Digging geology

This weekend’s family trip went to Geologisk Museum, where we could make our own fossil plaster casts (succes!) and marvel at flourescent rocks, giant shark teeth and other wonders of the world. Also, a remake of Ole Worms rennaisance cabinet of curiousities was an absolute joy.

As geology is not really our area of expertise (ahem), we decided to follow the guided tour. Which was really great! Having the collection opened up and learning some interesting facts from an enthusiatic expert gave me a deeper appreciation and understanding even though we were still only scraping the surface (albeit deep underground).

Mindboggling stuff, geology: carbon concentrations in 3.8 billion year old rocks proving that life on earth began earlier than previously assumed (carbon 12 & 13, that is, as carbon 14 only lasts 30.000 years and hence is only usefull in archeological dating #bonusinfo); special structures in a slice of meteorite tells the story of a cooling proces that took 1000 years per centigrade. Even if this is the sort of knowledge that may only become directly useful to me in a game of Trivial Pursuit, and even if I still don’t get how they work this stuff out, the information made an impression and sticks in my mind.

The point here, of course, is that mediation and information make a difference (so perhaps my comments in a previous post about the virtues of undisturbed contemplation were misguided?). And that the good old guided tour is a great format for not just transferral of knowledge, but also for sharing an enthusiasm for a given topic that can be rather contagious, as well as allowing for questions and dialogue.

Another strength of the guided tour is that is a social event, for the group as a whole and for your personal group within it, as you expereince the same thing simultaneously. Whereas my desire to try out my new Pinterest app, pinning a snapshot of a particularly captivating fossil, meant that sharing online had me lagging behind my family and hence not sharing in their/our joint experience at that point. Which is why I only did it the once, and felt rather torn. On the other hand, feeling inspired to share this paticular image also ‘pinned’ that fossile in my mind in a more conscious manner than simply taking a photo would.

As this is the kind of pros-and-cons conondrums and getting to grips with the nature of ‘the museum experience’ I’m dealing with in my project, I find these personal experiences to be very useful, even if they may only confirm my theories and not add new knowledge as such.

Mobile guides in the rhizomic museum / Proctor in Katz et.al. 2011

Just tucked into a new book; Creativity and Technology – Social Media, Mobiles and Museums (Katz et al, eds., MuseumsEtc., 2011), heading straight for Nancy Proctor’s chapter on mobile social media in the museum as distributed network.

Proctor opens the chapter with the statement that it’s not about the technology – its about the content. Old school audio guides were (are!) not herding the audience to follow a certain pattern and look at certain artworks for a prescribes length og time because of broadcast technology, but because the content instructed them to do so. “But imagine, for a moment, that the content asked visitors to spend a couple of minutes looking around the gallery, then to choose a favorite artwork and describe it to a companion” Proctor suggests, “Using the same, archaic broadcast tour technology, we would have seen a very different experience played out in the museum.” (Proctor ibid, 24). Hold that thought!

Proctor later describes a method for ‘question-mapping’, i.e. noting down the questions that occur to you and where in the gallery, as you move through your exhibition in order to decide what kinds of information the audience might be interested in when they come. The point is that “by starting with the visitor’s questions rather than the curator’s key messages, we enter into a conversation with our audiences, rather than a lecture.” (ibid 29)

Although I find this thinking sympathetic – if also bringing to mind the potential discrepancy between curatorial and mediation perspectives and aims – I couldn’t help wandering what would happen if we could actually have all our questions answered as they occur to os. (I’m not claiming that this would be Proctor’s intention; this is just the question that occured to me as i was reading her article).

Imagine a futuristic mediation device, say a pair of spectacles, that not only noticed where you looked by deducted from your brainwaves what you were thinking and promptly offered you the relevant information. (Coming to a museum near you, best get a patent on that ASAP). Or even walking the gallery with the curator, ready to answer your questions as they came.

