uses it to create a colourful and attractive visual design. The program uses font sizes and colour to show you those words that are used most frequently in the text. Once the inital generation of the image has been done, most programs will allow the user to tweak colour schemes, add or delete words, fiddle with the layout (presenting the words vertically, horizontally, both, or placed randomly), etc. Pretty neat idea, right?

Wanting an excuse to play with this technology, I decided to use the labels that I had attached to my blog entries so that I could see what a more visual representation of The Perpetual Student looked like (the image at the top of this blog is the result). It's amazing to be able to see at a glance the breadth of topics that I've been inspired to blog about as a result of class discussions, course readings, newspaper and magazine articles, etc. It's immediately apparent that my studies this year are concerned with public history, digital history and museums. It's also pretty obvious that I'm a student at UWO and that I have a personal interest in human rights issues and the Holocaust.

I'm curious; what would a similar Wordle look like in another month? Six months? A year? Would it show the same trends or new ones? Would it be an accurate visual representation of my Public History interests, or might it reflect a conscious effort on my part to include new topics in order to diversify my posts?

I also found myself wondering about other ways data clouds could be used. I remember reading a blog post when I first discovered Wordle that suggested that data clouds might be used to visually display the slant that newspapers take on particular topics. For instance, by taking an article from the Globe and Mail and and using Wordle to compare it to coverage of the same event in The Toronto Star, one might be able to visually discern the journalist's or newspaper's bias depending on the words that are given more or less emphasis. Or maybe the image could be used to determine the focus within an event - is it on the people involved? The politics? The geography? Wikipedia also provides an example of a word cloud that used information that might traditionally have been expressed in graph form (in this case population data) and re-imagined it as a cloud, with population densities attached to specific colours within the cluster. And I can easily imagine a student using it to determine the topics a professor has emphasized in their lecture notes (and therefore the material to study for the exam) or a secondary school teacher using it to show the themes of a novel. I suppose the options are endless for a person willing to use a little imagination.

But Wordle is not all moonbeams and roses. Due to their use of Java Script, you aren't able to save your Wordle image to your computer using the obvious cut and paste options. You have to jump through the hoops of using the "Prt Scrn" option, pasting it into a Paint document and editing it from there. (Conveniently, though, you can choose to save your Wordle image to their database and share it with the online community hassle-free)

In my case, however, the print screen option on my computer wasn't playing nice and I was forced to troubleshoot (something that I always resent, and yet feel smug about when I eventually find a method that works). Anyway, I did what I always do, which is to Google it and came up with a handy About.com entry that led me to a new and fascinating discovery - the Vista Snipping Tool. I had no idea I even had a feature like that on my computer. And from the Snipping Tool I was given the option of saving my file as a GIF, a PNG or a JPEG. I had no idea what these acronyms even meant, so I was then forced to go look that up and figure out which would be most useful for my situation.

It was like tumbling down the rabbit hole. What should have been a quick and playful experience turned into hours of playing, troubleshooting, contemplating and blogging. Before I knew it, all those wonderful intensions I had of doing my Museology readings tonight had slipped away. But, as the saying goes, "The More You Know."

Fee-Free Museums a Good Idea?

This past weekend was Thanksgiving, and for me that meant coming home to Whitby to see my family, gorge myself on turkey and mashed potatoes and get my hot little hands on the newest issue of The Beaver.

Although the magazine’s front cover promised me an article about Canadian spies outwitting the Nazis in WWII (always a fun time), it was a smaller article by Christopher Moore entitled “Land of the free museum” that initially caught my attention. Just a few hours before, we’d been discussing the cost of entrance fees in our Museology seminar and Professor Sendzikas had raised the question of how much we were willing to pay to go to a museum. We all answered the question in dollars and cents (in case you’re wondering, my threshold is around $20 before I really start to question my desire), but I think the discussion should have been bigger than that. Perhaps what we really should have been asking was: how much is our history worth to us (metaphorically speaking, that is)?

