The Online Exhibitions Project:

Final Report

Jane Devine Mejia

March 2010
Table of Contents
Executive Summary............................................................................................................................. 3
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................... 4
1. Introduction and background ......................................................................................................... 5
2. Preliminary research ....................................................................................................................... 6
a. Literature review ............................................................................................................................. 6
b. Survey of best practice.................................................................................................................... 7
3. Developing the online exhibition: technology ................................................................................ 7
4. Online exhibition content ............................................................................................................... 8
5. Student and tutor engagement ...................................................................................................... 8
6. Learning from students and tutors ................................................................................................. 9
a. Undergraduate visual research students: an archives immersion.................................................. 9
b. MA History of Design students: virtual curatorship ..................................................................... 10
c. Extension class students: experimenting with Flickr..................................................................... 10
7. Research findings .......................................................................................................................... 11
8. Key issues ...................................................................................................................................... 13
a. Project management and staffing................................................................................................. 13
b. Collection content, copyright and digitisation.............................................................................. 13
c. Metadata ....................................................................................................................................... 13
d. Access to students and tutors....................................................................................................... 14
e. Designing for dyslexia ................................................................................................................... 14
9. Technology for the OLE: moving forward ..................................................................................... 14
10. Conclusion & recommendations ................................................................................................. 15
Appendix 1: Project participants and people consulted ................................................................... 17
Appendix 2: Dissemination activities, papers and presentations ..................................................... 18
Appendix 3: Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 19
Appendix 4: Models of best practice: Museums & the Web award winners ................................... 22

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Executive Summary

This report describes the research carried out as part of the Online Exhibitions Project, a two-year
collaboration between the CETLD partner archives and students and tutors from the University of
Brighton and the Royal College of Art. The results of an extensive literature survey and exploration
of best practice are included, along with a selective bibliography of recent scholarship.

The Online Exhibitions Project examined how design students might learn from and about archives
through the medium of a virtual exhibition. Using collections at the Royal Institute of British
Architects and the University of Brighton Design Archives, a prototype exhibition was developed
about the house at 2 Willow Road, London, designed by modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger.
Students visited the house, viewed its archive at the V&A and then took part in an online experience,
using the virtual exhibition and a blog to contribute their ideas and images. A secondary project
involved creating a small exhibition on Flickr and assessing student reaction to it.

The outcome of this research was the decision to focus on Web 2.0 applications, such as Elgg
Community@Brighton and Flickr, as the most participative means of involving design students in
learning from archives. A recommendation to the partner archives to consider disseminating their
collections through various online channels, rather than following traditional exclusive image
licensing practices, concludes the report.

Figure 1 University of Brighton 3D design students at 2 Willow Road, October 2008 (Photo: J. Devine Mejia)

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Catherine Moriarty, Paul Snell and Anne Asha for their work in launching the
Online Exhibition Project, phase 1 (2007-8) and in supporting the project throughout the past two
years.

At the RIBA, Robert Elwall, Susan Pugh, Jane Oldfield and Irena Murray have all given their time and
expertise to the development of the 2 Willow Road online exhibition and Catherine Duncumb
(RIBA/V&A education officer) did an outstanding job of encouraging design students to look at
archives as a living record of the design process.

3D design tutors Patrick Letschka and Jacqui Chanarin graciously offered to make the Willow Road
experience one of the “adventures” for their visual research students. Without their enthusiasm
and the visual research students’ voluntary involvement, there would be no findings to report.

The RCA’s Neil Parkinson provided thoughtful advice throughout the project, while Jeremy Aynsley,
Harriet McKay and the MA in History of Design students volunteered time and creative ideas in the
OLE testing and assessment process.

CETLD ICT specialist Sina Krause did an outstanding job of creating the prototype exhibition and
testing other options along the way, while Roland Mathews provided valuable help with our blog and
the complexities of user access. Learning technology experts Stan Stanier and Adam Bailey advised
on Elgg and Community@Brighton at critical points in the project and let us play in their technology
sandbox.

At 2 Willow Road, National Trust curator Rebecca Milner tailored the house tour to the needs of
two distinct student groups and also contributed her time to evaluating the experience. Her work
created an inspiring context for the students’ archival experience.

The V&A Museum’s senior archivist Christopher Marsden and curator of design drawings Abraham
Thomas both showed a keen interest in the project, offering their advice and knowledge along the
way.

Special thanks to these CETLD staff: Debbie Hickmott administrator extraordinaire, Rebecca
Reynolds for including our Flickr experiment in her creative writing class, Catherine Speight for
editorial work on several papers, Philippa Lyon for advice and editorial skills, Jos Boys for support
and guidance throughout the project and Sol Sneltvedt for her patience in the final months, and lastly
my appreciation to CETLD director Anne Boddington and advisors David Gosling and Allan Davies
for helping me to stay on course and to ask the right questions.

Jane Devine Mejia

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1. Introduction and background
The Online Exhibitions Project (hereafter OLE) took place from October 2007 to December 2009
and involved collaboration between the four CETLD partner archives (the Royal Institute of British
Architects (RIBA), University of Brighton Design Archives, Royal College of Art (RCA) and V&A
Museum), along with students and tutors from Brighton and the RCA and CETLD ICT staff.