Although we would certainly become more knowledgable, and in light of this added knowledge, inspired to go deeper in our explorations, we would also have had our original train of thought disturbed. And perhaps the best part of that original question was not the answer to the question itself. Perhaps concrete questions, when unanswered, become the gateway to more abstract ponderings and reflections, reflections that make for a much more enlightening experience at the end of the day, that are, perhaps, the whole point of cultural experiences.

But maybe we just feel lost, or perhaps that lost train of thought just ends up sending us looking for the café, because that’s something nice and concrete that we know what to do with. It could go either way. So sometimes we need the answers, and making the relevant information available at the relevant place and time can only be a good thing. But perhaps this explains in part why we don’t go for the self-guided tours: That reflection takes time and cannot always be guided – we simply need time and mental space to absorb the experience as we experience it, and peace of mind to let it stew, to allow for that reflection to happen.

Anyway,-

Proctor goes on to describe the quirks and qualities of soundtrack and soundbites, including video content, and lays out the possibilities, strengths and weaknesses of a variety of mobile platforms.

This leads to an argument for dropping the concept of the multi-platform museum as the ideal for making content available on a multitude of devices. Multi-platform, Proctor argues, implies publishing to many platforms from a single sontent source, which, at a glance, looks like great economy of scale. However, content developed for one platform rarely translates well to another – think pamphlet text used on websites or even recorded and turned into a podcast. Neither does one size fits all when it comes to audience needs and interests. Instead, what is needed is a more flexible apporach to content and experience development.

The rhizomic museum, or the Museum as Distributed Network, is Proctors proposal for a new way of thinking about mediation in the museum, which integrates social media to support experiences which are engaging, conversational and generative of now content rather than didactic and finite. Furthermore, the experience is not confined to the museum, but is distributed into the public space and our hangouts on the www: “In the Museum as Distributed Network, every platform is a community, not just a point for content publication and distribution. By combining established social media platform like Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter with mobile social media, analog content, and publications built by or for the museum, we can create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.” (ibid 54)

This thinking is based on the principle that the best way to learn is to teach. Which is probably right. But there’s still something about this voxpop ideal that I think becomes problematic when it comes to realisation. Because who wants to be taught? I mean, it may make a lot of sense in both engagement and learning terms for me to share my views, knowledge and experience of culture – but will it also enrich the cultural experience and outcome for the next visitor, be it onsite or online? Again, there can be conflict between educational and curatorial aims, and I’m not quite sure which site I’m on as a visitor. Still, exploring the potential and downfalls of this kind of approach to museum mediation is excactly what my project is about, so in this research context, problematic translates as interesting.

In an epilogue to her article, Proctor provides a list of top tips for building a long tail mobile social media program, which benefits both visitors and the museum, and includes references to good examples and useful how-to articles. Like this presentation by Titus Bicknell on how to build your own mobile tour in WordPress in only an hour on handheldconference.com – great ressource!

Pinteresting

Getting all tangled up in the social web today. Planning a course on social media strategies led me to succumb to getting a profile on Foursquare (now the proud owner of the newbie badge, but suspecting I’ll never make it to a mayorial position); checking out Twitter had me taking part in the National Musuems twitpic quiz and retweeting the internship I wish I’d had, and so, spamming my Facebook network as I’ve allowed for crossposting. For someone who has not been in the habit of regular postings, I almost feel like telling myself to shush.

But mucking around with Pinterest was really interesting. Attempting to ‘curate’ an online exhibition to explore the potential for this kind of activity, I lost myself in sculptural knitwear, and had a great time with it! Plus, I’ve already had a couple of ‘likes’ on some cool pics of guerilla knitting – images, that is, that I can take no credit for, I just found them online and pinned them, and yet through this social sharing tool I get a head up for my troubles and a connection point to likeminded people.

Scraping the surface of what this sort of online forum, based on visuals and shared interests, can do, makes me want to dig deeper, as I believe there’s a potential in this kind of activity and interaction for museum mediation. Perhaps I should revisit my Tumblrblog too, to compare. Also, I need to find the references to properly describe what’s going on.

