Best outreach ever?

Another week, another best ----- ever .

I'm filled with admiration for Christchurch City Libraries' dedication to online outreach. Last week, for the second year in a row, CCL sent a fully-equipped team of writers (4 staff members, I think) to blog the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. You can browse all the posts here.

Writers Festival aren't my thing (I'm always scared an author will ruin themselves for me). But the CCL bloggers covered the Festival with spark and vim (and MP3s). They secured media passes (or at least pass) and managed to interview authors as well as cover talks, panel discussions, and Noelle McCarthy's shoes. While I have no way of gauging whether people were following the posts (although there are comments on many of them, and that's a pretty good indication of strong engagement) I think the whole endeavour is worth it - as much as anything, because it makes you aware that the real live people work at the Libraries, and they love what they do. And I like that.

P.S Palmerston North City Libraries were also blogging the Festival. If Palmy can do it, can someone PLEASE blog the Melbourne Art fair for me this year?

The Besties: Best Online Resources (local edition)

You can't go past the Auckland Art Gallery here. While their website is starting to look a bit geriatric, I think the online collection and the digitised resources are the best in NZ.

Word on the digitisation grapevine is that the AAG will be releasing a new digital product next year, which will add wiki-style commenting to a heritage resource.

Also worthy of mention:

Christchurch Art Gallery with their growing collection of Audio on Demand.

Te Papa's new mini-exhibition sites are nice to look at, and the Zoomify is cute. At the moment though there's no sectional nav (not even breadcrumbs) and you can get foisted out unexpectedly into TP's main site, which is a bit disconcerting. And this leaves me wordless.

Self-reflexive musings

A recent article on Newosaur looks at the disenchantment young staff within traditional media companies are coming to feel as they realise that while they might be the 'knowers' and the 'doers', they're not the 'deciders', and can't effect (or affect) change:

But the young net natives, for the most part, rank too low in the organizations that employ them to be invited to the pivotal discussions determining the strategic initiatives that could help their employers sustain their franchises.

“In most organizations, the people with the most online experience have the least political capital,” said one mid-level online editor at a newspaper. ...

Members of the wired generation say the process, bureaucracy and caution common to most media companies steals spontaneity and edginess away from ideas that could be appealing to their peers.

“Management is more concerned about who owns the change than they are about creating change,” said the online newspaper editor.

O'Reilly's Peter Brantley notes that this could apply to young professionals in publishing and libraries.

I wonder if this is just as applicable to art galleries? Is this what lies behind galleries' apparent slowness in coming to terms with Wikipedia, or with blogging, with starting a group on Facebook, or even with just getting on Flickr (a quick search this morning revealed a lot of lovely exterior shots when I searched on Christchurch Art Gallery, City Gallery Wellington and Dunedin Public Art Gallery, but nothing that looked like it came from the galleries themselves. Having said that, check out this great set of photos of Michael Parekowhai's Jim McMurty installed at CAG.).

I know one person who quit their job in an art gallery because they just got so frustrated about the management's reluctance to make use of technology that was cheaply (or freely) available that would help them work better. At the risk of sounding doddery, there's a generation coming through that's incredibly savvy, not just about online tools, but about building brands and networks online. So how will galleries harness this?

Free tools for free lancers

As part of my job (one of the best parts) I'm meant to spend an hour a day learning about web-related things. I wish that when I worked previously at an art gallery that I'd been encouraged to spend an hour a day learning about art-related things.

I started thinking about how I could merge the things that I was learning about online with the things that I'm interested in in my offline life. As a result, I've started work on the Best of 3 wiki: Free tools for free lancers.

The wiki is designed to be a resource for freelancers, particularly freelancers in the visual arts. It brings together a range of online tools and resources, all of which I've had a bash at, and all of which are free, or have a free option. Currently, the resources range from services for sending large files to good places to find art writing online to a Plain English video that will show you how to start up an RSS feedreader to places to look for work.

Free tools for free lancers is hosted by Wetpaint, itself a free tool that lets non-tech people (like me) build their own wiki. Check out their site to see how easily you could be doing this. It's a great way to run long-term projects or work with communities of interest: The Association of Collaboration, for example, would be better served by a wiki than their current blog.

I'll keep adding content to Free tools for free lancers over time. Any suggestions, or requests to join the wiki, are welcome.