13 thoughts on “First look at our new online collection (public alpha)

  1. Jonathan Dahan

    Congrats! The feel of being part of the web, instead of separate from shines through.

    Since this is an alpha, time to pass along some comments here (I don’t see a specific place for feedback on the site). Some of these are my observations, some are from others viewing over my shoulder.

    – “The map is really bright. Its the first thing my eye is drawn to” (on http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18804363/ )
    – random rules
    – I assume “Who’s on first” is a placeholder for the pieces missing titles?
    – Getting a 404 on http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18491031/%7B$cfg.abs_root_url%7Djavascript/webtrends.js on http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18491031/

    – Can’t wait to see people tagging stuff. I wonder what happens when artists whose medium is the internet tags things as part of a piece…

    Reply
  2. Virginia Gow

    Congrats again Seb and team. I am also excited by this for so many reasons – and particularly the reach towards a web where, as Charles Eames put it:

    “Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects… the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se…”

    Or as you put Charles Eames: http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/people/18044269/ , http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/people/18044269/objects/ , http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/people/18044269/ideas/

    Looking forward to reading the upcoming posts. Would you/Aaron/Micah be able to talk a bit more about the “Don’t / steal our pictures” (mainly in the sense of promiscuity, but also are there plans to interface more seamlessly with Art Resource)?

    Reply
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  4. lotusgreen ~

    Hiya Folks– I just came from tripping across what looks like an exciting new resource. I had googled a poster, and found an excellent copy on your site. But that’s when I became completely baffled. I tried searching by a number of the options you provide, but ended up each time with endless unillustrated lists of works where no artist is named! Shall I just assume that these are just unworked-out-yet bugs, or something I’m just personally clueless about?

    Thanks.

    Reply
    1. sebchan

      @google-cfbb7bae7d4266abdad6e9e0f17bd22e:disqus these are the result of there not being any detailed catalogue information on those objects, and often no digitised image (yet). These are the bugs, so to speak, of content that are hugely challenging to all museums. These were previously ‘hidden’ by simply not showing anything – but of course, if they aren’t shown on the network then they don’t exist.

      What is happening behind the scenes here is the clean up of all of this data on one hand, and on the other, the working up of different user interface models so that when there is no information the site ‘degrades gracefully’.

      Reply
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