Finding Story Inspiration with Collections Online

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Rachel Christine Woody. My name is Bradley and I’ll be your moderator for this webinar titled Finding Story Inspiration with Collections Online.

Before we start I would like to provide some information about our company and introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include Sydney, Presto, Argus, ArchivEra, Eloquent, and CuadraSTAR.

Now I would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter Rachel Christine Woody. Rachel is the owner of Relicura and provides services to museums, libraries, and archives. She specializes in museum collections management systems, digitization technology, digital project management, and digital usership. During the course of her career, she has successfully launched multiple digital projects that include advanced digitization technology, collaborative portals, and the migration of collection information into collections management systems. She’s also a popular guest author for Lucidea’s Think Clearly blog and has provided us with many great webinars that are listed on our website. So please feel free to check those out after today’s session. Take it away, Rachel.

Great. Thank you so much, Bradley. Thank you to Lucidea for hosting us today, and thank you so much for attending one of our digital storytelling webinars For today, we’re going to focus on where to find inspiration for our digital storytelling Sometimes in your museum, especially if you’re in a somewhat medium to large size museum your focus may be solely on the collections management aspect. And so for those who are not as familiar with storytelling, in terms of formation and structure, let alone where we can find inspiration, this webinar is for you.

We’ll start out. We’ve got the concept of flexibility as story inspiration. And primarily when we are working with digital storytelling platforms, we’re often able to do different sort of storytelling layouts and publishing and pathways in a more dynamic way than we would otherwise be able to do in a physical space.

We’ll go to another source of inspiration which is the exhibitions. So exhibitions within our museums.

If the museum has been around for any sort of multiple years you have a ton of past exhibits that you could draw upon for inspiration there’s of course some co creation that can happen when you think about exhibits in the present and then anticipating those future exhibitions and adding that into your storytelling inspiration.

We’ll also then look at the nearly impossible exhibitions as storytelling inspiration and that nearly impossible being the constraints that we feel when we’re in a physical space and that execution piece that may be easier when we are in a digital or virtual realm.

And then finally the demand driven story inspiration, so taking a look at sources that can help indicate what our audience is most interested in and have that help to feed inspiration for what sort of stories we can tell when we start thinking about the digital storytelling we can do. And then we’ll wrap it up with a conclusion and get you on your way.

Okay. Flexibility as storytelling inspiration and flexibility in this case, when we think of exhibits, it’s easy at least for my brain to think about the traditional exhibit storytelling and the physical space as one of the constraints for which you construct your story and the flow of that story. But once we introduce the concept of hybrid exhibits or even thinking about online only exhibits, the constraints tend to fall away, at least the ones that we’re used to. And we now have flexibility in areas that didn’t exist before and how that can sometimes help introduce further depth into the stories that we’re telling as well as different sort of mechanisms to help with engagement for our audiences.

So first one up when we’re thinking of flexibility of exhibitions, thinking of that hybrid exhibit. So you’ve got that traditional exhibition in your physical space.

Many of you are now used to using QR codes to, help print on your labels for objects that are on display where the person with their smartphone can scan the QR code and they can see that item in your collections management system. And of course with that comes perhaps different or more in-depth information delivered by your CMS then could fit into the labels that we use when we do an exhibition label.

We can also use QR codes to help link to additional galleries or help to offer different sort of story pathways for the user to further engage in where you may not have had room to explore in your physical exhibition.

So in addition to looking at additional item information in your CMS, you can also then provide users a way to explore digital galleries or additional digital storytelling pathways while they are in your physical space and exploring your physical exhibition.

We then also have audio visual supplements. Those can sometimes be difficult to include within a physical space, or at least you know you might be able to do one or two, but there could be a dozen or more of audio visual supplements that you would like to include and those of course can be offered digital online in addition to that physical space so another example of how you could introduce a hybrid concept to your storytelling and then just a mechanism for delivering any sort of additional information so above and beyond any sort of additional info on your items or the different galleries that you’ve constructed you can then link to any sort of related objects at a different museum You could bring in archival content.