The OLE Project was first proposed in May 2007 by archivists and education specialists from the
RIBA and the University of Brighton, with support from the CETLD manager. After some changes in
scope and the hiring of a part-time research fellow to lead the project, ten specific goals were
articulated by February 2008. These were:

1. To promote the knowledge and use of the CETLD partner archives across the HE sector through
the medium of an online exhibition (hereafter OLE)

2. To develop a prototype OLE drawn from existing digitised archival materials in the CETLD
partners’ collections

3. To work with the partner archivists, curators and ICT staff to select, document and replicate the
digitised material for the purposes of the prototype OLE

4. To investigate how to incorporate metadata from the partners’ digitised archival materials into the
OLE

5. To find effective ways of engaging students and tutors with this archival material, both for
historical/theoretical research and for practice-based inquiry

6. To explore the potential of ‘students as curators’, both in presenting their own work within the
OLE and in selecting and writing about archival material for the OLE

7. To undertake a review of the best and most innovative OLE websites, particularly those in the
museum, library, archives and HE sectors (including where possible information on ‘front end’
content and design, and ‘back end’ elements such as costs, technical infrastructures, etc.)

8. To undertake a literature review of art and design online teaching and learning environments and
OLEs, with an emphasis on HE rather than primary/secondary and further education

9. To report on the research completed and issues raised during development of the prototype OLE
and to make recommendations for the further design and development of an OLE educational
resource within the context of the CETLD partnership

10. To disseminate knowledge acquired from the project to a wider audience across HE design
education and the museum/gallery sectors through the CETLD website and newsletter, conferences,
seminars and other venues.

These goals provided the framework on which to build the project and also defined the project
leader’s principal responsibilities. Staffing for the project consisted of the half-time project leader, a
summer placement student (12 days), part-time assistance from the CETLD ICT staff and voluntary
involvement by the partner archivists, tutors and students. A complete list of participants and people
consulted during the project is provided in Appendix 1.

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In addition to the project goals, a set of CETLD guiding themes defined the focus of the research.
These were:

- Learning spaces (physical/virtual)

- Practice-based learning and object scholarship (through the interpretation of artefacts and
drawings in archives and museum collections)
- The student voice: student-centred, personalised learning
- Use and application of collections

This report describes the project methodology, including preliminary research, and outlines the main
findings and research outcomes. It concludes with a discussion of key issues and some
recommendations for the CETLD partners to consider in light of the project findings.

2. Preliminary research

a. Literature review
The literature review was based on an extensive exploration of art, design, education and museum
scholarship about online exhibitions. An initial bibliography was compiled with the help of CETLD
placement student Heloisa Candello, drawing on these online indexes and extensive searches of
relevant conference proceedings:

• Art Full-Text
• Artbibliographies modern
• Australian Education Index
• Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals
• Bibliography of the History of Art
• British Education Index
• Design and Applied Arts Index
• Educational Research Abstracts
• Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)
• Expanded Academic Index
• Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA)
• RIBA Catalogue & Index
• Zetoc (British Library)

The search focussed on literature published from 2000 onwards as earlier publications often dealt
with outmoded technology and were thus less relevant to current practice in OLE design. Many of
the key papers that informed our research were drawn from online conference proceedings and
electronic journals, rather than print sources. From an initial list of over 70 citations, we focussed on
35 books, papers and articles that dealt with OLE design from an archives/libraries/museums and
education perspective, rather than a technical standpoint.

Our literature survey findings suggested that no one was developing OLEs explicitly for a higher
education (HE) design audience; while none of the case studies that we reviewed tackled the
question of how HE students learn from OLEs based on archival collections. This confirmed that our
research agenda was original and that it offered the potential to contribute new findings to the study
of collection-based virtual learning in art and design.

Appendix 3 presents the bibliography of the key literature that guided our research.

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b. Survey of best practice
This review was based on an assessment of OLE sites that had won awards at the annual Museums
and the Web conference (1997-2009). This peer award, voted by members of the association, has
been a mark of excellence since the early days of virtual exhibitions. A summary table of findings is
provided in Appendix 4. A review of the past thirteen years of winners shows a progressive trend
from fairly simple self-developed HTML pages to complex professionally designed websites created
with custom software applications. By 2001, firms such as Terra Incognita Productions (Austin,
Texas) and later Second Story Interactive Studios (Portland, Oregon) were creating unique virtual
exhibition sites to meet their clients’ needs and take OLE design and conceptualisation to new levels.
More recently, software such as WordPress for blog-making and the Flickr image sharing site are
supporting a more user-centred approach to OLE development. The Brooklyn Museum’s “Click! A
Crowd-Curated Exhibition” (2008-9) is one good example of current practice in participative OLE
design.

Both the literature survey and the review of best practice led to the conclusion that we would
concentrate on developing an exhibition framework that would allow as much viewer participation
as possible and would thus encourage student and tutor engagement in the curatorial process of
selecting and documenting archival material for the OLE. Participatory sites that informed our
thinking included the Art Gallery of New South Wales myVirtualGallery (see Cooper 2006), the Art
Museums of San Francisco My Gallery and Exeter University’s EVE Everyone’s Virtual Exhibition site
(see Gardner 2005) as well as Flickr and several V&A projects described by Durbin (2003-2009).

Based on the range of best practice cases that we studied however, it was clear that we had neither
the funding nor the staff to emulate the more ambitious sites created by large teams of curators,
researchers, web designers, photographers and other technical experts, but would instead need to
think about the opportunities presented by social media such as CETLD’s Elgg Web 2.0, Flickr,
Community@Brighton (also an Elgg site) and other comparable applications.