And really, it’s all coming together: teaching social media, using them as tools as I go, and doing theoretical research and hands-on explorations makes for great synergy.

Follow-up notes on Pinterest January 11th 2012:
This Pinterest thing could get out of hand. Already, my fingers are itching to create more boards, the possibilities are endless, and there are so many great images out there – it’s like that napkin collection you had as a child, and the erasers, and the stickers; like the decoupage I’ll never get round to and less messy and more cool. But I have constrained myself (for now), I’m in in for the research!

So that’s what I did, a bit more research, and came up with a blog post that gives you a good low-down of what Pinterest is all about, aptly named Everything You Need to Know About Pinterest, and another from the Read Write Web putting it bluntly: If You’ve Never Heard of Pinterest, You’re a Big Dork (one point made here is that perhaps the reason why Pinterest has not yet cassed a stir in tech world is that alledgedly the majority of users of women. Hmmm…)

I also found that ofcourse a few museums have already found their way to Pinterest. Like Chicago History Museum SFMOMA and IMA. Be interesting to see if Peter Samis or Rob Stein has something to say on their experience and incentives, must check on that… However, it’s not easy to find their profiles by search. Also, users have found and pinned a lot of content from museum sights, meaning that there is a strong representation of museums like Designmuseum of London and Brooklyn Museum. Perhaps this post on how Pinterest could be used strategically by libraries could be inspiring for museums who want to join in but don’t know where to start.

And, of course, users also use ‘museum’ as titles for teir personal collections of art.

QR codes at the National Museum

Yesterday, I took my family to visit the brand new Europe meets the World exhibition at the National Museum. Actually, we’d hoped to join the childrens workshop, and was all set for a virtual trip to Italy, Germany or another exciting destination, when we realised that this was only possible on Sundays, so we’ll have to come back for that. Finding that the exhibition, although beautifully excecuted with a combination of objects and video projections, was a bit too abstract for our 4 and 7 year old’s, we ended up opting for the excellent children’s section of the museum instead (a family favourite and perfect weekend hangout in the winter months, inspiring hours of play and perfect in combination with visits to the museum collections).

As a consequence, I couldn’t give the exhibition the time and attention that it deserved, and will also have to come back for a proper visit to that (sans kids). Still, the use of QR codes was too much of a temptation for my geeky curiosity, and I couldn’t resist getting my scanner out. Unfortunately, this turned out to be an illustration of the challenges of utilizing this type of technology in an exhibition.

Now, motivations and obstacles for using your mobile in the museum for streaming/downloading museum content or sharing your opinions, and how this fits into and affects the museum experience overall is a (million dollar) question in its own right, which I won’t go into at this point (but which I will definitely explore in my project). Suffice to say that as many museum visits are social in nature, one person’s desire to explore in depth may not be compatible with the shared objective of the visit, as in our case.

Lights, camera…
But let’s just focus on technology for now. A lot has happened since I first wrote a post on QR codes back in 2009. I believe that a large part of today’s audience will now recognise and understand the use of the 2D barcodes as well as having the smartphone complete with scanner app ready for using the codes when desired, and still the novelty hasn’t quite worn off yet. In other words, time is ripe for putting this technology to good use in the museums – it’s cheap and simple to add a sticker to the exhibition display and doesn’t take a lot of technical savvy to set up the backend mobile friendly websites, allowing the museums to focus in stead on producing top quality content to augment the experience, supplementing the objects with audio, video or text, inviting participation in polls etc.

Still, in the case of this exhibition, the decision to offer content via QR codes clashes with the general design and ambience of the displays, created with subdued lighting and animated projections. As Seb Chan of the Australian Powerhouse Museum points out (or is ‘pointed’ more correct, given that the post I’m referencing (again) is also from 2009) in a brilliant post on the problems with, and solutions to, using QR codes in an exhibition, the shadows you cast when leaning in to use your scanner can steal the light needed for your camera to work.

