DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM OF MUSEUMS

"Sometimes, you have 
no choice but to innovate. Social media continually breaks down barriers between institutions and visitors.” -Rachel Gonzalez (Experience Developer, Science Museum of Minnesota)

What Rachel Gonzalez says is quite true and the best quote for this subject, so it would be better to start writing here.
Cover photograph: Visitors in the Omnitheater via Science Museum of Minnesota

Museum Ecosystem by Kajsa Hartig (Head of Museum Experience and Collections at Västernorrlands Museum)

The mapping of Kajsa Hartig is vital for museology, and even new updates can be added to the ecosystem.

“How can museums use Youtube to attract visitors and expand their access?

Youtube is the new TV today. But Youtube is actually much more than television. It is one of the largest social media platforms on the Internet, where people apply for information, entertainment and interaction. Users have only been registered in 2015, where they watched more than 70 million hours of video. This means, on the one hand, the presence of many people who volunteer for lifelong learning. Some museums have already adopted Youtube. The Field Museum in Chicago took its place on the platform with the independent science channel The Brain Scoop; Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) launched The Curiosity Show and the American Museum of Natural History with their hashtag #LearnWithMe. Moreover, we are talking about the developments that belong only to the science museums now.Sometimes you want to watch a funny video and there are plenty of them available on the platform. But what side do you turn when you want a high-quality mini documentary that you can trust? The answer is "museums" (widely). 

DIGITIZATION TRAINING VIA YOUTUBE FOR MUSEUMS

The Museum of London, for example, is a museum with elements that give clues about the city's past, starting from the Old Stone Age. For museums in the pandemic process; digitalization,Videos were regularly shared from the "Museum Development" channel about Youtube strategies about what to do and their sharing continues.

HOW TO BE SUCCESFUL VIA YOUTUBE AS A MUSEUM

- Useful ingredients (Utility)

- Continuous (Existence)

-Education *Addressing an audience open to lifelong learning, a platform that can reach all age groups.

- Community / Interactions *Supporting the process with comments, surveys, suggestions, shares from other social media accounts.

- Digital Heritage (Inheritance) *Long-term persistence and accessibility of the produced content in the same environment.

(via Simon Tanner - Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage & Vice Dean (People and Planning) Humanities, King's College London)

GLOBALIZING VIA YOUTUBE

The Digital Ecosystem in the Balanced Value Impact Model (illustrated by Alice Maggs)

Museums are trying to achieve their globalization goals as well as being active via Youtube. So what could be the most basic requirements to speed up this process?
The Answer: Common Language, English.

MAAT EXAMPLE (MAAT: MUSEUM OF ART, ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY)

MAAT is the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon. You may notice that MAAT, which produces only Portuguese content in its first videos on the Youtube platform, has begun to add English subtitles to its videos so that it can be accessed from anywhere on the Earth with the digital transformation brought by the pandemic process.

TOP 10 MUSEUMS IN YOUTUBE: (according to interactions)

1) The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), USA

2) American Museum of Natural History, USA

3) Corning Museum of Glass, USA

4) The British Museum, UK

5) The Met Museum, USA

6) Computer History Museum, USA

7) MOCA | The Museum of Contemporary Art, USA

8) The Tank Museum, UK

9) Louisiana Channel, DK (our favorite!!)

10) Getty Museum, USA

When you compare with YouTube pages of the museums from Turkey and the above list (without focusing on the contents ), the main differences stand out like:

-No design available for their Youtube Banners (Covers)
-Their "About" section is not found; video content, mission, vision, any supporters or the function of the museum information etc.
- Channel recommendations are only from their own corporate structures. There is no interaction with other culture and arts institutions.

Our museums (in Turkey) deserve to be managed with a better social media strategy. We always say that. However, many museums continue to be ignored and not taken into account in order not to prevent institutional identity. Although the use of social media is perceived as negative with the idea that it will prevent the identity of the institution, in fact, the new source of income of the museums will be provided from the social media platforms in the upcoming process.
There is benefit in renewal.