3. Developing the online exhibition: technology

Technology proved to be one of the biggest challenges of the project. The initial assumption had
been that CETLD’s implementation of Elgg Web 2.0 would underpin the OLE; however it soon
became clear that Elgg’s “Photo Gallery” feature was not sufficiently developed at that stage to meet
the exhibition’s requirements. Without funding to purchase commercial software or to pay
developers to build a custom application, we looked at a range of open-source [free] options,
including Panraven, MyGallery, Slideshow Pro, Smooth Gallery and Flickr before choosing Jalbum’s
Fotoplayer, an open-source exhibition framework designed by Dhinakaran Annamalai.

Fotoplayer offered a number of advantages. We could create the OLE and run it from within the
CETLD Web 2.0 site, with passwording to ensure the necessary level of security. There was ample
space to display image metadata as well as zooming and panning tools to allow detailed image
viewing. Fotoplayer’s “guestbook” tool also allowed the potential for users to comment on the
images they were viewing and to share their comments with others. This software was used to
present two versions of the prototype OLE, one for the University of Brighton second year visual
research students and the second for the Royal College of Art MA in the History of Design first-
year students. Each version of the OLE included an Elgg Web 2.0 blog for comments and image
uploading and the Fotoplayer exhibition based on archival material from the RIBA and the Brighton
Design Archives.

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Figure 2 Fotoplayer prototype, showing images from the RIBA and University of Brighton Design Archives. Image
metadata is displayed in the lefthand column.

4. Online exhibition content

The theme for the prototype exhibition was chosen after careful reflection on how practice-based
students and tutors are most likely to be attracted to an OLE and on how we could design effective
learning experiences based on the exhibition content. It became clear from meetings with the
archivists and from online research in the collections that the common strength of the partner
archives was twentieth-century British design.

A critical deciding factor was that we had no funding to digitise archival material and so had to
depend on digital images that the partner archives had already created. The RIBA archive of Ernö
Goldfinger’s 2 Willow Road house in London was the most complete set of design drawings and
documentary photographs available in digital form, with the major advantage that RIBA held full
copyright to the archive. A further benefit was that this material had already been collected into a
resource box as part of the RIBA/V&A education programme and most of its contents were available
in the RIBApix digital image bank. As a National Trust property, the house was open to visitors and
the National Trust curator was eager to be involved in our project. The first online exhibition of 32
images drew on Goldfinger material from the RIBA and related items in the University of Brighton
Design Archives.

5. Student and tutor engagement

Finding a way to involve students and tutors in the project was one of the greatest challenges. Not
only did we need them to volunteer their time, but they also had to fit the project work around
their coursework. Two groups joined the project to test the prototype OLE: the University of
Brighton 3D design undergraduate visual research class and the Royal College of Art MA in History
of Design first-year class, along with their tutors. A further group of extension class students was
recruited to test the Design Archives Flickr group. In each case, it was hard to sustain the students’

8
involvement beyond the initial activities, though many expressed an interest in the research and
regretted not having more time to contribute. Nonetheless, the evaluation questionnaires provided
valuable comments and data that advanced our work and led to a better understanding of student
learning in both online and physical environments.

6. Learning from students and tutors

a. Undergraduate visual research students: an archives immersion

We structured the first student experience in the following way. The Brighton group (12 students
with tutors Patrick Letschka and Jacqui Chanarin) visited the house at 2 Willow Road with National
Trust curator Rebecca Milner and then explored the related RIBA archival material at the V&A study
room with RIBA/V&A education officer Catherine Duncumb. After the physical tours, they had the
opportunity to visit the virtual exhibition and to upload their own Willow Road photographs,
questions and comments to the OLE blog. Using a series of three questionnaires, they assessed their
own learning and reactions to the virtual, vs. the physical, archives immersion over a 10-week period
in autumn 2008. At the same time, they worked on their individual visual research projects which
focused on an object with personal meaning and required them to explore it using various media. A
fuller discussion of this phase is provided in two conference papers listed in Appendix 2.

None of the undergraduate students had had any prior exposure to archives and they were generally
very positive about this introductory experience. Some of the students noted:

“There is a lot of information to find in the Archives and I would definitely try and revisit to research
into future projects.”

“the drawings are certainly going to be useful for my work. It made me think differently about ideas
and approach…”

Another commented that the online archival exhibition gave the “opportunity to see the building when
it was first built and differences in interiors as well as the intentions of the architect in the plans”

At the same time, there was a desire for more user control over the sequencing and presentation of
images. For instance, in contrasting the real with the virtual experience, one student said:

“Being in the house lets me choose to see what I want to see whereas the OLE is someone else’s
perception.”

Similarly, a suggested improvement to the OLE structure was “possibly ordering the images to mirror
the beginnings – plans and sketches to the end – photographs of the house.” The exhibition had been
presented to show the house from exterior to interior, divided by room type rather than type of
drawing or photograph, but clearly some students would have preferred to arrange the images
according to their own preferences. Due to the limitation of the software, we could not offer them
this option, but it was significant that some students wanted more involvement in sequencing and
presenting the archival images.