This was the case at the National Museum, and it took dedication and some interesting body shapes to get some of the codes to work. Similarly, other visitors who noticed my attempts commented that they had found reflections problematic in other parts of the exhibition. And whereas I managed to succesfully connect to some of the educational material, I had no luck trying to take part in the polls asking my opinion on democracy or religion in Europe. Even if I managed to capture these images with my phone camera, the images where too dark for the scanner (Scanlife on an iPhone 3GS):

Early days
Visiting on the first day of the exhibition, one of course has to allow for adjustments to come, especially when the display includes new technologies that still take a bit of getting used to. Indeed, the reception staff welcomed my comments on the light and lack of open wifi (the wifi was meant to be open access in this part of the museum, but I was continously asked for a guest login, which you can get at reception on request, I later found out). Also, as I was clearly rushing along as well as being distracted by trying to keep track of my family, my exploration of the exhibition was in no way exhaustive, I may well have missed helpful pointers or even missed the point – my objective here is not to critizise or review the exhibition as such but only to discuss the challenges of using new technologies for mediation purposes, and if this comes across as some sour remark, I deeply apologize! I only hope that next time I visit, the museum has come up with a solution for securing sufficient lighting for the codes without spoiling the ambience of the exhibition. Looking forward to exploring the themes undisturbed!

It will be interesting to learn about the uptake of these QR codes once the exhibition is evaluated.

A couple of additional notes:
All QR labels offered a short explanation of what material you could find when scanning the code, including information on the format, i.e. video or audio. Written content, howeveer, was labeled ‘Undervisning’. In English, you would call this ‘Education’, hence previous discussions on the term mediation, but the Danish term ‘Undervisning’ has a strong classroom connotation. So much so that I was unsure if this was indeed part of some educational programme aimed at visiting school classes and not really targeted at visitors like me. If I was meant to be included in the target group, I’m not sure if the term appealed to me. I may want to learn, but am I interested in being taught?

Back home, and trying to find an explanation for why these labels offered content in Danish only, I’ve come to the conclusion, that this was probably part of an educational programme. But that doesn’t change that whilst at the exhibition I believed and wished the labels to be aimed at me too. Why has ‘my target group’ not been considered as potentially attracted to these labels, and subsequently baffled or left with a feeling of being excluded?

Finally, checking out the teaser video for the exhibition hosted on YouTube, it turned out to be an example of the challenges of entering into social media, as the only comment on the video was a stupid racist blurb. Wisely, the museum has simply chosen to ignore it, rather than enter into an impossible dialogue. Despite all the effort going into making the users engage and amplifying the vox pop, sometimes you wish they’d just shut up!

Quick note on co-branding

Just a quickie: Coming down with a sore throat, I just bought these liquorice pastils with packaging designed by a Danish fashion brand:

An obvious excercise in co-branding (think Lagerfeld for H&M, Nike + iPod sports kit etc.) this made me ponder if museums could also think along these lines when trying to attract the attention of their audience. Without jeopardising their neutrality and cultural credentials, of course.

If so, who would be attractive collaboration partners for the museums? What would make a good vehicle for a specific museum like, say, Designmuseum Danmark? And what would the museum have to offer in return? When would it be cool to do a product with a museum add-on?

Or is this simply what’s already happening in the museum gift shops with items such as special edition Liberty print totebags at the V&A (which I imagine is not a wild guess)?

Predictions on the future of digitalized cultural heritage

Charlotte S.H. Jensen, webeditor at the National Museum, front runner in the Danish museum world when it comes to digitization of cultural heritage and exploring the potential of new media for museum mediation, and generously sharing her insights on her blog, is always a great source of inspiration (and surely deserves a trackback!). Like this post Digital kulturarv – hvad sker der i 2012, in which she points to possible upcoming trends for digital cultural mediation.

Her point about how cultural institutions should or will shift their focus from simply having a visible presence as institutions on social media platforms to engaging in interactions around themes and topics of interest where they occur resonates very well with my own outset. Perhaps my project could even nudge this development along?

