Museum digital work, talked through panel by panel.
'MCN 2019 sessions recordings' gathers panels from the Museum Computer Network in which people working on the digital side of museums compare notes on copyright, representation, burnout and hiring. The mic checks stay in, and so do the frank asides.
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'MCN 2019 sessions recordings' collects sessions from MCN, the Museum Computer Network. Some were recorded in a room, where a speaker stops to ask whether the microphone is on. Others were recorded on calls, which open by thanking people for joining early or late depending on their time zone. The speakers change from recording to recording, but the concerns of museum digital teams stay constant. Copyright is one clear thread. 'GLAM Collections on Social Media: Navigating Copyright Questions' was organised by MCN with Europeana and OpenGLAM, and it includes a pointer to MCN's special interest group on IP. In it, Sarah Pearson recalls a Creative Commons review of platform terms of service and says the in-house counsel they consulted never read those terms as strictly as the question assumed. 'Copyright & Open Access for GLAMs in the age of COVID19' is about museums, galleries, libraries and archives moving online. In that session, a speaker suggests that relying more on fair use might show that the world did not end and copyright was not killed. The same speaker argues that nothing done online replaces a face-to-face encounter, which could ease the fear that digital access will cost the physical space its visitors. Representation is a second thread, and the panel speaks about it openly. In 'Increasing the Representation of Diverse Populations Online with Digital Collections', a panel drawn entirely from the Smithsonian Institution begins by pointing out the irony of its own lineup, whose members share a similar racial background. The opening speaker connects online collections to hiring practices and everyday museum work, and asks the audience for critiques. Then there is the workplace. 'How to Avoid, Handle, and Recover from Burnout in Digital Communications' includes a story about people constantly confusing the New York Historical Society with the Museum of the City of New York. The fix was to share 'on this day' posts, with one institution covering the person and the other covering the work. The speaker admits it was not a big success. Another speaker recalls a new outdoor area that was given a very long branded name and calls the name ridiculous. Hiring runs through two more sessions. 'Acing the Interview' brings together Victoria Portway of the National Air and Space Museum; Douglas Hegley, Chief Digital Officer at MIA; Dana Allen-Greel, Director of Digital Strategy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium; and Rob Lansfield, Head of IT at the Yale Center for British Art. Its advice is aimed at both candidates and hiring managers. The panelists introduce themselves with counts of the interviews they have been through, including one hiring process of six Skype sessions followed by a full eight hours in person. The 'DEEP DIVE' session on hiring content creators uses a format described in the room as new for MCN. It is neither a workshop nor a presentation: attendees sit in round clusters and work toward practical takeaways together. Start with 'Acing the Interview' for named speakers and plain advice, or go to the copyright sessions for the legal questions around sharing collections online.
Made for: Suits a listener who works in or near the digital side of museums, galleries, libraries or archives and wants peer discussion of copyright, online collections, social media and hiring rather than polished narration.
What sets it apart: It is a set of recorded conference and online sessions rather than a produced conversation show: each recording has a different panel, and the mic checks and seating directions stay in. In sessions such as 'Acing the Interview', speakers give their institutions and job titles, so each piece of advice comes from someone in a named role.
MCN's mission is to grow the digital capacity of museum professionals by connecting them to ideas, information, opportunities, proven practices, and each other. This audio collection contains recorded sessions from previous conferences, topical webinars, continuing educational lessons, and conversations between musetech professionals.
That museum image lives on whose server? Your copyright question just crossed a border.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at how COVID-era online access tested copyright instincts in cultural institutions.
Copyright questions turned practical when museums, galleries, libraries, and archives moved more of their work online during COVID-19. The review follows the pressure points around fair use, copyright exceptions, Creative Commons licensing, open access, and the rights-holder…
A clear museum tech case study on voice, accessibility, prototyping, and open-source reuse.
Museum technology feels most convincing here when it is treated as something to try, test, and improve. The episode follows Knight Foundation's arts and technology work, with Chris Barr linking the Knight Prototype Fund to journalism's shift into digital publishing before moving…
A grounded field report on giving museum site managers modular control across 26 historic locations.