The visual research tutors had a strong interest in exploring how an OLE could influence learning.
Students showed the influence of their Willow Road experience in their attention to materials and
their approach to space as they worked on their individual projects. While the students were not

9
always aware of this connection, their tutors observed it when reviewing the work. The tutors also
felt it was very useful for students to participate in the project as an example of design-related
research. The tutors felt it was important for the students to see the difference between an
academic interface (like the Willow Road OLE) and a commercial one, and also between social
networking sites like Facebook and academic sites such as our Web 2.0 environment. They noted
that design students often go online to learn how to make or do something, rather than in search of
content. The tutors felt that a possible theme to explore in future research would be how to
present student work in an online environment, for instance by sharing work shown at crits through
an online medium or in an e-portfolio.

b. MA History of Design students: virtual curatorship

Working with Prof. Jeremy Aynsley and PhD candidate Harriet McKay at the RCA, we structured
the second student project over a two-week period in March 2009. The 10 first-year MA students
had a guided tour of the 2 Willow Road house with National Trust curator Rebecca Milner and
participated in an afternoon panel at the V&A focusing on online curatorship, archives and education.
The panel was unfortunately curtailed by a fire evacuation, but each student received a reading
package and participated in an informal discussion about the project’s aims. The project brief
encouraged them to propose alternative exhibition layouts, narratives and perspectives using the
archival images and related readings as the basis for an exercise in virtual curatorship. Four students
presented PowerPoint mock-ups of their ideas, using archival images, their own Willow Road
photographs and other material related to the topic.

Lack of time and the demands of their coursework prevented them from doing a complete
assessment of the OLE experience, but the students did present some creative ideas about how the
OLE could incorporate contrasting contemporary and archival images and how the Willow Road
design narrative might unfold in an online environment. They also found examples of other sites that
could be models for future development of the OLE. However, it was apparent that these MA
students were already proficient in archival research and did not need the online exhibition
experience and Willow Road tours as an introduction to archives. This finding confirmed that we
should focus our attention on undergraduate and postgraduate practice-based students, rather than
those on design history courses.

c. Extension class students: experimenting with Flickr

In thinking about the OLE, we had considered Flickr as a possible platform, but rejected it on the
basis that copyrighted RIBA collections could not be posted on a commercial third-party (ie. Non-
CETLD) site and there was concern about asking students to set up separate Flickr accounts instead
of using the CETLD Web 2.0 site. However the “Creative Writing in Practice” extension class
taught by Rebecca Reynolds offered us the opportunity to run a very small scale Flickr test project
using the Brighton Design Archives collections.

In March 2009, archivist Catherine Moriarty presented a selection of archival material to 11 students
enrolled in the class and then 28 images and associated metadata were uploaded to the private
Design Archives Flickr pool. The group was defined as private so that students would have the
security of working in a closed environment and so that the Design Archives and CETLD staff could
measure image use without Flickr members from the general public joining. A week later, the

10
students presented their work based on the archives session and Flickr use and they were asked to
complete a short questionnaire assessing their experience with Flickr.

Figure 3 The Design Archives Flickr Group, showing images from the collection.

Like the previous Brighton group, these practice-based undergraduates were largely unfamiliar with
archives. At least four of them were Facebook users and two already had Flickr accounts. When
asked how they felt about the informal online exhibition of images in contrast to the archivist’s
classroom presentation, one commented: “I’d still prefer to physically be in contact with the objects
but if not, it’s an acceptable alternative.” This response echoes previous findings and articulates the
appreciation many students felt for contact with real archival objects as opposed to their virtual
surrogates. Nonetheless, the online experience was considered useful as a means of exploring the
archival collections and producing the creative writing work required for their class.

7. Research findings
The most important research finding was the discovery that a collaborative art and design archives-
based virtual exhibition project like ours has not been attempted elsewhere. The review of award-
winning OLE sites confirmed that few, if any, of them address an HE audience explicitly. Although
many museums and archives produce online exhibitions for virtual learners, the emphasis tends to
be on lifelong learners and primary/secondary education. University archives produce scholarly
virtual exhibitions that may have a teaching and learning benefit, though this is not always a stated
goal. Although certain projects had similar elements to our prototype OLE, such as Kingston
University’s “Trading Faces: Recollecting Slavery” site (http://www.tradingfacesonline.com/index.asp)
which used archival collections and invited user contributions, none was focused on archives, higher
education and creative practice. Janis Jefferies’ research on Goldsmith College alumni and the role

11
of textile archives in the production of new work 1 is similarly a related field of research, but it does
not deal with how online exhibitions can make the bridge between archives and practice-based
learning.

Our research has revealed the high degree of interest in the application of Web 2.0 technologies in
an academic context, an interest that is reflected across the CETLD partnership from
Community@Brighton to the RCA’s Moodle environment. Museums, libraries and archives, such as
the V&A and the Library of Congress, are increasingly involved in interacting with their audiences
through social medial like Flickr, built around communities of interest. They are also exploring how
to disseminate their collections within these social networks. Our project was therefore at the
crossroads between the trend towards participative environments in art and design education and
the desire of museums and archives to reach wider audiences through social networking
technologies.

Figure 4 National Trust curator with University of Brighton students at 2 Willow Road (Photo: J.
Devine Mejia)

1
Jefferies, Janet and May Cornet. “Crafting geometry: work in progress”. Talk presented at Archive Fever 2:
Building Material and Virtual Archives, Collections in the Making conference. Goldsmiths College, University of
London, 12 September 2008.

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8. Key issues

a. Project management and staffing

Sucessful OLEs require specialist project teams, with archivists, curators, ICT staff, Web designers, imaging
experts and others.