Similaly, I agree that it would be great to see a ‘native’ mobile network for sharing and collaborating around cultural heritage. Which again reminded me to start using some of the tools that are already around; I’m now awaiting an invitation to the online pinboard Pinterest, which I’d been checking out before. Charlotte also shares links to Oink (couldn’t get my head around how that works), Miso (but it would seem that only makes sence if you have a telly, which I don’t)and Path (which presents itself maily as a tool forn sharing everyday life with your social network, but perhaps I’m just not seeing the potential for museums?), but I’ll focus on Pinterest at this point.

Charlotte goes on to cover objectification, cultural heritage in public spaces, crowdsourcing and Second Life (not sure about that, I have to say, but maybe it’s just because I had to leave my avatar stranded in a pool years ago when I couldn’t work out how to fly…) amongst other things – well worth a read!

On doing a research blog

Sifting through my old papers this Christmas, I stumbled upon an article on research blogs written by my former lecturer at IT University, internet researcher Lisbeth Klastrup: Forsker og blogger:- webbloggen som forsknings- og fællesskabsværktøj (Eng: Researcher and blogger: the weblog as a tool for research and collaboration)

In the article, Klastrup, herself a dedicated blogger since 2001, urges researchers to take up blogging and explains how using a blog as a notebook for your research serves perfectly as a filter of information and tool for reflection, assisting the thought process when facing a new challenge or idea, as well as making it possible to find that thought and that reference again when needed in a later stage of the process. And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed having my own experience and hopes for this blog confirmed by an experienced and insightful academic, a reassurance that blogging could set me on the right track.

Another point by Klastrup was the potential for building your network in the blogosphere, sharing posts, comments, references and ideas with other people in your field. Although, as Mortensen & Walker (in Klastrup 2005, as above) point out

“The current reward system depends on certain formulas of academic publishing that encourage exclusivity and the fear of being robbed of thoughts and ideas. Since the real currency in the trade of academia is originality of thought and imaginative development of theories, there is more to lose than to gain in exposing your own ideas too early. The danger of having thoughts, ideas or questions copied before they have been published is not just a matter of some petty game between jealous professors with too little time on their hands, it’s a very real matter of being robbed of the currency which measures academic success.” (Mortensen & Walker:262)

I still like to think that knowledge creation should be a generous and collective effort, and even if I hope that I will eventually come up with ideas worth nicking, I prefer to trust that people who share my interests will also share my desire to discuss and collaborate rather than compete. But maybe they have a point.

Now, I’ve written before that the point of this blog was not necessarily to reach a larger audience, that perhaps keeping it a bit quiet might make it more useful as a notebook, as it takes away some of the pressure of coming up with brilliant posts when I have more silly questions than clever answers. But maybe it’s time to try to attract some followers after all. Maybe I should do a post on Formidlingsnettet to catch the attention of the Danish museum crowd. And maybe I should make a tweet about each posting, adding some #muse hashtag in the hope that it might get picked up by some international players (if nothing else, that would give me something to tweet about, being a bit rusty in that department, and never really much of a songbird @rikkebaggesen).

Which leads to the question: Is blogging becoming a thing of the past, whilst Twitter is where it’s at? Going back to Klastrup, it would seem that even her dedication as a blogger has waned, her latest post dating back to the autumn of 2010, whereas @klast is very active. And closer to home, the blogs by RSLIS reseachers Jack Andersen and Henrik Jochumsen mentioned in Klatrups overview of Danish research blogs (a project which itself seemed to have faded out in 2008) can no longer be found. As for my fellow Ph.D. fellows here and in other institutions, none of them seem to care much for blogging either.

