Getting Down to Business

1. Design and Development Strategies for Building a Museum iTunes U Site, and the Perplexities of Apple's Site Design iTunes U is a rapidly growing international platform for institutions interested in distributing their educational content broadly. Although there are more than 1,000 institutions contributing content to iTunes U, iTunes U is much less noisy than other platforms such as YouTube. Understanding the iTunes U environment, and audience behavior is critical to competing favorably in that space. Through an extended process of planning and investigation, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) peeled back the layers of iTunes U and developed strategies for target audiences, market segmentation, and promotion. The approach was methodical, thorough, research-based, and creative, and it followed best practices for site development from Apple Inc. and user-centered design. This presentation outlines the design and development process for creating an institutional iTunes U site and also the strategy NMNH used to position this media platform to be successful. Presenter: Name: Katie Velazco, New Media Project Specialist, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History 2. The Lowcountry Foodways Project: Deconstruction of an IMLS planning grant and the importance of regional foodways for collection development, preservation, and community building Trident Technical College and the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, a community college and a museum located in Charleston, South Carolina, successfully completed writing, submitting and implementing an IMLS National Leadership planning grant, "The Lowcountry Foodways Project," which was funded on its first submission. This accomplishment was the result of a winning concept---Lowcountry foodways---and persistence in seeking and following solid grant writing advice. Other topics include: lessons learned and upcoming changes for IMLS grants that will simplify the grant process. Outcomes of this session: 1. How to navigate the IMLS grant process from idea to implementation. 2. Regional foodways awareness and its importance for collection development, preservation, and community building. Presenters: Laura Barfield, Systems Librarian, Trident Technical College Georgette Mayo, Archivist, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture 3. Ticketing Case Study The Henry Ford working with Cortina Productions has implemented an extensive large format touch screen architecture inside their newly opened 80K square foot Driving America Exhibit. The touch screens provide multiple levels of engagement and real time 'play' access to over 20,000 digital objects including images, text, metadata, cloud searching, video, 360 internal views, audio and interactive games and simulations. Visitors can create virtual collections on demand through the use of RFID technology and smart phones. Mike Butman, CIO of the Henry Ford and Kelsey Livingston, Project Manager from Cortina Productions will discuss the deployment of this complex project. Topics include: -Tour of the technology -SQL, Web and API architectures providing anywho, anyhow digital collections access -3 phase interdependent user interface development including web, mobile and kiosk -Collections Management System, CISCO network and VMWare concurrent deployments -Project Management, Prototyping and Design techniques Presenters: Mike Butman, Chief Information Officer, IT, The Henry Ford Kelsey Livingston, Project Manager, Cortina Productions Session Chair: Rob Lancefield, Manager of Museum Information Services / Registrar of Collections, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University Presented Friday, Nov 9, 2012 at the Museum Computer Network Conference in Seattle, WA. mcn.edu