As we have seen in class, a growing number of Libraries, Archives, and Museums are turning to social media as a way to connect with people around the world. In class we tend to look a lot at art museums when looking at the way cultural heritage institutions interact in the online environment. In an attempt to move slightly away from institutions focused solely on art, I chose to look at the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is the University of Oxford’s Anthropology and Archaeology museum. While primarily an ethnographic museum, it still classifies itself as a type of art gallery in some instances.
The main website for the Pitt Rivers Museum can be found here: http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk
The museum is a lot more involved in social media than I expected. Beyond their main webpage they have a Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, eight different blogs, phone and tablet apps, and numerous interactive web features. From what I have found, it does not appear to have an official Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, or Tumblr, but is still frequently tagged by users on these sites. I think this is a good example of how a museum can still have a presence on social media websites, even if it is not an official one. In February of this year the Pitt Rivers Museum was nominated for a Shorty Award, which is an award that honors the people and institutions that best use social media. It is currently ranked as the 9th best museum on social media through the Shorty website, as voted by social media users (The Shorty Awards, 2013).
For this post I will be going through several of the ways in which the Pitt Rivers Museum uses social media, and compare it to the Social Media Strategy Framework handout we received in class, as well as to our class discussions on the subject of social media use in libraries, archives, and museums.
Blogs
On the Pitt Rivers website they give users the option of looking at eight different blogs that are run through the museum. These blogs range from highlighting specific collections to looking at the museum as a whole.
The Social Media Strategy Framework (Smiciklas, 2009) describes blogging strategies as a way to “Help build two-way conversations with your audience”. The Pitt Rivers Museum uses Blogspot as their blogging platform, and each one of their blogs has a distinct layout and feel to it. The most recent post on each of the blogs had been made within the last two weeks, indicating that the Museum frequently updates the information they are providing to their users. They are not updated so often that the information becomes overwhelming for the users, but they appear to be updated on a regular schedules of one or two days a week.
The majority of their blogs have to do with specific collections or with ongoing projects that the museum has undertaken, and are used as a way to keep the public updated about the progress that the projects are making.
My favorite of the blogs created through the Pitt Rivers Museum is called “Need/Make/Use”.
According to the blog, “Need/Make/Use describes the focus of a five-year project at the Pitt Rivers Museum (2012-2017), devoted to substantial redisplay and new public programming. The project will focus on key elements - Visitors, Engagement, Renewal, Visibility and Enrichment (VERVE) - and seeks to re-engage visitors with the materials, skills and ingenuity evident in our collections; how people everywhere need, make and use 'things'. This blog will follow the team's progress and see what they get up to behind the scenes” (Pitt Rivers Museum, 2013).
This blog gives visitors the chance to see some of the items in the Pitt Rivers Collection that are not on display. It also gives them a chance to look behind the scenes at the way exhibits are made. I think that this is a fantastic way to encourage users to become more interested or involved in what the museum is doing. Some of the posts on this blog focus on different aspects of the museum’s extensive ethnographic collection, and tie those items back to the cultures where they originated. Other posts look at topics like how new displays are created, and events that the museum is putting on to raise awareness of their collections. Overall I really like the idea behind the project, and look forward to seeing how it continues into 2017.
Some other blogs that I enjoyed looking at included “Conserving ‘Curiosities’: Investigating the Cook-Voyage Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum”, and “Pitt Rivers Museum Photograph and Manuscript Collections”. Both of these blogs looked at specific collections within the museum and created regular posts highlighting specific pieces or aspects of those collections that visitors may not always notice.
Facebook
While I appreciated the wide range of blogs available through the Pitt Rivers Museum, I do not think that they are the museum’s main form of social media outreach. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Fickr undoubtedly generate more visits to the museum’s pages than the blogs do. The Facebook page for the Pitt Rivers Museum has 2,572 likes, and includes links to all of the blogs, as well as event and photo pages that users can use to see upcoming lectures, courses, exhibit openings, and other big events happening at the museum. The museum updates their facebook once a day with information ranging from events taking place at the museum to something that is relevant to what day it is.
Some examples of what the museum posts on their Facebook can be seen below. As you can see, the Pitt Rivers Museum likes to find an object in their collection that they can tie into the date or time of year, and include pictures of those objects. In addition, they include text posts to educate visitors to their facebook about the objects and the history behind them. This is a good way to keep visitors aware of what is in the museum’s collection, as well as making the information seem fresh and interesting.
Twitter
The Pitt Rivers Museum Twitter is also well maintained and updated. They have 6,216 followers, which is significantly more than what they have on Facebook. Twitter is clearly the social media platform where the Pitt Rivers Museum excels. When asked how often they update their Twitter, the Pitts River responded, “About a day. No point overloading followers with stuff. Rationed but worthwhile - like a lovely wodge of cake you try to make last the week” (The Shorty Awards, 2013). Looking at their Twitter, however, it is clear that they do not always adhere to their once-a-day rule on this platform like they do on their Facebook.
