Managing Museums – I.T.

“The great thing about technology, is that it is ALWAYS letting you down!” – I.T. guy

We were told that there are basically four areas of management when it comes to museums (although I am sure this might be true in other areas): management (the “boring” parts that make everything else efficient), collections, marketing, and product (the part for visitors).  I.T. (“Information Technology”) is involved in all four parts.  This post will be about I.T. in each of these four areas of management in museums.

There are three areas where I.T. can help management.  The first area is not a surprise: finance.  I.T. makes it possible to be more accurate with less people to monitor cash flow, make predictions, work with balance sheets, ledgers, and profit and loss accounts.  The second area is in systems that support governance.  These help manage teams, health and safety issues, legal compliance issues, and intranet, which helps people know what they should be doing and how to do it.  The third area that I.T. helps management is in systems that analyze the audience.  I.T. can help management see patterns of visitation, patterns that visitors spend their money, and directed audience research.

There are also three areas where I.T. can help collections.  The first area is probably the most obvious: tracking.  I.T. is important so that staff can know what they have and where it is.  The object’s title, acquisition, location, movement, and condition are tracked.  The second area is in research.  This allows work to be done once instead of repeatedly.  Research might include an object’s identification, description (using keywords to make it easy to find again), materials, data, and comparisons.  The third area that I.T. can help collections is in images by providing simple logistics and also helping staff to see the strength of the antiquities schemes.  I.T. can help with identification of objects, images help show the condition of the objects, images can be used in research, and images can be used by the public.  All three areas can now be piped into websites (if desired – the I.T. guy who was doing the lecture felt strongly that this sort of information is not to be guarded and stored away but to be shared with humanity, freely).

There were three areas where I.T. can help marketing (I guess he liked “three’s”) that were discussed as well.  The first area was in dealing with audience through tracking demographics, tracking how the visitors knew about the museum (geographical, chronological, and material method used in communicating this data to the future visitor), and also in tracking the non-visitor (who didn’t come).  The second area is in reaction.  It was said that the value for money comes at 80% satisfaction.  However, much more can be learned; such as what did they like, what did they not like, was there a warm welcome, etc.  The third area is behavior.  There are always areas of the museum that are not visited often and it is important to know why.  So visitors are tracked to find out what they did, how long they did it, and what they used (such as the café, gift shop, etc.).  Without this sort of data, all decisions made in marketing (and really for the whole management team) are just stabs in the dark.

That last area where I.T. can help is in the product where he presented four (yes, finally not “three”) ways that I.T. is useful.  First, I.T. can help build kiosks (which are interactive devises in galleries) that should be fun (not boring databases) and should be designed specifically for that specific gallery.  You should think about having a computer animated “guide” that visitors can access.  It should be possible for the visitor to change the language.  Be sure to target your audience carefully.  Second, I.T. can help people imagine the past by providing CGI 3D reconstructions, animations, and even blends of animation with reality.  Movies can show an archaeological site’s development.  Third, I.T. can provide special effects to tug on emotions such as audio/visual presentations, immerse the visitor in an experience, and even holographic presentations.  Lighting, video projections on mist, figures can appear in space, are all things that I.T. can do.  And finally, I.T. can provide hand-held fun through sound wands, PDA’s, and even now provide wireless presentations for mobile phones (such as podcasts, smart phone apps, etc).   After all, you not only want people to come, but you want them to come back.

Some final thoughts that he gave us were that I.T. doesn’t have to cost a fortune.  However, I.T. is an essential part of any museum and should be given more thought.  The museum is a brand and I.T. helps to communicate that brand to the world.  I.T. can help with website because this is the brand and it should not be done ad-hoc as it speaks to the world the quality of your museum.  You should be able to communicate that you offer something unique.