Here are just a few examples from across the state. The Springville Museum of Art encouraged visitors to recreate their favorite artworks from the collection and post on Instagram. The BYU Museum of Art offered yoga via Facebook Livestream. Thanksgiving Point allowed the public to view their annual Tulip Festival virtually and even posted a DIY video so fans could make the traditional Tulip Julep at home while they viewed. The Park City Museum highlighted online content on their website about Dr. LeCompte who was influential in putting the community under quarantine to combat the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918.  There are many more - share your favorites in the comments below or in the UMA Facebook group. 

In the past, the purpose of online content has often been to bring visitors through the museum's physical front doors. Now museums are producing content to connect with communities unable to visit their physical spaces. This content is being used by parents to supplement school-from-home curriculum, providing connection for high risk community members unable to leave their homes, and offering a refreshing way to recharge during the pandemic. While no one is enthusiastic about the circumstances we currently find ourselves in, there can be long-term benefits gained from what museums are learning about online content that can be leveraged to help museums of any size to connect with their communities and raise funds to fulfill their missions. 

Going forward, museums that have chosen to increase online content will find additional opportunities to connect with a wider audience and increase accessibility. We all look forward to welcoming the public back into our spaces but the reality is that there always has been and will be a portion of our audience that is not able to attend in person for medical or distance reasons. The increase of online content will expand our audiences now and into the future. In the future, it will likely become common to report on both onsite and online reach. For many museums, this has the potential to double their audiences. 

Museums, with little online content, can utilize a plethora of online tools and examples currently available to begin building thoughtful, relevant content that can attract broader audiences from across the globe. This expanded reach will be an important statistic to track as museums continue to show the value of their mission in an increasing challenging fundraising climate. And with increased online presence, museums must not forget to give visitors the opportunity to support their organization - make your donation button visible and the process as painless as possible. Even small amounts will add up over time. 

With these thoughts in mind, here is a short list of tools & tips for quickly creating digital content for your museum or historical site. 

Podcasts

• Super Quick DIY Podcasting for Museums & Other Nonprofits Closed by COVID-19 by Hannah Hethmon. Her new book, Your Museum Needs a Podcast is currently available here.

Google Earth Tours

Google Earth Tours are a great way to map your storytelling especially for history museums. Consider combining a Google Earth Tour with Virtual Reality equipment for a very fun way to learn history.

• Step-by-step resource to set up a Guided Tour with Google Earth from Michigan State University
• Creating a Narrated Tour in Google Earth Desktop

Online Historic Tours

Create and link a walking tour for your city or site to your website so visitors can utilize them on their own schedule. Make sure to provide a downloadable PDF version for those without cell signal or wi-fi while on your tour path. You may also want to include Pokémon stops.

• Creating Engaging Walking Tours from Main Street America
• Seven Tips to Create a Heritage Trail by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Creating Online Exhibitions  

Curating an online exhibition uses many of the same principles of design and education as a traditional exhibition.  Using a different medium can be a blessing or a burden.  A wide variety of solutions exist for creating an online exhibit to meet the resources you already have available.  When selecting the tools you will use, please consider the following:

• Life cycle of your exhibition – Don’t make your website an orphan.  Can you commit to supporting and hosting it for a decade?  Will you only support it for one year? Either is fine - just be sure to communicate your plans.
• Your existing skills – How much support do you need in learning to use software?  Do you need extensive tutorials?  Are you accustomed to figuring it out on your own?  If you need tutorials and support, use products created for online exhibits. 

A long-trusted source of leadership in digital humanities, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, developed Omeka to help create online exhibits.  It is a great alternative for smaller historical museums and preservation sites.  There is plenty of assistance to help you work your way through the process. 

A new year, a new decade, and new chances. The Utah Museums Association wants to help you learn, connect, and advocate for museums. This year, we will be trying new formats to make it a helpful, interesting resource for you. We want to add your voices to our blog! UMA members vary from novices to museum executives and small, rural museums to large world-class institutions. Help us create content for everyone.

We are going to kick off the year with some questions for you.

• What is your favorite tool at the museum?
• What do you use constantly?
• What piece of equipment or software can you not live without (and why)?

Email us with a quick message and maybe a photo.

We will let you know what people respond in a future post.

Do you have something you want to share with us?

Blog posts can vary in length from 200 to 750 words. Some ideas….

• Tell us about a day in your job
• What exhibition or program hasbeen a great success in your museum?
• Do you have a museum hack you want to share?
• Do you have an inspiring visitor experience story?