You could link to different peer storytelling or articles like there is a multitude of ways that you can grab and bring in additional information for your audience to do their own sort of deep dives and their own self guided exploration while they are being inspired in your own physical exhibit space.

The benefits for the hybrid exhibit and I want to mention these because for some some of the directors and decision makers it can be harder for their brains to conceptualize like okay we did the physical exhibit why do we need to do more or does the extra work of doing more is that justified so I want to make sure that we highlight the benefits for you and then also for those higher ups having a hybrid exhibition increases engagement like manifold increase in engagement here because not only are they more moving from passive in your physical exhibit space and moving then into of course very intentional active exploration of your story, but it also helps them to give options to engage in ways that they prefer depending on your audience and of course depending on their backgrounds interests even age they may have more enjoyment or be easier to engage when there’s something that they can engage with on their smartphone in addition to being in your physical space.

So you’re providing some broader mechanisms for the different types of audience members that tend to frequent your exhibits.

Also helps to deliver on demand information. So as you provide this hybrid component with the online aspect with that online aspect becomes instant statistics in terms of getting real time numbers on what people are clicking on, where they are spending their time, how much are how much time are they spending, and what sort of digital pathways are they going through.

All of those are being tracked the minute you get your audience members to engage with your content online. And that information can be incredibly helpful as you think about the way you’re delivering your exhibit, as you think about the way you’re bringing in these hybrid online elements and how you may be able to engage or better improve future exhibition offerings and then finally the benefit of offering different perspectives when we’re thinking of exhibits in a physical space the physicality of it is a constraint and so often for us that means we have to leave either objects and or different story lines out of a story that if the physical space wasn’t a constraint that we would otherwise want to include And so when we’re able to offer those different perspectives, we then have that increase in potential engagement. We’re able to offer a fuller and more in-depth story, and it just offers a richness to the story that we’re executing through this exhibition.

And then when we think about the online only exhibit this can be incredibly helpful especially for those museums where gallery spaces may be designated as permanent gallery spaces meaning that meaning that they don’t tend to rotate out or change very frequently and so for some of us having this online exhibit can be a great way to give us that option of telling different stories more frequently than perhaps our permanent galleries are able to do.

So as we think about the online only exhibit many of these can be done through our collections management system even if you don’t have a CMS or have a CMS that maybe isn’t as great at digital storytelling there are a number of different storytelling platforms that you can engage with at fairly low cost.

In fact, there are also some free platforms out there too that will do a review of, and have some examples in a near future webinar.

So, platforms aside, all of these different factors can be brought in when you’re thinking of online only exhibit.

And one thing is is great when you’re using your CMS is that you can have that interlinking of related items already present. So this is one of the avenues where you can leverage a functionality and information that exists already in your database.

And it helps you as you’re creating the story and helps users engage in your story that there’s more than just this one item that is related. They can look at the whole spectrum of items that you have that are related to each other which of course helps to deliver deeper contextual information from those relationships Also when it’s online, you can offer dynamic galleries dynamic in this case meaning they can be changed depending on what the user is doing and where they’re navigating and what they’re clicking on.

For example, one of the ways I’ve seen this executed really well is you, when the user comes up, there’s at first perhaps three different storylines they can choose from. They can select one and then throughout their pathway, there can be a series of a and b decisions where they can learn more about one thing or another and have a self determinant path in terms of where they wanna go. And, of course, from those answers, the, online platform is reacting in real time to deliver the different sort of content from your online exhibition in a dynamic way.

There then is the incorporation of the audio visual supplements. So just like with the hybrid exhibit, there is no limit to what we can do in terms of providing audio visual entertainment as part of that exhibition mechanism and in fact when we’re delivering online exhibits the more different type of media we can include the more rich and engaging it is so while objects are amazing, artwork can be great, dinosaur bones so interesting, having that audio visual supplement, even if it’s just like a two minute interview with a curator, for example, can help with those different engagements because all of our audience has a different preferred way that they wish to interact with us and have different preferences for whether they’d like to read something or listen or watch something.