Our research into best practice showed that outstanding OLEs were typically designed by
professional Web design firms in collaboration with curators, archivists and education staff from the
lead institution. In some cases, they were also designed by dedicated in-house teams of
programmers, designers and imaging specialists. An array of expertise is needed to produce an
exhibition that presents archival content in an engaging and user-friendly way, with the added value
of teaching and learning components and opportunities for user participation.

In our case, the archivists and curators have the collection knowledge, digital imaging and image
cataloguing expertise, but very little free time to participate in curating an online exhibition in
addition to their very full workloads. The project leader therefore became the de facto curator, a
role not originally envisaged in the proposal, and acted as a coordinator between the partners.

We relied on the RIBA/V&A education specialists to lead student sessions and provide expertise on
interpreting the Willow Road material to student groups. The CETLD ICT staff devoted part-time
hours to testing software, developing the prototype OLE and providing technical support, in addition
to their other duties. This kind of collaboration is very rewarding, but it does create difficulties in
scheduling an additional project on top of existing work plans.

b. Collection content, copyright and digitisation

Copyright restrictions determined the potential content of the prototype online exhibition to a large extent. A
key issue in developing the OLE was the tension between the archives’ desire to protect digital images from
unauthorised use, versus our need to use them for teaching and learning purposes. Copyright policies varied
across the CETLD partnership and did not always take digital rights into account., particularly rights to
disseminate their digital holdings through third-party websites.

c. Metadata
Most partner archives do not have established protocols for exporting images and associated metadata from
their online catalogues.

There was a lack of metadata and image exporting protocols across the partnership, because very few of
them have disseminated selections from their image collections through third-party websites. Each partner
uses different cataloguing software for its collections: RIBA uses iBase, Brighton uses FilemakerPro, while the
RCA uses Extensis Portfolio and the V&A has two in-house systems (CIS and a separate archives catalogue).
While they share common metadata standards to some extent and the collections databases are managed
by highly qualified staff, it has been hard to determine how to get images and their associated data out of
each system. Cutting and pasting data from RIBApix and the University of Brighton Design Archives system
proved the only practical short-term solution, but this is far from ideal, particularly if the archives wish to
produce OLEs with other institutions in the future.

This is an area that will need special attention if the partners wish to collaborate with each other or with
other institutions in sharing metadata for online exhibitions and other ventures.

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d. Access to students and tutors
Research involving students and tutors where the lead researcher depends on voluntary participation is
particularly challenging. It was difficult to find space on the academic calendar to carry out the project and to
give students enough time to do their own work while participating in the research.

e. Designing for dyslexia

Given that up to 35% of practice-based students may have some degree of dyslexia, it is very
important to consider how this affects the design and structure of OLEs. We had hoped to
incorporate audio narration and metadata description into the prototype, but software limitations
prevented this enhancement. Likewise, the system of double passwords to prevent unauthorised
access to images was a deterrent to some students. In future, there should be a better balance
between security needs and accessibility, perhaps through another means of user validation.

Future OLEs need to allow for sound files, variable font sizes, user-defined colours schemes, dividing
of text into shorter segments to enhance readability and use of graphic elements and colour to
denote types of content. The British Dyslexia Association provides style guides to help Web
designers make their sites more accessible to all users
(http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/files/Dyslexia%20Style%20Guide.pdf).

9. Technology for the OLE: moving forward

At the start of the project, there was no technology budget, on the assumption that the CETLD Elgg
Web 2.0 site would host the OLE. Once it was evident that the blog feature could be used, but that
the Photo Gallery was inadequate, we had to seek open source solutions. This resulted in the choice
of Jalbum Fotoplayer for the prototype exhibition as it met most of our specifications and was fairly
easy for the ICT staff to learn.

With the 2009 release of Elgg however, there were significant improvements to the image
management and display features. A small test using RIBA images and some student photographs
(see figure 5) led to the conclusion that we could again use Elgg to present small-scale OLEs which
incorporate the blogging, tagging and commenting tools that users value in other sites like Flickr. As
a result, the University of Brighton Design Archives has created an archives group on Elgg’s
Community@Brighton and will be using it to share archival material for teaching and learning, as
well as to present online exhibitions.

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Figure 5 Albums of 2 Willow Road archival material and student images on Community@Brighton

10. Conclusion & recommendations

Throughout the project’s two-year life, dissemination activities offered a means of presenting work
in progress and soliciting advice from others working in related areas. A full list of papers,
presentations and publications is provided in Appendix 2. Besides confirming the unique nature of
our research, these events provided an opportunity to learn what others were doing. Almost
without exception, whether the focus was archives, museums or education, attention focused on
how users could engage more fully with collections in an online environment. The 2008 seminar
“Widening Access to the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership Collections”, hosted at the V&A,
confirmed that HE users were confused about accessing online archival resources and felt the need
for guidance and support. The range of different online catalogues and image databases is not always
easy to navigate, even for subject specialists. At the same time, users are eager to do more than
passively view collections on display. Initiatives such as the Library of Congress photography
collections on Flickr Commons are inviting the public to contribute their memories and knowledge
to enhance the understanding of archival objects (Springer 2008).

