Awhile back, I posted about ways to create online exhibits.  There are some new entries, and I have some additional comments, so it’s time for an update.

One new option is Open Museum. Right now, curating exhibits there is free, although that should change when they reach their beta phase.  (See the business faq.)  In the meantime, this seems like a nice option, particularly for small museums without the confidence to try some of the options with more technical requirements, or for those who like the idea of having a more social aspect to online collections.  While if it became a commonly-known portal for online museum exhibits, I think that might make it more valuable.  I’m not sure what Open Museum provides right now though that is not built into Flickr.

There may be some other options available, depending on where you are.  In Arizona, for instance, there is the Arizona Memory Project, which brings some similar online exhibits options, although with some of the same drawbacks of Flickr or Open Museum (i.e., few options for configuring into a more creative exhibit).

Before I talked about Pacyderm. The new release of Pacyderm (via Pachyforge) is “slated for release in Fall 2009.”  Granted, Fall 2009 hasn’t passed yet, but there seems to be very little going on.  That could be because they’re working hard on the new release, or because not much is going on.

Both Open Exhibits and Collection Space are still pending.  Open Exhibits has released some interesting survey results.  The numbers themselves are interesting, as are some of the responses to the open-ended questions.

Larry Cebula at Northwest History has recently posted about different Collections Management software options.  There are some good contenders, and some overlap with the ability to create online exhibits (for instance, CollectiveAccess seems like it does a great job of putting collections online, although perhaps not so much as “exhbits”).

Right now, I think CollectiveAccess and Omeka are my picks for the win – assuming a museum has someone who can install (and maintain) them.  I haven’t yet tried installing CollectiveAccess, but I have installed and configured Omeka, and, at least on Dreamhost, it was super fast and easy.

Are there online exhibits options I’ve missed?

What Not to Retweet

A local children’s museum is using a service like Auto Retweet (or something similar) to automatically retweet just about everything posted to Twitter by anyone involving the words “children” and “museum.” Never mind the fact that most of these tweets are completely inane and totally irrelevant to the retweeting museum in particular (things like “I went to the [insert random children's museum here] today!”), but the situation is made worse by the fact that this came through today: “Museum was nice but too many kids and add all the stupid an rude old people who think they deserve special treatment at a children museum!”

Perhaps this is not exactly the kind of thing a children’s museum should be retweeting, but I’m willing to bet the museum doing so hasn’t even seen this.  They rarely post anything real. I’ve wound up in conversations with more than a couple local people who’ve unfollowed this museum for the random rewteeting.

End point is that I’m not sure this is a solid Twitter “strategy.” But then again, they do have more followers than the museum for which I tweet, so perhaps they’re onto something. Are there other non-profits who do this, and does it seem successful?

Other Thoughts From Around the Web

Is Auto-Tweet a Dirty Word? Interesting take on what value can come from automated tweets.

From Beth’s Blog, Best Practices for Micro Blogging in Museums (some great tips the museum referenced above might want to read).

10 Thoughts to Get You Started Using Social Media for your Non-Profit or Do-Good Project
100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs (via the Burke Museum Blog)