Provincial Museum Association Meetings - Day 3

The first topic of today's discussions hit very close to home - documentation standards.  As most of you know, I tend to get a little preachy sometimes with this topic, so hearing what's new with standards was great.  I've got a long list of resources to share which I'll be doing through our Facebook page over the coming weeks.  Thank you Heather!

We also heard from CHIN staff about the latest and greatest in digital technologies, ie emerging trends.  I'm very happy to say that QR codes were at the top of the list, and have actually created a lot of buzz at these meetings.  Almost all the other provinces want to follow our lead in doing their own qr code project, or at least encourage their members to incorporate qr codes at their sites.  Yup, ANSM - trendsetters.  Sheila also talked a lot about augmented reality and rfid tags.  Very inspiring stuff, and I took a lot of notes and thought up even more stuff to add to the ever-growing project wish list.  Oh the possibilities!

Ken from Newfoundland talked about all the work they're doing with intangible cultural heritage.  This is the province to watch.  Since the provincial government decided there should be a provincial initiative to deal with ICH, they've developed guidelines and are now actively capturing information.  We got to watch a video of "running the goat" from 1981, which was pretty amazing.  I'll definitely be delving more deeply into this work.  Huge potential for Nova Scotia's museums, and something that people have been asking about fairly frequently.

David and Jim from BC talked about their new website, timetravelbc.com.  This is definitely an inspirational site.  David gave a great presentation on the process they went through in developing it, and Anita and I were definitely paying very close attention.  Lots to learn, and lots to apply to our website plans.  The BCMA is very closely aligned with BC Tourism, and has been gradually shifting their focus in this direction over the past few years.  Once again, this is a phenomenal project that we can learn a lot from.  It has been a banner year for ideas. 

Anita with Maman

We ended the day with a guided tour of the National Gallery of Canada.  Unfortunately, when you put that many museum geeks into a space they tend to wander around a lot, so as Anita put it, we were very amoeba-like in our tour.  Unfortunately we didn't get to see the new Caravaggio exhibit because it's still being installed, but it sounds like that's a show worth coming back to see.  I think my favourite pieces were the ones from home, like the painted room that used to live in Nova Scotia, which had mill-work that was practically identical to my house.  I also liked the old harbour views of Halifax; there's just something about the age of sail...
The Group of Seven works were pretty great as well.  Thanks so much to CHIN for organizing the tour, and to our lovely tour guide whose name I did not catch.

that's all for today