Hello!
Welcome to the first in what we hope will be a more regular and informative update from all of us at The Museum Platform. We’d like to tell you about what we’ve been up to, and also what we’re going to be getting up to, as we develop the next version of TMP.
In this newsletter: A new TMP site, what we’re working on, stuff we like, and a (nearly) random object.
Any questions? Just get in touch!
From the launchpad: 90,000 images of Manchester
At the end of last year we launched a new website for Manchester Libraries’ image collection. A volunteer-led digitisation project has added 10,000 new images to their collection, and now 90,000 images are publicly available.
On the new site, as well as the familiar advanced search tools, and smooth deep-zooming, there’s a gallery-sharing feature that allows you to build your own personal collections of images.
Beyond the collections themselves, there are some beautiful examples of storytelling uncovering the histories behind photographs, such as this story of a long-lost street that’s now a pedestrian walkway through the university.
We’re not done with the Mancunians, so look out for more soon from Manchester Art Gallery and Manchester University.
In the pipeline: pipelines and other stuff
We’re spending the first quarter of this year working on version 5 of TMP. At the top of the list are improving performance and the tools for editors. But we have a few other pots on the boil…
We’re working with Bristol Museums on a project that puts TMP in the content-driving seat for in-gallery kiosks around the museum.
We’re also developing a new TMP-based mobile tour– this is an itch that Mike has been wanting to scratch for quite a while now!
Meanwhile, Jeremy is working on building a pipeline from the recently-launched Museum Data Service into The Museum Platform. This means that if you’ve already got your data in the Museum Data Service, it will be simple and straightforward to include your collections, and your images, in a TMP installation. This is something that we hope will be particularly helpful for smaller museums and organisations.
Intermission: TMP vs the 🤖Robot Army🤖
You might be aware of the current huge hype around large language models and ‘Generative AI’. One side-effect of this is an increase in the number of bots crawling websites to harvest their content, and this has slowed down some of the sites that we host for our customers.
Find out how we’re fighting back, and if you’re a customer who’d like to talk to us specifically about this, please do get in touch.
Stuff we like: Journeymaker
We like to keep our eye on what other lovely museum tech people are up to, and this recently popped up in our feed. JourneyMaker from The Art Institute of Chicago is a tool for creating a personalised tour guide for the galleries that is – gasp! – paper-based. Choose a theme and pick your artworks then print it out and fold it up like a mini-zine. It’ll keep you from looking at your phone as you make your way round the gallery.
From the collections: Leon in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1988
There are millions of records and images hosted by TMP installations, but occasionally one just stands up and grabs you by the neck. That’s the case with this image of holocaust survivor Leon Greenman, visiting Auschwitz in 1988.
It’s part of a collection that Leon Greenman gave to the Jewish Museum, which is now part of their integrated collections site. There’s a wealth of background to this image that needs to be told, and TMP is here to help the museums and people that are able to tell them.
Thanks!
Thanks for reading to the end, if you got this far. As always, we’d love to hear from you, with feedback on this newsletter, or letting us know what you want from TMP.
Til next time,
Mike, Jeremy and the TMP team.