A great series of articles here from the Nature Network Team.
Behind the Doors at the Museum – part 1 – by Nature Network Team

“In the next of our new, regular editorials on Of Schemes and Memes, we are running a mini-series looking at various aspects of science museums.

Museums are places for inquisitive minds. Appropriately, the name comes from the nine Muses who, in Greek mythology, were sources of inspiration in poetry, the arts and science. The origins of modern museums lie in private collections of rare and curious artefacts, which belonged to the affluent from times as early as the Renaissance. But what are science museums for nowadays? What do they offer the public and what goes on behind their doors? The rich variety of activities and events that are organised by science museums can easily be underestimated so in this post we will delve further into what a museum can really offer.

Next time

In the next instalment we will take a look at what museum employees really do behind those doors….”

Visit the blog.

Very nice videoclip! Find out more about the iPad app at http://www.moma.org/abexapp

At the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland, museumgoers wore gloves containing active RFID tags and wireless biometric sensors, thereby recording biological and cognitive reactions to each piece of art.

The Swiss National Science Foundation funded the experiment, and Ubisense donated its technology. Phebey estimates the equipment and installation would have cost €60,000 to €70,000 ($86,000 to $100,000), with the location tags in the glove priced at €65 ($93) apiece.

via RFID and Sensors Illustrate Art’s Impact on People – RFID Journal.

Some museums have a contest on Twitter. Twitter has published some useful guidelines for running contests:

• Discourage the creation of multiple accounts: If users make lots of accounts in order to enter a contest more than once, they’re liable to get all of their accounts suspended. Please be sure to include a rule stating that anyone found to use multiple accounts to enter will be ineligible.

• Discourage posting the same tweet over and over (and over) again: Posting duplicate, or near duplicate, updates or links is a violation of the Twitter Rules and jeopardizes search quality. Please don’t set rules to encourage lots of duplicate updates (like saying, “whoever retweets this the most wins”). Your contest could cause users to be automatically filtered out of Twitter search. Plus, instead of their followers seeing your cool contest, their followers might start getting annoyed by your contest. You might want to set a clear contest rule stating that multiple entries in a single day will not be accepted.

• Ask users to include an @reply to you in their update so you can see all the entries: When it comes to picking a winner, you’ll want to see all the contestants. If the updates include @username mention to you, you’ll be able to see all the updates in your Mentions timeline (see here for more information on replies and mentions). Just doing a public search may not show every single update, and some contestants may be filtered from search for quality.

• Encourage the use of topics relevant to the contest: You might decide to have users include relevant hashtag topics along with the updates (like #contest or #yourcompanyname). Keep in mind that hashtag topics need to be relevant to the update; encouraging users to add your hashtag to totally unrelated updates might cause them to violate the Twitter Rules.

Do you have some great ideas for contests?

fresh + new(er) — discussion of issues around digital media and museums Fresh+New is a blog primarily written by Seb Chan at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The purpose of the site is to act as a repository and sounding board for discussions around digital media and its use in museums. It evolved from a team discussion tool into a sector resource.

via BagTheWeb.

More blogs:

Museum Blog

Museum 3.0

Museum Blogging

Here you can find 406 Museum Blogs

Museum Blog Directory

100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs

Britain Loves Wikipedia is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest that will be held in museums and cultural institutions across the UK, with the aim of increasing the number of pictures available to illustrate Wikipedia articles and inspire new articles. The event will kick off with a launch event at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Sunday 31 January 2010, followed by a series of events each weekend at locations around the UK. Museums looking for more visitors and exposure are still welcome to sign up. Read the whole article on Heritage Key

Na het Rijksmuseum, het Van Gogh Museum en de National Gallery in Londen heeft nu ook het Louvre in Parijs een eigen iPhone applicatie: Musée du Louvre. Het Louvre of op z’n Frans Musée du Louvre of  Le Louvre is een groot museum in Parijs. Het bestaat uit drie vleugels; de Richelieu-vleugel, de Sully-vleugel en de Denon-vleugel. De Mona Lisa van Leonardo da Vinci is waarschijnlijk het beroemdste stuk uit de collectie van het Louvre. Lees meer

Bron: Mobielnieuwsnet.nl

Museuminaday is almost exactly what it says on the tin: a museum website that is intended to design, build and launch in 12 hours.

This is an initiative of Dan Zambonini and Mike Ellis. Read more and follow their progress.