Further information about what you can see above is available in my Museums and the Web 2013 paper.
You can view the work at http://printsandprintmaking.gov.au/explore

Feedback welcome!

Feedback from twitter

Great session this morning TY @cathstyles @beneb @alexmyoung and Ana Sanchez Laws #MAConf13 Be brave and collaborate

— Jan Molloy (@Janpcim) May 20, 2013

@beneb Interesting talk, thanks! As a user I’m often frustrated by the search query when I want to visually browse a collection #MAConf13

— Michelle Mortimer (@chelle_mortimer) May 20, 2013

@beneb offers new way ofthinking about access,viewing collection items in context , continuous navigation adds to understanding #MAConf13

— Jan Molloy (@Janpcim) May 19, 2013

If you don’t know what’s in a collection, how can you find something interesting? @beneb had some ideas…#MAConf13 twitter.com/jonnybrownbill…

— Jonny Brownbill (@jonnybrownbill) May 19, 2013

.@beneb discusses issues with the search paradigm for online cultural collections. Only works if you know what you’re looking for #MAConf13

— Museums Aust (ACT) (@MA_ACT2013) May 19, 2013

My Museums and the Web paper, Visual Exploration of Australian Prints and Printmaking, provides further information about the interfaces and my research work.

My paper proposal for Museums and the Web 2013 got accepted. Entitled Visual Exploration of Australian Prints and Printmaking it will discuss the interfaces I’ve being building with Mitchell Whitelaw for the Australian Prints collection at the National Gallery of Australia.

It examines how ideas of play can be used to help a user engage with, and enhance, interactive data visualisations. We argue that the discovery of order within complexity is a pleasurable experience – an experience one can only have if they get the opportunity to play with the data itself. We therefore suggest that there are good reasons to acknowledge the concept of play in the design of interactive interfaces.

The paper has just been published online over at the ACUADS website.

This was the first conference that I’d ever been to, and I was the first speaker on the first day. Mitchell and Sam weren’t able to be there, so I got to do the honours. The paper went down well and here are some points raised in the discussion following it:

• visualisation is about opening collections to different audiences who might not otherwise be looking at this kind of collection.
• There was concern about social connectivity – if all this research work is being done online then what happens to those unique conversations you might have with someone when you bump into them in the library (e.g. browsing the stacks and finding something fascinating that you wouldn’t have otherwise found)
• Can visualisation be used for actual research or is it strictly for playing about?
• Discovery is interesting but potentially limited – what to do with that information?

All in all, it was a good day and probably quite a good way to kick off my PhD!