Aviation museum information systems?

I bought a portable DVD player today and we will see if it has potential for hire to museum visitors.

I think we would make fibreglass cases with external access to only the on/off switch and a hole for the IR remote control (which we would keep).

“free WIFI” is an interesting one especially when you dig into some of the technology that’s out there. As a marketing tool it’s brilliant most ask for an email address so as a business you’re able to direct market the customer you see the traffic so you know what the individual is interested in looking at so you can pitch directly at that. Most good installations have been heat mapped so your location within the access point range can be calculated. The systems will also track your unique MAC address so next time you pass the access point it knows whether you just walked by or stayed a while. Thin tin foil hat brigade would have a field day with some of the capabilities out there.

Some of the tablet and all in one PC technology available now would potentially be brilliant for museum’s when the cost comes down a little more we’re trialling some 27″ tablets at the moment which have a 4 hour battery life and all the power of a good spec PC. The smaller tablets which have a battery life that covers the opening hours would be great for key exhibits where power is an issue and can easy be secured to prevent light fingered people nicking them. The other possibility would be low cost eBook readers.

While technology is great (and how I earn a living) when budgets are small traditional printed displays are still king, I’ve never had to apply a security patch to a poster and never had to debug a nasty coding issue with a caption card 😉

It has been suggested to me that considering the age of a typical visitor to our aviation museum we need only to install induction loops for hearing aids! :highly_amused:

Going ‘back in the day’, perhaps the best such use of contemporary technology I’ve encountered was the USS Pampanito, a WW2 submarine moored on Fishermans Wharf in San Francisco. I went on board in 1995, and they gave you a sort of wand thing which worked on induction loops around the boat. As you entered each compartment you were ‘greeted’ by spoken reminiscences by people who’d actually served on her. Very moving and engaging, and allowed one to take things entirely at one’s own pace – I always found tapes a bit clunky in that regard. I don’t want to start a great argument about relative merits – this one has stuck in my memory and I’ll happily accept others will have other views.

Modern technology such as iPods and so forth have many advantages over the older devices. They are also considerably more potential use to someone who nicks one and very easy to slip in a pocket and walk out with. The wand on the Pampanito was no use whatsoever once off the boat (maybe you could use it as club to crack crabs in the nearby restaurants, but not much else); the ‘walkman’-style tape units, IIRC, were usually rather bigger than their consumer equivalents, and probably in a case with a shoulder strap – deliberately conspicuous. Do you really want to get to the point where you have to threaten to strip-search a visitor who claims to have dropped your iPod behind an immovable exhibit or whatever? Of course not. Realistically, you will have much less control over these things than you’d like. OK, there are ‘kill’ apps which can be put on the device so that if it goes missing it can be made no use whatsoever, which might be a bit of a deterrent. From the point of view of a museum operating on the proverbial shoestring budget, however, the important thing is that the device has gone, and needs replacing. You’re not going to want to do that too many times. All of this leads very firmly in the direction of allowing your visitors to use their own devices to access content. Business users are heading in that direction too – some of them reluctantly, but that is the way the world is headed. Either that, or you stick with the old technology, such as the wands or the tape units, which will be mature technology, so reliable, efficient and easy to control. Right up until you hear the dreaded phrase “There’s no call for those any more…”

Back in the days of the ‘Walkman’ Duxford and several Historic houses I visited loaned visitors a set putting in a cassette using the appropriate language. Surely a modern version (Ipod?) is relatively simple and cheaper?
My local council has for several years had a walking tour of the water front area which you can download to any device. It has verbal cues when to switch on or off just like those cassette players did all those years ago. Using a numbering system it could even cope with Duxford playing ‘musical chairs’ with the exhibits.
mmitch.

That’s probably a fair point and not being a techie I would not know if your reservations are valid, but I suspect so. A dilemma to be sure.

Thanks for those kind words charliehunt.

Yes, I know there are plenty of establishments with ‘public’ WiFi and a password posted up somewhere. From an IT techie viewpoint, I have to wonder why? If you post the password on the wall for all to see that suggests you really don’t mind who uses your connection and it would be simpler for all concerned if there was no password at all. Some other establishments (and if I remember correctly a whole city in Norway somewhere) do that. With the password on the wall the obvious implication is that whoever set it up doesn’t know how to turn the password off, hardly likely to fill one with confidence that the rest of the system is correctly and securely configured. Maybe this isn’t a problem in a cafe where there is little online behind the scenes that could be corrupted or stolen, but a museum with plenty of digital images and so forth is a different proposition. A way round this would be to have two completely separate network connections, one for the public and one for the museum staff. The problem with that is that it doubles the cost, and may well lead to the ISP reclassifying the establishment as a different sort of business incurring even greater charges…

To an outsider/visitor you have made extremely interesting and pertinent points and I can fully understand the problems you have raised. One small point I would make is that there are many examples of localised wifi outlets at a variety of establishments with the password freely available and therefore quickly able to be used at every subsequent visit. We have a farmshop and a garden centre near us offering that facility.