Moore’s article started out in generally the same way that our class discussion did – in terms of cold, hard, cash. He went through a list of Canadian museums and galleries and quoted the prices for a family of four at each of the institutions; they ranged from the relatively inexpensive ($18 for the National Gallery) to the moderately expensive ($47 for Fort Henry) to the exorbitant ($74 for the ROM... before the addition of any of the “blockbuster” exhibitions).[1] Moore’s next step was to compare our entrance fees to the entrance fees at even more prestigious institutions in the United States and England. I have to admit, I was intrigued. Canada has some amazing museums, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that any of them are in the same league as the Smithsonian or the Tate Modern.

Do you want to take a guess at how much admission costs for a family of four at the Natural History Museum or Museum of American History in Washington, DC? How about at the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum or the British Museum in London, England? You could guess, but you’d probably be wrong. There is no price; admission at all of these truly remarkable museums and galleries are free. [2] That’s right – zip, zero, zilch, nada.

I was floored when I saw these figures (so much so that I went to all of their websites and double-checked Moore’s data. For the record, it’s accurate). How can those museums afford to offer their visitors free admission?! How do they pay their staff, maintain their collections, or acquire new artifacts? The more I thought about it, however, the more I began to wonder how we, as Canadians, can afford not to do the same.

As I see it, high admission fees aren’t really in keeping with the values of our society. With our ridiculously expensive ticket prices, the museums and galleries in Canada have managed to commoditize our history to an extent that puts seeing and experiencing much of it outside the reach of a large number of Canadian citizens. This fact doesn’t sit well with me. Think of the message that this prohibitive pricing is sending to Canada’s poorer sections about their present and future worth in our society. Moore even suggests that museums teach people to appreciate their country and be better citizens. Do our high fees suggest that Canadians only care about middle- and upper-class citizens becoming “good” citizens? Possibly.

What real purpose do high entrance fees serve, anyway?

Although they contribute to the running of museums and galleries, the majority of funding for these institutions comes from government grants and private donations, not their admission fees. And if American and British museums have found a way to make up the shortfall caused by free admission, why can’t we do the same?

Some would argue that paying a higher entrance fee creates a perceived value of the contents of a museum in the mind of its visitors. This view may have some validity, but I would argue that those that visit free museums still appreciate them as repositories of our history and culture. It’s not like anyone walks away from the Smithsonian going, “Man, that sucked. If only they had made me pay to see it....”

Sources:

[1] Moore, Christopher. "Land of the free museum." The Beaver, October-November 2009, 13.
[2] Ibid.

Gimme Your Two Cents... For Every Paragraph I Write

Perhaps one of the more interesting tidbits I picked up from this week’s Digital History readings, (beyond the content itself), was to notice the form and function of the webpage Christopher M. Kelty set up for his book, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. His web pages are essentially broken down into three columns: The actual content of his book on the left, a comments overview that floats with the reader as they scroll down the page in the centre, and his book’s table of contents and a Browse Comments option on the right. I’ve never seen a website designed in quite the same way before, but I think it’s awesome and I think more people should do it.

Although I can appreciate that the parts of the web page combine to make a cohesive whole, it is the centre column, and how Kelty uses it, that I find of critical importance to his site’s success. Kelty has provided a tracking system for comments in the centre column that allows both the author and the reader to see at a glance what areas of the author’s writing are generating the most buzz or the greatest confusion. He does this by providing the means for his readers to comment on his writing on a per paragraph basis. This format not only offers a quick visual breakdown of activity on the site, but it also allows the readers and author to carry on an immediate dialogue about the pressing issues of his piece. By doing so, it engages the reader continually throughout the piece and works to stave off what I’ll call “reader exhaustion.”

This approach to web page design reminds me of our class’ discussion a few weeks ago surrounding the digitization efforts that have been going on that include the ability to cross reference different versions of a text and annotate them directly in front of you on the screen, essentially creating another version of the document with an entirely new meaning. It seems to me that Kelty is doing close to the same thing by using new technologies and design to reach out to his readership and involve them in the process of his thought creation and writing. Interesting.

"Isn't it ironic... don't you think?"

And, I’m back. There seems to be yet another issue being faced by the CMHR in regards to their construction project, and I thought it was interesting.

