This Friday we will be meeting in the ISRL at 10:00am to do two test installs of new software for managing and presenting museum and cultural heritage collections.

Omeka
Omeka is a collaboration between the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the Minnesota Historical Society. Omeka appears to be similar to open source blogging and wiki software - it’s easy to install, extensible with plugins and themes and offers easy dissemination through RSS feeds.

Be sure to check out the Showcase of existing Omeka project as well.

Open Collection
In contrast to Omeka, Open Collection is a “full-featured collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections” intended to provide an alternative to expensive proprietary systems such as The Museum System, Willoughby Systems, or Past Pefect. Like many of these systems, OC also includes a public access module that has been used to provide public access to collections information.

This week our focus will be on the installation, but I hope to revist these once they are up and running to see how they function, ease of use, strengths, weaknesses, etc.

Currently we have decided to name our research group the Eclectic Design Research Group. The naming of this group, however, has been a never-ending saga, so do not be surprised if the name changes again. Originally, we called ourselves the CSCW Research Group (the Computer Supported Cooperative Work Research Group), for lack of a better name. But our topics of interest and topics of discussion have ranged far beyond what would traditionally be considered CSCW research. For example, we have discussed topics in knowledge management (KM), human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-mediated communication (CMC), social informatics (SI), and sociotechnical systems. One common theme of the group is our interest in design. Another common theme of the group is our interest in rapid, iterative methods. A third theme is our focus on what people actually do. Thus rapid prototyping and evaluation, scenario based design, participatory design, etc., are all topics which we recurringly address.

The reason for choosing the name, “Eclectic Design Research Group” is based on the first definition of the word in Merriam Webster’s Online dictionary:

“1: selecting what appears to be best in various doctrines, methods, or styles”

http://m-w.com/dictionary/Eclectic

Why? Because that is what we do. We do not believe in picking a single doctrine, field, method, approach, style, etc. Rather, we are constantly exploring new ideas, new methods, and new approaches to design, and always welcome new types of design projects. The purpose is to try to understand the nature of design, and to develop principles of design that are robust across different applications.

In any case, if you’ve got an idea for a better name for our group, feel free to email me: ifloyd2@gmail.com

Ingbert