And then finally delivering additional information and multiple perspectives so similar to the hybrid exhibit where we have more room to explore different storylines this can be a built in concept when we are approaching an online only exhibit and being able to have a plan for those different storytelling pathways and incorporate from the beginning the different sort of perspectives that we wanna make sure we have covered, and they can be as broad or as many as you would like.

The, of course, staff capacity depending, but from a technology perspective, there is no limit.

And then the benefits, so just like for the hybrid exhibit just in case you need to advocate to your higher ups why we should pursue this sort of idea because it does take some staff time to do so, here’s some benefits for you so similar to the hybrid in introducing this online only element we are going to increase engagement so especially increase in engagement with our objects and with the concept of our exhibitions we’re able to deliver on demand information so gather and deliver in this case so as people are navigating our online content all of those different clicks the duration of time that they spend all of these stats will be available to us either through our CMS or through the digital platform that we are using which is a wealth of additional information that isn’t otherwise able to be as easily tracked in a physical setting We can offer those different perspectives similar to that hybrid exhibit, but even more so when we’re online because there’s no technical limit in the number of perspectives we offer and we are able to support a self determined pathway.

So when it is online only and in the example I gave you where you could start out with like three different story options and the user can then do like a a or b selection of where they wish to go, those are known as self determinate pathways. So while you have created several different pathways and several different ways that they can interconnect, how your users go through those different pathways is entirely self determined. And in those cases, the stories that they pursue are inherently of interest to them. And because of that it is more enriching and more engaging for each of them.

So having that ability to provide self determinant pathways can be quite powerful not just as a museum being able to provide them, but quite powerful as an experience for your visitors.

Alright. So thinking of flexibility of storytelling and having it inspire that dynamic storytelling, that ability to sort of change on demand depending on what the inputs are being received. And with that, we have multiple ways we can tell a story. We have multiple voices that we can share when we are telling that story and it helps to encourage visitors to participate in that story. So we’ve got capturing attention. We’ve got encouragement of engagement and then we’ve got the active participation in that story which are three major elements that we’ve covered in a previous webinar that are crucially important in order to capture and engage that visitor’s attention through the duration of the story being told within an exhibit setting.

One of our next places of inspiration for where we may be able to find stories that we can tell, online in this case is we can, of course, look to our past exhibitions.

There are two main areas that are the most obvious to consider, and those are exhibitions that are considered classics so perhaps past exhibitions that tend to be resurrected every five to ten years the classics where when people think of your museum they think of this particular exhibit and story to be told and then there’s the most popular so when we think of exhibits for most museums there is some sort of statistics capturing in terms of how many people may have visited that particular gallery or exhibit how many ticket sales, for example. So there’s some numbers that can be drawn upon to help indicate popularity of exhibits where it would then make sense to reproduce online, especially if they’re no longer available in a physical space so having that past exhibitions help serve as some inspiration for your storytelling online and what’s nice about using the past exhibitions is that a lot of the work is already done in terms of objects selected there’s some narrative already available so you’re remixing some existing content without having to start from scratch so if you’re new or newer to storytelling this may be a great place to go to first for inspiration.

When thinking of the present exhibitions, if you’re just getting started now then it’s doesn’t make sense for you to try and execute hybrid or online exhibition components for all of the present day exhibits.

However, there may be one or two exhibits where it makes sense to start testing out offering some supplemental online storytelling for exhibits that are going on currently.

This can be a great way to help offer supplemental information to help engage different audience members where they may prefer that online or technical engagement component in a physical space.