As our project was evolving towards a participatory model that encourages student involvement
with and learning from archives, several larger scale projects went online that validate our focus.
These include the National Museums Learning Online Learning Project (NMOLP) Creative Spaces
site (http://iwm.nmolp.org/creativespaces/) that links nine UK museums in a Flickr-like environment
and the Australian Powerhouse Museum’s Object of the Week blog
(http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/blog/). What these models suggest is that user
participation is the key to designing successful online exhibitions. In fact, we are in the midst of a
profound change as museums, libraries and archives become more than repositories that relate to
their audiences hierarchically, but instead evolve into “memory palaces with porous walls” (Schnapp

15
2008), ready to disseminate artifacts of the past and to invite viewers to join them in virtual
collaborations.

At the beginning of the OLE project in 2007, the expectation had been that we would find ideas of
best practice and seek to implement them in the creation of the prototype. What in fact happened is
that the literature review and survey of best practice led us away from the notion of a complex,
professionally designed site like those that had won awards and towards a simpler but more
participative concept based on sites like Flickr Commons.

In terms of recommendations to the four CETLD partner archives, the main point that should be
made is that conventional image licensing needs to be re-examined. The V&A is already offering
users non-commercial image access for personal use and the University of Brighton Design Archives
is disseminating its holdings on the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) and Archives Hub. The
assumption that institutions will lose both revenues and curatorial control if they disseminate their
collections on sites such as Flickr has proved untrue (Bray 2009, Springer 2008). Instead broader
access has benefited both the institutions and the local and global research communities.

This report recommends that the CETLD partner archives take advantage of the array of Web 2.0
channels for raising awareness of their collections and for inviting users to be partners in learning,
whether through their internal Web communities (e.g. Community@Brighton) or through public
sites such as Creative Spaces. Archives can easily be overshadowed by museum collections and Web
2.0 media offer the opportunity to highlight material previously known only to archivists and skilled
researchers.

Online exhibitions no longer need to be about creating a perfectly conceived and curator-controlled
product, but instead about offering arrays of archival objects that invite the user into a dialogue
around the artefact. There is a place for the virtual equivalent of a physical exhibition, but that is no
longer the only model for online exhibitions. Increasingly users want to enter the archive or museum
and make their own choices about what to exhibit (Cooper 2006). The design students who
participated in the OLE project were eager to learn about archives and to incorporate this learning
into their own creative practice. This is the project’s most important achievement: to show students
that archives do have relevance to contemporary practice and that an online exhibition can be a way
into these rich and diverse research collections.

16
Appendix 1: Project participants and people consulted

University of Brighton Royal Institute of British Architects

Design Archives Library & Archives

Catherine Moriarty Irena Murray
Leslie Whitworth Jane Oldfield
Sirpa Kutilainen Robert Elwall (RIBApix)
Barbara Taylor RIBA Archives at V&A
Screen Archives South East Eleanor Gawne
Frank Gray Susan Pugh
3D Design Education
Patrick Letschka Paul Snell
Jacqui Chanarin Catherine Duncumb (joint RIBA/V&A)
Second-year visual research students

Postgraduate Studies & School of Architecture V&A Museum

Christopher Pierce Archives
Learning Technology Christopher Marsden
Stan Stanier Design Drawings
Adam Bailey Abraham Thomas

Web Team
Royal College of Art Mark Hook
Library & Special Collections

Neil Parkinson Online Exhibition Advisory Group

Learning & Teaching Catherine Moriarty, University of Brighton
Chris Mitchell Neil Parkinson, Royal College of Art
History of Design Paul Snell, Royal Institute of British Architects
Jeremy Aynsley Christopher Marsden, V&A Museum
Harriet McKay National Trust, 2 Willow Road
First-year MA students Rebecca Milner

17
Appendix 2: Dissemination activities, papers and presentations

Jane Devine Mejia is the author, unless otherwise noted.

“The DesignCETL Online Exhibition Project.” Design Scholarship Seminar, CETLD, 14 May 2008

“The CETLD Online Exhibition Project.” Invited presentation at ARCLIB (UK Architecture
Librarians Group) annual conference, Liverpool, 24 July 2008.

“The Online Exhibition Project”, CETLD Newsletter, no. 7 (Summer 2008). 4-5.

“The Real and the Virtual: Online Exhibitions, Web 2.0 and Design Students.” Paper presented at the
Archives 2.0: Shifting Dialogues between Users and Archivists conference, Manchester, 20 March
2009.

“The Real and the Virtual: Online Exhibitions, Archives and Design Students.” Presentation to the
V&A Education Group, 30 March 2009.

“Online Exhibitions and Archives: A Collaborative Project for Teaching & Learning in Design.” EVA:
Electronic Visualisation and the Arts conference, London, 6 July 2009.
http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_ev09_s3paper3.pdf Presented with Sina Krause.

Jane Devine Mejia, Patrick Letschka and Marney Walker. “Online Exhibitions and Archives: A
Collaborative Project for Teaching and Learning in Design.” Presentation at the University of
Brighton Learning and Teaching conference, 10 July 2009. Paper by J. Devine Mejia and P. Letschka
to be published in the proceedings, forthcoming 2010.

“Online Exhibitions and Archives: An Immersive Experience for Design Students.” Paper presented
to the E-Learning Group for Museums, Libraries and Archives, 1 November 2009.

