I think I’m just a bit dismayed to see a lack of originality. The whole notion of online ‘lightboxes’ or user-generated collections of images of objects from different museums has been done to death, and never seems to get a great take-up.

The reason for this, I think, is that it fails to address any actual need. If I want to collect images of objects from museums (which itself is a niche need), I can just download them to my computer.

I’m not saying that pictures of objects aren’t interesting, it’s just that this isn’t a very engaging interaction. Comments and tags are a start (ala Flickr, Facebook and a few institutional websites themselves), but they’re pretty generic and low-level. Why not go further, and encourage people to map ‘this artist was inspired by this artist’, or ‘i’ve got this object/a similar object at home’, or ‘here’s a link which connects to this object’ or a million other options…?

And DON’T limit any tool to just a random collection of museums. Build open platforms/tools, or better still, build upon existing platforms.

Frankie