Despite only breaking ground in April 2009, the construction efforts of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have not been without (somewhat ironic) controversy. In June, Leigh Syms, a retired archaeologist and former curator for the Manitoba Museum, accused the CMHR of cultural insensitivity surrounding their treatment of First Nations heritage in the area. Apparently the new museum is being located on top of what Mr. Syms considers to be one of the richest deposits of First Nations artifacts in the province and he doesn’t think the museum’s 5-and-a-half month archaeological excavation of the site sufficiently preserved the wealth of artifacts present at the site. [1]

Interestingly, it is one of Antoine Predock’s design features that is providing museum representatives with their strongest defense against Syms’ claims – the entire museum will be built on piles. These piles will raise the majority of the building aboveground, reducing the pressure that will be put on the cultural layers of the site. So, while the remaining artifacts will be rendered inaccessible beneath the building, the theory is that they will not be harmed by the creation of the museum. [2]

I’m curious as to whether this consideration for cultural sensitivity played a part in Predock’s design plans or if his use of piles to preserve the underlying artifacts was just a happy side benefit of a purely cosmetic choice. Nothing in my research suggested deliberate action on his part (then again, nothing suggested that it wasn’t). And, if you consider some of Predock’s other architectural feats (specifically the Logjam House), you can see how he has used natural elements from the building’s surroundings to add to the aesthetic of the structure. So, I guess it’s entirely possible he may have taken the preservation of First Nations heritage into account as he designed the building.

One could hope, anyway.

Sources:

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/06/16/mb-museum-artifacts-human-rights.html
[2] Ibid.

The Rise of the "Starchitect"

This week in museology we briefly discussed the idea of the “starchitect” in response to mixed emotions surrounding Daniel Libeskind’s design of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) original buildings in 2007.

As I understand it, a “starchitect” is an architect whose work has made them a celebrity in their own right (Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry come to mind). The argument that has been made by some is that in seeking to hire these celebrity architects, museums are placing a greater value on the aesthetics of the buildings that house their collections and the publicity resulting from the attachment of a famous name to their project, than they are on the ability of the new space to function as a museum.

Oftentimes these new museums (or additions to existing museums) are visually striking creations of glass and steel, full of clean lines or sinuous curves. As a fan of modern architecture, I have to admit to finding many of these buildings both beautiful and intriguing. And I have been known, on occasion, to take planes, trains and automobiles just to be able to see the outside of one of these buildings. [Note: The photo to the right is one I took of Frank Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague – affectionately nicknamed the “Fred and Ginger Building”]

Unfortunately, architects are not museum workers and their designs often reflect this fact. One of the biggest criticisms of “starchitecture” is that while beautiful (or an eye-sore, depending on your point of view) they fail to take into account the practical day-to-day concerns of museum staff, such as excess natural light, heating and cooling, the feasibility of easily mounting paintings or displaying their artifacts, office space, collections storage, etc.

Considering the brouhaha surrounding The Crystal, I was curious as to the approach that went into choosing the design for the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights that is currently being built in Winnipeg. Upon a little research, I discovered that Antoine Predock’s design was chosen by “an international Architectural Review Committee (ARC) comprising architects, distinguished Canadian public servants and representatives of Friends of Canadian Museum for Human Rights Inc” (none of which are explicitly museum professionals). The objective set by the committee for the architects to guide them in their creations was for them to create “an inspirational building that achieves a complexity relating to the diversity of human experience.” If this was the only criteria that the architects vying for the job were given, then it seems that Predock’s design is a worthy choice – the building certainly looks complicated enough.

But where's the consideration of the building as a museum!? I realize that the CMHR is planning on focusing on technology-based exhibits as opposed to collections-based ones, but where's the consideration of light, or office space or any of the other countless concerns that I, as someone who has never worked in a museum, couldn't possibly fathom?

As the building is not due for completion until 2012, perhaps only time will tell how functional the space is as a museum. I’ll be interested to follow this museum as it develops.

Oh, and if you would like to follow the museum as it develops, be sure to check out the museum's website, where the progress at the construction site is taped 24/7 and then edited down to a 1 minute clip that is posted once a week. It's a bit like watching paint dry at the moment, but it'll be interesting to see the changes made to the site over the next two years.

Source of Quotations:

http://www.dexigner.com/design_news/1739.html