18
Appendix 3: Bibliography
Compiled by Heloisa Candello and Jane Devine Mejia

1. Adams, C., et al. (2001) Bringing the Curatorial Process to the Web. Museums and the Web
2001 http://www.archimuse.com/mw2001/papers/depaolo/depaola.html

2. Alexander, K. and J. Temos (2004) From Virtually Impossible to the Virtual: Building a Dream
Exhibition. Museums and the Web 2004
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/abstracts/prg_250000757.html

3. Baines, A. (2004) A Virtual Learning Environment for BA Graphic Design at Central Saint Martin's
College of Art & Design. 2nd International CLTAD Conference
http://www.arts.ac.uk/itrdu/conferences_ext/baines_cltad_barcelona.pdf

4. Beler, A., et al. (2004) The Building of Online Communities: An Approach for Learning
Organizations, with a Particular Focus on the Museum Sector. EVA 2004 London Conference -
Electronic Visualisation and the Arts http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0409/0409055.pdf

5. Bray, P. (2009) Open Licensing and the Future for Collections. Museums and the Web 2009
http://www.archimse.com/mw2009/papers/bray/bray.html

6. Breakell, S. (2008) Perspectives: Negotiating the Archive. Tate Papers

http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/08spring/breakell.shtm

7. Carreras Monfort, C. (2000) Virtual Exhibitions: Extending Museum Potential. Cultivate

Interactive http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/virtual/

8. Carreras Monfort, C. (2001) Initial Thoughts for Setting up a Virtual Exhibition International
Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting: Cultural Heritage and Technologies in the Third
Millennium. http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/ichim01_vol2/monfort.pdf

9. Cooper, J. (2006) Beyond the On-line Museum: Participatory Virtual Exhibitions. Museums and
Web 2006 http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/papers/cooper/cooper.html

10. Danks, M., K. Rodriguez-Echavarria, R. Griffiths and D. Arnold (2007) Producing Interactive
Digital Media Based Exhibitions to Engage Students with Cultural Heritage: Brighton Fishing
Museum, A Case Study. International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM07)
http://www.archimuse.com/ichim07/papers/danks/danks.html

11. Desmond, Y., et al., Artlog: Archiving the Artistic Process, in EVA 2008 London Conference. 2008:
London, UK. http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_eva08_paper7.pdf

12. Durbin, G. (2003) Using the Web for Participation and Interactivity. Museums and the Web
2003 http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/papers/durbin/durbin.html

13. Durbin, G. (2004) Learning from Amazon and eBay: User-generated Material for Museum Web
Sites. Museums and the Web 2004
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/papers/durbin/durbin.html

14. Durbin, G. (2008) Just do it! Web 2.0 as Task, not Technology. Museums and the Web 2008
http://ww.archimuse.com/mw2008/papers/durbin/durbin.html

19
15. Durbin, G. (2009) Out There: Museums and User-generated Content on Social Media Sites.
Museums and the Web 2009 http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/durbin/durbin.html

16. Gardner, J., et al., E-learning at the University of Exeter Library. EVE Everyone's Virtual Exhibition.
Sconul Focus, 2005. 35: p. 22-24.

17. Goodes, D. (2000) Thinking: Aesthetics, Architecture and Ambience. Museums and the Web
2000 http://www.archimuse.com/mw2000/papers/goodes/goodes.html

18. Greenfield, D. (2008) YouTube To MuseTube - Now We Have Web 2.0 Tools, How Do We Use
Them? . Museums and the Web 2008
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2008/abstracts/prg_335001730.html

19. Hamma, K. (2004) The Role of Museums in Online Teaching, Learning, and Research. First
Monday
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1146/1066

20. Kalfatovic, M.R., Creating a Winning Online Exhibition: a Guide for Libraries, Archives, and
Museums. 2002, Chicago: American Library Association. 118.

21. LaBar, W. (2006) Using the Internet for a New Exhibit Paradigm. Museums and the Web 2006
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/papers/labar/labar.html

22. Lester, P., Is the Virtual Exhibition the Natural Successor to the Physical? Journal of the Society of
Archivists, 2006. 27(1): p. 85-101.

23. Magoulas, G.D. and S.Y. Chen, eds. Advances in web-based education : personalized learning
environments 2006, Information Science Publishing: London.

24. Marable, B. (2004) Experience, Learning, and Research: Coordinating the Multiple Roles of On-line
Exhibitions. Museums and the Web 2004
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/papers/marable/marable.html

25. McMillan, S., Visiting the Virtual Museum Some of the Most Dynamic Museum Exhibitions are on
the Web. Communication Arts, 2004. 46(1): p. 58-67

26. Nickerson, M. (2002) Voices: bringing multimedia museum exhibits to the World Wide Web. First
Monday 7 http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/nickerson/index.html

27. Roland, C., Art Education, Collaboration and the Internet, in National Convention of the National
Art Education Association. 2003: Minneapolis, Minnesota.
28. Schnapp, J. (2008) Animating the Archive. First Monday
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2218/2020

29. Semper, R. (2006) From On-line Exhibits to On-line Experiences to On-line Community: Thirteen
Years of Science Centers Experimenting with the Web. Museums and the Web 2006
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/papers/semper/semper.html

30. Silver, D., Interfacing American Culture: The Perils and Potentials of Virtual Exhibitions. American
Quarterly 1997. 49(4): p. 825-50.

31. Springer, M., et al., For the Common Good: the Library of Congress Flickr Pilot Project. 2008,
Library of Congress: Washington, D.C. 55 p.

20
32. TASI, Using Flickr to Organise a Collection of Images. 2008, TASI: Technical Advisory Service
for Images.

