The Fourth Museum INDIAN in NEW YORK CITY
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USABILITY STUDY OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN The Fourth Museum INDIAN IN NEW YORK CITY The Smithsonian NMAI is committed to engaging online visitors with a virtual Deimosa Webber-Bey museum experience. The resources of the Smithsonian are presented with LIS 697 Museum Informatics multimedia narratives which are community developed and provide context for cultural heritage items. The museum’s efforts support the paradigms of design- Prof. Jonathan Bowen based research, and suggestions are offered for future progress. Pratt Institute School of Information & Library Science July 23, 2012 Webber-Bey, pg. 1 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................... 2 DATABASE USAGE ....................................................................................................................................... 6 National Museum of the American Indian website .................................................................................. 6 Native Networks ............................................................................................................................................ 7 Native Words Native Warriors online exhibit ........................................................................................... 7 Lakota Winter Counts online exhibit .......................................................................................................... 7 American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges .................................................................... 8 Smithsonian webpage .................................................................................................................................... 8 Smithsonian Institution Research & Information System ....................................................................... 9 Encyclopedia Smithsonian ........................................................................................................................... 9 National Anthropological Archives ............................................................................................................ 9 WEBSITE FACILITIES ................................................................................................................................ 10 MUSEUM INTERACTIVES ........................................................................................................................ 11 SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE ............................................................................................................................ 13 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COLLABORATIONS ................................................................. 15 MOBILE APPLICATIONS .......................................................................................................................... 17 FUTURE POTENTIAL ................................................................................................................................ 18 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................... 23 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................................. 24 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................................ 26 Appendix A Floorplan of George Gustav Heye Center Level 2 .......................................................... 26 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................. 27 Webber-Bey, pg. 2 INTRODUCTION Museums have overtime work to do in the 21st century. Collections of cultural heritage items are under increasing scrutiny and policies for repatriation are developed alongside those for collection. The National Museum of the American Indian [NMAI], the Smithsonian’s first culturally-specific institution, is an exercise in careful reflection and purposeful design, facing the challenges of producing innovative on-site exhibitions and engaging the online world. The base collection for this endeavor is the legacy of the Museum of the American Indian [MAI]; founded in 1916 by George Gustav Heye, who collected Indian artifacts aggressively during the early 20th century. With over one Figure 1 Museum of the American Indian million items the Heye collection “is the largest assemblage of Native American artifacts ever gathered by a single individual” (Small). It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institute in 1989, an outcome of the National Museum of the American Indian Act. This Congressional act, Public Law 101-185, requires a “living memorial to Native Americans and their traditions” on the National Mall in Washington D.C. and the repatriation to tribal communities of “Indian human remains and Indian funerary objects in the possession or control of the Smithsonian Institution” (101st Congress). The bulk of Webber-Bey, pg. 3 the Heye artifacts are now located in the museum’s Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland, and the first iteration of the NMAI, the George Gustav Heye Center, opened in lower Manhattan in 1994. The museum on the National Mall opened in 2004. From the outset, NMAI visionaries have been engaged in an attempt to reeducate museum visitors of all ages, challenging the practice of exhibiting Native Americans artifacts out of context in open storage displays, on pedestals and walls, and in cases (National Museum of the American Indian 37, 15). The Heye collection was presented in such a manner, and the crowded display cases at the Museum of the American Indian left no room for interpretation (Figure 1). Viewing these cultural heritage items out of context leads to a “museum effect”, where isolated objects, such as artic clothing, assume different roles lined up in a display case hanging flat than they do in their original environment – on a person, outside, where it is cold and likely dark (Economou 139). Exhibits are frequently guilty of facilitating transduction, “in which something which has been configured or shaped in one or more modes is reconfigured, reshaped according to the affordances of a quite different mode” (Ho, Nelson and Müeller-Wittig 1091). Transduction is a known problem, but in 1994 NMAI leaders recognized that the display of artifacts primarily from the late 1800s and early 1900s (a period of resistance, relocation, and assimilation in American Indian history) was supporting a narrative that “disembodies the reality of a continuing Indian presence” (National Museum of the American Indian 37). The lessons learned from the MAI focused the Smithsonian on involving tribal communities and highlighting contemporary culture; to this end, the museum has been involved in a form of crowd-sourcing. Engaging in self-assessment and adjusting their exhibits to integrate context, the Smithsonian NMAI began the process of design-based research. This approach is “an emerging paradigm for the study of learning in context through the systematic design and study of instructional strategies and tools” Webber-Bey, pg. 4 (Design-Based Research Collective 5). In the education arena, design-based researchers carefully evaluate both process and product at the end of each academic cycle, and they incorporate lessons learned (becoming more effective and efficient) in subsequent cycles. We propose that good design-based research exhibits the following five characteristics: First, the central goals of designing learning environments and developing theories or "prototheories" of learning are intertwined. Second, development and research take place through continuous cycles of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign (Cobb, 2001; Collins, 1992). Third, research on designs must lead to sharable theories that help communicate relevant implications to practitioners and other educational designers (cf. Brophy, 2002). Fourth, research must account for how designs function in authentic settings. It must not only document success or failure but also focus on interactions that refine our understanding of the learning issues involved. Fifth, the development of such accounts relies on methods that can document and connect processes of enactment to outcomes of interest. (Design-Based Research Collective 5) The NMAI is exemplifying these characteristics in practice, with choices like holding major conferences concurrent to the opening of both major facilities. At the opening of Heye Center in 1994 in New York City, participants in the first conference, The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures, the NMAI coined a term for their online presence, establishing a “virtual fourth museum” as the integrated and collaborative networking of tribal communities and institutions with the museum (National Museum of the American Indian 43-44). During the museum’s inaugural year they also conducted a survey of 70,000 members, learning that the membership wanted recreated environments, live demonstrations, hands-on activities, interactives, and written materials; 74% of NMAI members asked for information reflecting current social concerns, such as health and economy on American Indian reservations (NMAI 111). When the Washington D.C. facility opened in 2004 the NMAI held a second conference, The Native Universe and Museums in the Twenty-first Century: the Significance