So is this blog an altmodish side track after all? Is there anybody out there who cares? Perhaps the potential for building a network of reseachers through blogging is limited these days, or maybe I just haven’t found my posse yet. Indeed, Mortensens latest post is still fresh off the wordpress (even if she uses Blogger), and Christian Dalsgaards article on research blogs in Mediekultur is only from last year. Either way, as long as the format works for me, I’ll stick with it. Might even earn me a few ECTS credits, or at least a brownie point or two.

Fashion brings in the crowds

A new article from The Independent states it simply: Fashion at the museum brings in the crowds. And again, Valerie Steele provides an explanation, namely accessibility: “People believe they are able to understand and appreciate fashion, whereas they are often unsure about contemporary or even historical art.” In other words, they probably follow the sentiment of Zandra Rhodes, fashion designer and founder of the Fashion and Textiles Museum: “To me, a dress that has been marvellously made has more value than an unmade bed with a lot of garbage round it.”.

So the good news is that there are more great fashion exhibitions on the horizon. What the article also made me realise, however, is that in order to secure a true blockbuster exhibition with maximum pazzaz, most museums seem to favour top couturists and luxury brands. Of course, I too would love to marvel at the work – or works, even – of Yves Saint Laurent, Schiaparelli, Gaultier and Hartnell. But by focusing on the story of the designer as creative genius, as artist, and by seeking to align fashion exhibitions with the fine art galleries, curators are also missing the opportunity to showcase the fascinating history and aesthetics of everyday dress and popular fashion, leaving this to the less highbrow cultural history museums.

Is this a ‘natural’ division? Or perhaps a sign that even though fashion may bring in the crowds, the shift towards a greater acceptance of fashion as an area of culture to be reckoned with and treated seriously, is still only partial?

Either way, by putting dreams on display rather than showcasing a recognisable reality of what the general public will wear and can afford, museums may find it harder to engage the audience in outreach projects or social interactions and knowledge sharing. After all, how many people can share their story of a favourite McQueen ballgown or a Stephen Jones headpiece? On the other hand, I’m not sure if Trapholt’s call for contributions to a recent exhibition on Margit Brandt really payed off either. And perhaps the flights of fancy provided by the creative elite may serve as a greater inspiration for DIY museum projects, such as V&A’s My Beautiful Paper Hat for the same Stephen Jones exhibition.

So really, one shouldn’t exclude the other. Indeed, why not combine the best of both, as in the upcoming Pop! exhibition at The Fashion and Textile Museum, where show pieces, high fashion and subculture styles will share the exhibition space.

Here’s hoping I’ll get to see some of it.

Mediation (the sequel)

Where were we? Ah yes, trying to explain why I have chosen mediation as my translation for formidling. And finding, after several failed attempts at closing the deal and pinning down, in one neat follow-up blogpost, everything that needed saying about mediation at this point, that in my quest for clarity I had overcomplicated matters. So here’s trying to put it simply.

I realise that I was getting lost in the possible translations of a term that is in itself unstable. Indeed, as Gudiksen (2005) points out, the ambiguity and versatility of the term formidling is what makes it so useful: “Begrebet er brugbart, fordi det formår at favne en række komplekse problemstillinger vedrørende fx viden, læring, dannelse, kommunikation [...] Begrebsanalytisk betragtet er formidlingsbegrebet således også særdeles komplekst og kan rummes og formuleres i relation til flere forskellige vidensformer og udspringe af og repræsentere mange forskellige interesser.”

So rather than looking for the right translation or arguing why I preferred one over another, the point in choosing ‘mediation’ is that it is also a focus on the aspect of ‘formidling’ that I want to explore, i.e. the aspect that Gudiksen (ibid.) describes as exchange and interpretation (“formidling som udveksling og tolkning af betydning“).

ICOM states, in Key Concepts of Museology, that “it is through the mediation of its culture that individuals perceive and understand the world and their own identity“, and later on explains how mediation may “favour the sharing of experiences and social interactions between visitors“, perhaps by means of diverse technologies, as an educational communication strategy to facilitate such understandings in the audience.