33. Tatlock, J., J. Debert, and S. Lackey, Learning and Enquiry via Collections in Real and Virtual
Worlds, in EVA 2008 London Conference. 2008: London, UK. p. 240-248.

34. Thiel, S.G., Build it Once: a Basic Primer for the Creation of Online Exhibitions. 2007, Lanham,
Maryland: Scarecrow Press. 101.

35. Wetterlund, K., Flipping the Field Trip: Bringing the Art Museum to the Classroom. Theory Into
Practice, 2008. 47(2): p. 110 - 117.

21
Appendix 4:

Models of best practice: Museums & the Web award winners

22
 Museums and the Web Best Online Exhibition Award Winners 1997-2009
WEBSITE & URL INSTITUTION FUNDING DEVELOPER SOFTWARE AWARDS
SOURCE
Mongolia, The Legacy of Ghinggis Khan The Asian Art Museum of National HTML Museums & the
http://www.asianart.com/mongolia/index.html San Francisco in Endowment for the Web Best Virtual
association with the Humanities and Exhibit 1997
Ministry of Culture, National National
Museums, and National Endowment for the
Library of Mongolia Arts, USA

Virtual Museum of Arts El Pais Diario El Pais [newspaper], In-house Web2mil M&W 1998
http://muva.elpais.com.uy/ Montevideo, Uruguay, production
team (20
people)

Cyberatlas Guggenheim Museum Designer: M&W 1999

[no longer on the Web] Laura Trippi

Museo della Scienza e Politecnico di Webtalk M&W 2000: Best

Virtual Leonardo della Tecnologia "Leonardo Milano, online exhibition.
http://www.museoscienza.org/leonardo/leonard da Vinci" and Politecnico di Hypermedia Honourable
ovirtuale/default.asp Milano Open Center mention (no winner
(HOC) Director: chosen)
Prof. Paolo
Paolini
M&W 2001,
Tempus Fugit: time flies Nelson-Atkins Museum National Terra Incognita custom American
http://www.nelson- Endowment for the Productions, Association of
atkins.org/art/PastExhibitions/tempusfugit/ax/co Arts and others Austin, Texas Museums, MUSE
mmon/startup.html Award - Silver,
2001

2009 Museums and the Web Criteria for Award Winners

Best Exhibition: These sites excel in presenting and interpreting museum collections and themes, providing a rich and meaningful virtual experience. They may be a section of a larger museum Web or be a
collaborative project between institutions and/or individuals and communities associated with museums. Entirely virtual museums are eligible to participate in this category as are exhibitions of Web art and other "born
digital" collections. Quality characteristics include:

• Effective use of multiple media formats

• Innovative ways of complementing physical exhibitions or providing surrogates for physical experiences in on-line only exhibitions
• New ways of representing museum processes and structures
• Imaginative audience participation and engagement of different categories of 'visitors'

Source: http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/best/categories.html#exhibition [accessed 12 March 2010]

 Museums and the Web Best Online Exhibition Award Winners 1997-2009

WEBSITE & URL INSTITUTION FUNDING DEVELOPER SOFTWARE AWARDS

Jasenovac: Holocaust Era in Croatia 1941- U.S.Holocaust Memorial Second Story custom M&W 2002
1945 Museum Interactive
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/j Studios,
asenovac/ Portland,
Oregon
M&W 2003

Corridos Sin Fronteras The Smithsonian Institution Smithsonian Interactive custom

http://www.corridos.org Traveling Exhibition Service Knowledge
(SITES), The Chicano Inc., Charlotte,
Studies Research Center, North Carolina
University of California, Los
Angeles (CSRC) ,
Smithsonian Center for
Latino Initiatives (SCLI)

M&W 2003,
Yin Yu Tang : A Chinese Home Peabody Essex Museum Second Story custom American
http://www.pem.org/yinyutang Interactive Association of
Studios and 40- Museums, MUSE
person team Awards, Bronze,
History and Culture,
2003 + 6 others
Lewis & Clark: The National Bicentennial Missouri Historical Society Various sources, Terra Incognita M&W 2004
Exhibition including the NEH Productions custom
http://www.lewisandclarkexhibit.org
 Museums and the Web Best Online Exhibition Award Winners 1997-2009

WEBSITE & URL INSTITUTION FUNDING DEVELOPER SOFTWARE AWARDS

Cycles: African Life Through Art Indianapolis Museum of Art SBC Terra Incognita custom M&W 2005
http://www.ima-art.org/cycles/ Communications Productions

Curating the City - Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles Conservancy The Getty Hello Design M&W 2006
Los Angeles Conservancy Foundation, Ralph (Los Angeles) custom
http://www.curatingthecity.org M. Parsons and Future
Foundation Studio with
LAC 9-person
content team
Rembrandt-Caravaggio Webspecial Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Rabobank M&W 2007
Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands (sponsor)
http://www.rembrandt-
caravaggio.nl?index_en.htm

The American Image: the Photographs Maxwell Museum of National Ideum M&W 2008
of John Collier Jr. Anthropology, New Mexico Endowment for the (Corrales, New Flash, Flickr
Humanities Mexico), with mashups and
http://americanimage.unm.edu/ the College of custom
Education’s programming
Technology &
Education
Center TEC),
University of
New Mexico

Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition organized by

Brooklyn Museum Shelley Blog – WordPress; M&W 2009
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibition Bernstein,
s/click Manager of Info
Systems,
Brooklyn
Museum