And so for that present exhibition, you can replicate some of the at least structure and themes of that particular story you can do that supplement piece and of course enhance any areas of the exhibition where they may not have been enough room to provide the full spectrum of objects or voices that we would otherwise have wished to have in that exhibit.

So again not suggesting present as like you need to do all of your present exhibitions right now, but they can help serve especially if you’re just starting out as like a testing ground for providing smaller different sort of supplemental information to help enhance that experience.

And then future planning for museums future planning with exhibitions can be several years out. I’ve seen as long as five to ten years out especially if there’s any sort of major anniversaries happening for that particular museum or collection or history and so when we have several years out to plan for again, not that you need to do this for every future exhibit, but there may be different exhibits as they come up where it makes sense to offer either a hybrid component to that exhibition or an online only component perhaps in the lead up or after that physical exhibition is done. Regardless

though, as the future planning is happening for these future exhibitions, as you go through this process, there are naturally going to be discarded ideas that can’t or just don’t make it into the finished component of the physical exhibit and so those may be great different side stories different ideas that you can explore when you work towards that online only component You can also of course do that straight replication so thinking similarly to the past or excuse me the present exhibitions doing a replication of and offering that online component especially for audience members who may otherwise not be local or able to travel to your museum physically.

You can of course offer that supplemental piece of it, offering that hybrid approach to that physical and digital storytelling space and having that enhancement piece. So enhancing the story being told through that physical exhibit in the future, and perhaps leading up to or after keeping either helping to create the buzz and momentum around the story or helping to keep that momentum going with that story and providing that continued engagement.

Alright next area of storytelling inspiration is considering the nearly impossible exhibitions and these are the exhibitions where it is most likely or totally impossible to execute in a physical space but could be executed when you consider the online only space and some of the constructions that we are considering when we’re thinking of the physical constraint is of course space restrictions so just not enough room to tell the entire story that we wish to tell. There could be object size issues. For example, objects could be too large or even too small to adequately fit to the room size or to safely fit to the room size for those physical displays.

There’s also object health, the condition of the object that needs to be considered where many of the objects in our collection can be quite fragile, can be quite old, and so while we wish people to see them and they help to tell a story, it can be safer to do so in an online setting while the object is still safe and snug in storage.

And then of course it is easier to incorporate pure objects and even sites that are related to the objects and the story that you are telling when you introduce that online component. It’s much easier to link and bring in with permission different objects from pure museums and perhaps providing when we’re thinking of sites being able to bring in either augmented or virtual reality settings of where these objects came from or where this story originated from that you’re telling so the dynamic aspects of things that would be impossible in the real world.

Can be very easy to execute actually in an online setting and that part gets me excited.

So executing that in an online setting, you’re going to need some sort of digital storytelling platform. The CMS can do some of that, of course, with digital galleries, but you may want to explore some of the more dynamic digital storytelling platforms depending on the kind of story that you want to tell.

You may also want to consider three d imaging, especially if you’re wanting to explore doing a sites based storytelling for your particular objects and storyline, 3D imaging of your objects to fit into that virtual reality space could be of interest.

Three d imaging in general and just being able to explore and zoom into objects, rotate them, handle the objects in a way digitally that you would never be able to do, in a physical setting for for safety of the objects, of course. But having that three d imaging offer different ways for us to be able to interact with objects that would otherwise be either impossible or just, like, very ill advised.

And then that virtual reality setting piece, there can be some great things to do in in the virtual reality world.

If you’ve not already explored that as a museum, it’s it is a whole other world in terms of there will be some learning curve etc. and some exploration you’ll need to do on your own in terms of determining whether that’s something of interest and something you’d like to do.

But it is possible when you’re considering this online only space, so I encourage you to think about how that could be applied.

And then the demand driven storytelling inspiration, so we’ve got a great amount of statistics that we could draw from to help inform us on what our audience wants to see. This can be a great well of inspiration for us because it is real time numbers essentially in what our audience wants to see and is a great indicator of what they would want to see more of So in person visitor numbers, these are amazing, especially if you’re a museum. If you’re on the larger side, you’re able to actually, trust track statistics for the different galleries and different exhibits that you have. Regardless though, any sort of in person visiting can be helpful, especially when you compare those numbers to what exhibits and stories were being offered at the time.