The information they share through this platform is similar to what they share through Facebook, but it is much more abridged. They focus on more events happening at the museum, and less of specific pieces from collections. It is good that they share different information in different forums, if they decided to share the exact same information on both Facebook and Twitter their followers would not see the point in following both platforms.
Flickr
The Pitt Rivers Museum also maintains a Flickr page, which is filled with 194 photographs. They divide their images into several different sets, and their photographs include pictures from events that have happened at the museum as well as pieces within their collection. Their Flickr page does not appear to be updated quite a regularly as their other social media platforms, but the images of the pieces in their collection include a lot more information from the catalog record than can be found on Facebook or Twitter.
I think I was the least impressed with the museum’s use of Flicker for social outreach. We have seen in class how things like Flickr Commons can help crowdsource projects for museums as well as raise awareness about those museums. Flickr can be a very powerful tool when used by museums, and the Pitt Rivers Museum does not appear to have put a lot of energy into their Flickr page. While it is good that they have one, I do not believe that they are using it to its full potential.
Conclusions
I think that the Pitt Rivers Museum does a very good job of keeping their social media up to date and engaging for visitors. They provide a variety of different social media pages for users, and they included different types of content on each of them. While some of the content was similar on multiple platforms, I do not think that I saw any that contained the same text word for word.
Their strengths lie in their blogs and Twitter pages, but it is clear that they have made efforts to branch out into other forms of social media as well. They believe that social media is important for cultural heritage institutions, stating that it is about “Encouraging participation in arts, heritage & culture. Offering both contemplative & social experiences, museums can contribute to well-being” (The Shorty Awards, 2013).
I did not see very many comments appearing on the Pitt Rivers Museum blog posts, but comments seemed to come up fairly regularly on both Facebook and Twitter. I do not know how many hits each of their blogs gets on a regular basis, but I would guess that their Facebook and Twitter are much more popular than any of their eight blogs. I would have liked to see a bit more on each of those pages encouraging users to look at new posts on the various blogs. It is fine to have each social media platform separate from the rest, but I would have liked to see something linking them together in some way, even just on the Pitt Rivers main website.
I hope that in the future the Pitt Rivers Museum will look into more forms of social media, and maybe into some crowdsourcing projects through social media. It does seem like they have a Social Media Strategy, and are attempting to increase their online presence. I think that as their Need/Make/Use VERVE project continues, they will be looking into other ways of engaging visitors within the museums as well as in an online environment. I think it is important to note that all of their current social media sites have content on them, which is more than can be said for some other museums (The Metropolitan Museum of Art has both a Pinterest and a Tumblr, but has no information of any kind on either platform).
While I think that the Pitt Rivers Museum could do more with social media to help interest the public in the museum, I think that they have a solid foundation and a solid start to a well done Social Media Framework.
Bibliography
Pitt Rivers Museum. (2013). Need/Make/Use [blog]. Retrieved from: http://pittrivers-verve.blogspot.co.uk/
Pitt Rivers Museum. (2013). Pitt Rivers Museum (Facebook). Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/pittriversmuseum
Pitt Rivers Museum Official. (2013). Pitt Rivers Museum (Flickr). Retrieved from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pittriversmuseum/
[@pitt_rivers]. (2013). Pitt Rivers Museum (Twitter). Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/Pitt_Rivers
The Shorty Awards. (2013). The Best Museums in Social Media. Retrieved from: http://shortyawards.com/category/museum
The Shorty Awards. (2013). A Shorty Interview with #museum niminee, Pitt Rivers Museum. Retrieved from: http://blog.shortyawards.com/post/43151538627/a-shorty-interview-with-museum-nominee-pitt-rivers
Smiciklas, Mark. (2009). Social Media Strategy Framework. Retrieved from: http://www.intersectionconsulting.com/2009/social-media-strategy-framework/
I did not know that there are awards given for social media use, or that museums are ranked according to this. I would be interested in how this museum compares with others in the top ten, and how museums compare to other institutions or organizations. Social media has a lot of potential for outreach, and some museums (like the Pitt Rivers) are doing well, but I still think they have not taken advantage as well as companies or celebrities. There is a lot to be learned from outside the cultural heritage sector, as well as within.
ReplyDeleteThe Shorty Awards are interesting, Emily, because the sites are nominated and voted for by users. So it's not a formal evaluation saying these sites tick these boxes, it's real people saying that they find the information useful and interesting.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that there are companies and celebrities who have social media outreach down to a science! It would be interesting if a LAM took some notes from that and did something like a celebrity twitter account based on one of their collections.