There are some museums that are already taking advantage of Wikipedia's content. Last weekend, I was at Fort Perch Rock [1], which is a small naval/RAF museum near Liverpool. The style of some of the content pinned to the wall was easily recognisable - it was straight from Wikipedia. E.g. the complete text of the article on HMS Thesis [2] was there, infobox and all. Although, there was a slight lack of attribution...
I would love to see this become more widespread. QR codes linked to Wikipedia content would be fantastic. If the museum has an international audience, then using the different language editions of Wikipedia would be great, if there's space on the paper (bear in mind that most people don't have smart phones, or if they do and they're international travellers then they probably won't want to use the expensive data roaming costs).
It very much depends on the museum's interest, and the level of the costs; it's worth talking to them about though. I think it would be a really interesting use of a microgrant, if the costs are sub-£100.
Mike
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Perch_Rock [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Thetis_%28N25%29
On 1 Feb 2011, at 11:48, Fae wrote:
WRT QR codes: I brought this up when chatting with the British Library. If it were part of a temporary exhibition (the BL has a funky new-media room in the foyer area, for example) then a demo using QR codes and a free smart phone app(*) would be an easy thing to show off and less controversial than sticking new labels all over a museum. As the QR codes can point to an official website (or database record for the item) this would not need to be a Wikipedia specific initiative.
If someone is into this technology, perhaps we can make such a demo part of an upcoming workshop/edit-a-thon event with a relevant GLAM (like Derby or the BL)?
(*) The BL recently made a great hoo-ha about their new smart phone app, see http://www.bl.uk/app/
Fæ
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