Melbourne folk! In two weeks' time it's ACMI's Future of Arts, Culture & Technology Symposium (FACT 2024) https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/fact-2024/

I'm really looking forward to chatting with Keir Winesmith (NFSA) and Simon Loffler (ACMI) in our session on 'The Machines looking back at us'. See you there?

National Museum in Norway shares a prototype semantic collection search tool. Uses various models from OpenAI to generate image captions then vectors to expand searches.
Tord Nilsen: 'we are currently in a beta phase where feedback from users is crucial to evaluate and adjust the search tool' https://beta.nasjonalmuseet.no/collection/

Looking for a unique job that needs imagination and technical expertise; linking the worlds of ancient manuscripts and algorithms, historical newspapers and large language models? Make a difference at one of the world's biggest libraries

BL Labs Technical Lead, £51k, closes Dec 20 <- not Dec 22!
https://www.vercida.com/uk/jobs/bl-labs-technical-lead-british-library-st-pancras

More on this job, also Product Owner, Research Software Engineer and Test Engineer posts in the @BL_DigiSchol Universal Viewer product team, close Jan 3 https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/digital-posts-at-the-british-library/
https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2023/09/join-the-british-librarys-universal-viewer-product-team.html

The National Archives UK have a 'new way to explore the nation’s archives' and it's lovely!

https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/

It's inspired a new #UX metric for #CollectionsOnline - 'time to curiosity inspired', or more accurately 'clicks to curiosity inspired'. Three clicks in and I was marvelling at a 1904 photo from a cotton mill

'About' post https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/new-way-to-explore-the-nations-archives/

#MuseTech
HT @DavidUnderdown

Interested in 'responsible computational use of gallery, library, archive, and museum collections'? Join Us! Crafting the Vancouver Statement on Collections as Data

What and why? https://collectionsasdata.github.io/part2whole/join/

Google doc with the statement: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11PQb8rPGY0jb_KpUAszOO7ceLy_wzpEu3AqFKP0tcBI/edit

#DH2023 If you're interested in museums and social media, there's probably a national or regional conference where #MuseTech and #MuseSocial folk are sharing their successes and experiments with reaching different audiences for different purposes

Did you know that there's a list of GLAM / Digital Humanities folk on Mastodon? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1phT792K3WqoHEGrlu6R2AVzqMH69t2gV5kvGkJ59UJk/edit#gid=857195355

(A list like that might have very 'October 2022' vibes but new folk are still joining / re-migrating over from twitter so it's worth sharing again, plus there are lots of new names)

You can still add yourself https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf68Kj6KYRLOFIm7BYR6UkBH2Ob4Rmm-IdwpbbUgGaVTMJqNg/viewform

'A global approach for natural history museum collections'

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf6434

'we worked with the directors and lead science and collection staff of 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums and herbaria from 28 countries to design and complete a simple and rapid survey of their collective holdings ... We then subdivided this aggregate collection by creating a shared vocabulary for collection types and their geographic source areas'

Since hashtags in bios seem not to be indexed for search (?), here are some of mine for discoverability as we newcomers find one another here.

#Museums
#MuseTech
#DigitalStrategy
#DigitalImaging
#DigitalCollections
#Collections
#OpenAccess
#OpenContent
#MuseumData
#UIUX
#IIIF
#InfoSec
#Infrastructure
#Sustainability
#Ethnomusicology
#CulturalHeritage
#Repatriation
#Nonprofits
#Leadership
#Governance

PS: If I learn that this post is a newbie gaffe, it may disappear quietly.