If you have your collections online, which nowadays unless they’re security or private collection reasons, many of our mainstream nonprofit government type museums, much of our collection is now online, and it’s continue continual work to get it online, but having it online and having it attached to a collections management system can help give us statistics in terms of how many times an object is clicked on, if you allow downloads, how many times a particular objects been downloaded or added to a favorites list.

Any of those sort of activities that are tracked through statistic can be very informative and when thinking about our collections management system so many of our objects that we have aren’t necessarily on display all the time So having these online numbers for objects that may not be available physically can better help to inform what our audience wants to see that they have yet to see in person.

And there may be other numbers. So depending on your museum, different events you may have, different educational programs you may run for example, you can also get different sorts of statistic driven information on what sort of topics, stories, exhibits would be of most interest.

So as we think about demand driven some of the statistics you get are like oh this object’s really popular online or oh that exhibition in nineteen ninety five it was like a big big hit with our audience.

You don’t necessarily need to retell that nineteen ninety five exhibit story, nor do you need to tell a story around that one object that seems incredibly popular.

Instead, I recommend thinking of them as storytelling ingredients so you can pick and choose elements from what the information is giving you and constructing your own story around it. So don’t feel beholden to, for example, doing like the top ten objects because they may have nothing really to do with each other, or they may not offer a engaging or interesting story to tell. So think of them as ingredients, think of them as options as you use them for inspiration.

Also, if your brain has a hard time taking these numbers and translating them into stories as mine can do, working with a team, any sort of like a team at the table these they do not need to be a team of curators for example and have people play with the different ingredients and what sort of stories or connections they see can be incredibly helpful and for example I recommend if you are looking at like the top ten objects for example running a best story competition so in your museum with the staff having some sort of competition of like how many objects out of the top ten can you use to tell a story what story is that can be great team building and also a lot of fun.

All right so in conclusion for our storytelling inspiration we talked about the concept of flexibility in general with our exhibitions and flexibility and how we can tell that story we did a deeper dive of flexibility into physical exhibit with digital online exhibits so the concept of the hybrid exhibit as well as the online only exhibit we then took a look at exhibitions of past present and future story inspiration and how each of those different aspects lend themselves to different types of inspiration We looked at nearly impossible exhibitions as story inspiration taking a look at the constraints from the physical space and how those are those constraints are completely removed when we think of moving it to an online space and the different type of storytelling that can happen the increased engagement the enhancement of the story when we transition the impossible to an online form.

And then we covered demand driven story inspiration demand being informed by the statistics and the numbers that we have whether that is physical in in house numbers people visiting our physical exhibitions as well as how many people visit our collections management system online, what the most popular objects are, that kind of thing. And with that, I will mention our demystifying data preparation for a new CMS.

You may wonder how is this related to storytelling but it is incredibly related the better our data is the easier it is for us to use and discover and link for our online storytelling Even if you’re not moving to a new collections management system, this book does a good job of taking a look at your data, thinking through some data cleanup, data enhancement. So as you think about storytelling, you may start thinking about and running into different data that you may wish to clean up and enhance. So if you’re interested, Lucidea Press is offering free courtesy e-copies, so go check it out.

And with that, I’ll hand it back over to Bradley.

Thank you, Rachel, for the wonderful presentation. And to our audience, if you’d like to learn more about our museum collections management system called Argus, please feel free to visit our website or reach out to us at sales at lucidea.com, and we’d be happy to have a chat with you.

And if you have any more questions on any of our software or our company, our contact details are listed on the screen, and please stay tuned for more webinars and content related to this series.

On behalf of the Lucidea team, I thank you all for attending today. Until next time. Thank you.