Malik Davis's account of rebuilding 26 Minnesota Historical Society location websites works best as a practical look at modular design under real institutional pressure.
A practical look at how borders, servers, and public-domain differences complicate digital collections.
Digital collections turn copyright into a question of borders as much as rights. This review follows that tension across works created, published, housed, digitized, aggregated, and accessed in different jurisdictions, then grounds it in platform choices: servers in the United…
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Sarah Pearson from Creative Commons says platform terms of service and CC BY-NC can pull in different directions when museums post online.
["MCN 2019 sessions recordings episode \"Copyright & Open Access for GLAMs in the age of COVID19\" brings together Sarah Peterson of Creative Commons, Andrea Wallace of the University of Exeter, and Europeana's Junior Policy Advisor for Copyright Issues and Engagement.", "The panel splits museum rights into public-domain material, third-party works, and new digital content, then compares fair use, fair dealing, and Creative Commons licenses.", "Sarah Peterson argues that shutdown conditions strengthen fair-use arguments, while Andrea Wallace warns that museums should document experiments instead of rushing to license collections.", "Audience questions bring up the Internet Archive's National Emergency Library, a Hammarskj\u00f6ld-Hopper-Hockney virtual exhibition concept, and the archiving of social media and user-generated content."]
Jacob Kim, Kelsey Savak, and Samia Khan describe adapting the Hirschhorn Eye, a web-based image-recognition museum guide, for Smithsonian museums and the National Museum of American Diplomacy.
MCN 2019 sessions examines museum wayfinding through printed maps, directories, kiosks, mobile tools, and augmented reality.
Chad Weinert presents Collection Explorer, a Mellon-funded project for the Williams College Museum of Art, a teaching museum with about 15,000 objects and roughly 2,000 Williams College students.
Laura Mann frames the MCN 2019 sessions panel around museums moving from “publish all of it” toward content for the right audience, time, and platform.
Ryan King moderates a Smithsonian panel with Keith Wilson, Emma Stein, Liz Cheng, and Farouk Rezaei about curators building websites and in-gallery digital features with internal and external teams.
MCN 2019 sessions recordings presents the Museums and AI Network, a UK-US project that engaged 50 experts, 15 museums, six universities, and more than 200 public participants.
Juliette Venegra moderates a panel on four Andrew W.
Max Evgen, Chad Weinert, Megan Reel, and David Nunez compare digital and collaborative work at academic museums including Michigan State, Williams College, Texas Tech, and MIT.
Colin Brooks, Dan Michelson, and Bora Eshehu present digital visitor-experience projects from the Whitney Museum, the Shed, and the Met.
Kate Haley Goldman, Ely Wood, and Kathy Sigmund use six museum-data situations to explain how visitor research should move from vague interest to actionable questions.
["Malik Davis of the Minnesota Historical Society explains how 26 historic-location websites were rebuilt from a Drupal 6 template system into a modular setup.", "The talk centers on accessibility and scale: half of users were coming from mobile devices, so the team worked with a consultancy, rewrote page semantics, and added transcripts, alt tags, and text overlays.", "Davis says the first rebuild took three months, which made a 25-site rollout look like a six-year project until the team added templates, flex columns, galleries, and a modular box.", "A consultant later caught CSS being embedded in page content, and the final system let site managers update events, alerts, hours, and exhibits across Minnesota Historical Society properties."]
Chris Barr frames MCN 2019's 'Prototypes: Learning Through Making' around Knight Foundation's question of whether museum ideas are feasible, desirable, and viable before teams commit to building them.
This MCN 2019 session, 'International Copyright Law: Implications for Digital Collections and Collaborations,' argues that online collections can be globally accessible while copyright still turns on country-specific rules.
Museum professionals discuss strategies for handling brand confusion and collaborating on social media content between overlapping institutions.
A panel of museum professionals share tips and practices for both interviewees and hiring managers on how to conduct effective job interviews.
A panel from the Smithsonian discusses efforts to increase representation of diverse populations in digital museum collections, acknowledging institutional challenges.
A conference session introducing a practical deep dive on storytelling for museum professionals.