agreed…

it’s a shame that UKOLN’s anniversary celebrations kept CL from being at all of mw2008 [he had agreed to be right up until just before] because one of the real differences between museums and libraries on the web is that museums have always embraced the social. there are discussions from the outset of mw that explore connecting people, building communities, enabling alternative interpretations, empowering users. …. all things that are enabled by the tech that marketers call web 2.0.

it’s easy if you come from the academic community, to think that museums are only about supporting scholarly research. or as a librarian to think that museums on the web are more collections databases to be searched [caricatures, i know]. but most museums’ programming swings another way, towards engaging the general public. strategies and goals may be different, even if tools and techniques are shared.