Email us with your favorite tool or ideas for a guest post.

Learning Professional Languages

It is understood that learning a second language is much easier for young people. Learning a professional language usually takes place in an academic setting among younger people as well. Many of the people working in our small museums are older, often retired from careers in other professions. They have had no formal museum education, though they may have extensive training and experience in a totally unrelated field. My exposure to museum-speak began, not before my first experience working in a museum, or even during my first years working at a museum, but with the first Utah Museums (UMA) Conference I attended. I admit that I wasn’t always sure what was meant by terms being used, and I did become more familiar through attending more workshops and conferences. But I also was not about to look the fool by asking “what does that mean?” in the midst of a room full of  professionals.

Becoming familiar with and even using terminology is not always accompanied by a good understanding of concepts and practices. My first museum experience was being a docent, which is one museum term regularly used in the museum field. I came to realize that being a docent for many meant sitting by the door knitting and greeting visitors as they came in the museum. Through the Museum Interpretive Initiative (MII), we completed an exhibit in our museum. This term had not been used much at the museum I was at, but after the MII, it began to be used to refer to previous displays of objects which hardly fit the definition of an exhibit.

Many people come to be employed in professional museums without a degree in Museum Studies, but have other professional training closely aligned with the museum world. They may need to learn museum-speak as well, but they have had the advantage of being immersed in a professional environment where museum- speak is spoken fluently and constantly. They are also immersed in an environment where best practices are followed and can be modeled. (Admittedly some organizations do better than others) They receive some on-the-job training from mentors with knowledge of the job and the language.

Teaching Each Other

Volunteers often come to small museums because of an interest in or passion for local history. The language used in these museums is rather casual and often more in line with the historical or religious organizations that these people belong to. Not only is museum-speak not used, but many of the functions and practices the museum-speak terminology refers to are non-existent in these museums. Museum volunteers, who are generally intelligent and capable people, may find themselves in an environment where a foreign language is spoken when they come to their first UMA Conference.

After spending years doing extensive genealogical research, I thought it would be beneficial to share some significant discoveries I had made. I put a great deal of time and effort into writing an article which was published in the journal of a Genealogical Society. I was fortunate to have a wonderful mentor who was a professional genealogist and published author. She guided me through this process and made sure that my language, format, and documentation met professional standards.

I also wrote a rather lengthy comprehensive family genealogy book. Like this article, I wanted this book to be acceptable to professional genealogists, but I had another audience in mind as well – my family members, who cover a wide range of ages, education, experience, and genealogical knowledge. It was a challenge to write something that could be understood and appreciated by all.

Because our Utah Museum community consists of untrained, inexperienced volunteers as well as seasoned museum professionals, it is important that we all remember that we are addressing a widely varied audience for our articles, workshops, and UMA conference sessions. Some may bristle at the thought that they should be expected to dummy down a professional presentation. Rather than dummy down a presentation, we can use these opportunities to educate each another. We can strive to create working descriptions of museum terms and practices that everyone can access. Once we let go of the assumption that everyone should understand the language as we do and know all that we know, education within our museum community can take place. Even if we think a question we have might be perceived as stupid, there is a very good chance someone else has the same question. As we ask questions, discussions can thrive and we can foster a learning museum community.

Volunteers and others who find themselves working in the museum world have a responsibility to learn the language and make the effort to become part of this professional community. They need to work to understand and adapt principles and practices to their situations. Good mentors, those who have a thorough knowledge of museum-speak, can play a critical role in making this happen. I doubt my genealogical article would have been published without the help of my mentor. Likewise, I am sure my Spanish would be much better if I had a native-speaking tutor.

As part of our Conference 101 to orient newcomers to our 2014 UMA Conference in Cedar City, we are developing a Museum Glossary with definitions and descriptions of museum terms and practices. We welcome input from all of you in our museum community. If there are terms that were unfamiliar or confusing to you or to others in your museums, please let me know so we can address those! If you happen to have good definitions or descriptions that have been helpful, please share those as well. Feel free to email me with any input you have kstarkrm@aol.com.

As one who has made an effort to become bi-lingual, but doesn’t yet feel fluent in the new language, I hope that this Glossary and Conference 101 will be a good step toward integrating new members into our UMA community.

Karen Stark works with the Utah Humanities Council as the Museum on Main Street Program Assistant. Karen is a member of the UMA Board and is a passionate advocate for small museums incorporating engaging and professional museum practices.