And this is what I wish to explore – not distribution or dissemination of pre-existing knowledge, but how mediated interactions, two-way dialogues, between museums and users may serve to bring about new knowledge and enhance the experience and understanding of cultural heritage for both parties.

So mediation it is. And as I’m closing the subject for now on the blog, I can also see an opening for an interesting discussion on the topic in my actual thesis. Maybe this is where I’ll start writing for real…

Meditations on mediation (part one)

Yesterday, I started this blogpost intending to ‘spend a moment pondering the meanings of ‘mediation”. Guess I should have foreseen that a moment wouldn’t cut it, and as I started writing, the complications of pinning down the meaning became obvious as I starting revisiting my sources and came across new references. I finally aborted the mission when I took a phonecall from a fellow ph.d. student who happened to be pondering the same question!, which of course led to an interesting conversation and yet another useful reference that he sent me. Thank you, Lasse!

So probably a single blogpost won’t cut it either, but that won’t stop me from addressing the issue now and then returning to it again when I’m older and wiser still.

As mentioned, the working title (! – I know it’s clunky, but decided that a neutral description was a better starting point, even though I’m a sucker for a pun, as the heading reveals) of my project is Mobile Mediation of Fashion by Museums. The thing is, it turns out to be everything but neutral.

When looking for a suitable translation for the Danish ‘formidling’ in the preparation of my proposal, I was at a bit of a loss. ‘Education’ was a definite no, as I was making a point out of focusing on an adult, ‘casual’ museum audience, seeking out cultural experiences, with, at most, a subconcious desire for self formation and identity building, but with no interest in (semi)formal education. ‘Communication’ seemed too all-encompasing, yet with some sort of marketing bias – if a museum were to have a department for ‘formidling’as well as a communication department (as some of them do), communication would be aimed at attracting the public, whereas formidling would focus on ‘opening up’ the stories and knowledge of the museum, and it is the latter that has my interest. ‘Dissemination’ seemed to me to be about spreading, rather than forming the message, let alone entering into a dialogue with the public, perhaps even with slightly ominous connotations of propaganda or cultural imperialism.

I’ve later realised that ‘Dissemination’ seems to be the standard choice of translation. In the English section of the Heritage Agency of Denmark website* Dissemination of knowledge is listed as an obligatory practice for museums under the Danish Museum Act, alongside collection, registration, preservation and research. Similarly, the Royal School of Library and Information Science, where I now work, chooses the title Cultural Dissemination for the Kulturformidling part of its master programme. So of course, this is the discourse that I am now part of, but also one that I must position myself in.

In the end, I turned to ICOM’s Key concepts of Museology where I found ‘Mediation’ described as equivalent to the German Vermittlung, i.e. the same as formidling. At first glance I still wasn’t happy with this term either, despite the obvious link to ‘media’ and ensuing potential for the aforementioned puns as well as more academic musings on the nature and affiliations of media and mediation. Reading the article won me over though, and after some discussion I even managed to convince my husband that this was indeed the term I was after.

A native English speaker, he can be quite precious about language, which is a true gift (if, at times, hard work X) in this sort of discussion. The thing is, that even if the predominantly French speaking academics in ICOM decide that ‘mediation’ is the correct English term for the French ‘médiation’, including the discourse represented by the term, this will not necessarily find its way into common parlance in English, where the connotation of mediation is more courtroom, less exhibition (i.e. used similarly to the Danish ‘mægling‘.)

Indeed, I haven’t come across the term very often in the museological literature I have studied so far, and I am not sure if I could use it in a discussion with my English peers without qualifying it, so even if neither my gut feeling nor the sensitivities of my Englishman of choice or even the Oxford English Dictionary constitutes a valid academic argument for favouring one term over another; it is still worth keeping in mind that the correct term (if such a thing could be established) is not necessarily the one that people subscribe to.

… but alas, time is running out again, and I must end for today, even though there is still a lot more that I have to say about this. To be continued… dun, dun, dun!

* Which is probably due a major reconstruction as the agency has just been restructured