I have a running brief to investigate this on behalf of our museum, but with a budget approaching B****r All it’s difficult to inspire interest in potential suppliers, most of whom are really only interested in providing expensive content authoring and management systems and would rather leave the ‘sharp end’ delivery to you. Doing it entirely ourselves isn’t an option, for a variety of reasons. We have other constraints which I won’t go into here, but I reckon they mean that we’re unlikely to be ‘early adopters’ no matter how enthusiastic we get. In this regard the ‘ideal’ visitor is the owner of a tablet or smart phone with an unlimited data contract. Such things are becoming more common, but as others have pointed out some visitors (probably including some of those we as archivists really want to meet) still don’t even have a mobile phone, let alone the more sophisticated devices. We did consider it, but I really don’t like the idea of handing out tablets or whatever to visitors (realistically, it has to be in return for something valuable as hostage, which is uncomfortable). Think of the initial outlay in order to have a sufficient number; how you handle breakages; and any other potential confrontations with your visitors – easy to ruin your reputation. The expectations of anyone who can view the electronic content is that it will be readily and seamlessly available, and many of them probably expect it to be limitless so they can pick and choose, and drill down to their hearts’ content. Unrealistic, you say, but it falls to us to manage those expectations. There are perhaps three issues which need to be addressed:

1. Content.
Are we safe in the assumption that most of the owners of the smarter devices are younger and less well informed? I’d suggest this is a dodgy assumption, personally, but it’s one that many people feel comfortable with and would seem to skew the content offered to the simpler end of the spectrum. Simpler for us to prepare but perhaps likely to leave people asking ‘is that all’ – such feedback won’t endear the project to those holding the purse strings. And where do you store the content? Online storage in the Terabyte range is now comparatively cheap, but the server infrastructure needs to be sized and tuned to deliver it on demand. What will work superbly when being used by half-a-dozen people may well collapse in a heap if there are a hundred people trying to access it. A separate point that has tripped others up is of linking to external content – if you find something else on the web that is germane to your exhibits (or perhaps you want to link to something you’ve put on YouTube yourself) and want to show your visitors this too, how do you make sure they return to the right spot in your delivery once they’ve seen it? Easy to get diverted into technical complexities involving the capabilities of various devices and web browsers here, which you won’t be thanked for.

2. Copyright.
I’m sure every museum has plenty of images (and other potential online content) which are labelled ‘Joe Bloggs Collection’ or similar, not to mention a few where you don’t even have that much idea of provenance. You’ll be perfectly happy, perhaps, pinning such images up on the wall, but less so putting them online for the world to view and copy. Even where you do demonstrably own the copyright, if you’re using QR codes or any other means of letting people within the museum use their own device to view your online content, you need to consider that it will be impossible to prevent people outside the museum viewing the same content. I’m sure if you’re really clever and have deep pockets you can make it quite difficult, but you wouldn’t be able to outright prevent it. Does this affect your decisions as to the content you offer? If so, does that devalue the system to the point where it’s not worth the bother?

3. Connectivity.
How do you allow your users to connect? Two options really, either via WiFi or via the local cell network. In terms of IT security, you’re probably safer expecting the visitors to use the local cell network, but this will be slower and for many of them will incur charges they will find unacceptable. If you open your own WiFi network – you won’t want to be handing passwords out to all and sundry, so you’ll need a completely open WiFi set up – then you have to be really sure you’ve firewalled the rest of the world away from all the stuff that needs protecting. You probably also need to be prepared to completely rebuild (in software terms) your delivery servers on a regular basis. More cost and complexity for you. Then you need to think about ‘blind spots’ around the site. Not much point putting a QR code in front of an exhibit if most people have no signal at that point to be able to exploit it. What affects the signal? Metal, concrete and people – most museums will have plenty of one or other of the first two, and hope to have lots of the third! Your exhibits, your walls and your visitors can all act as lenses to focus signals or as reflectors to send them elsewhere – and visitors move around… To put this in context, in a past life I ran a project to provide wireless connectivity to improve the check-in experience in Heathrow’s Terminal 4. We put up three wireless base stations way up in the roof of the departures hall – a huge barn where the check-in desks are located. We had near-perfect coverage across the patch for some six months; it wasn’t until we came to dismantle the kit at the end of the trial that we discovered one of the bases stations had never been plugged in to the mains… We also investigated providing similar coverage airside. Similar floor area in simple terms, but lower ceilings and a hugely more complex layout. A survey (which we didn’t believe, so we repeated it, with the same results) showed that we would need 137 base stations for the same coverage on a good day, but that if it got really crowded we couldn’t even guarantee that.

All that comes across as being very negative. One can always find reasons to be (over) cautious, but I’m sure that this is a part of the future for many museums. It just needs a lot of thinking through first, and maybe some advances (or simplifications) in technology which haven’t quite arrived yet. If you can think your way through all this, then the bottom line is: Get the content level ‘too right’ and your system could be a victim of its own success. Get the content wrong, or the infrastructure wrong, and you have an expensive white elephant. You need to be Goldilocks, without understanding fully what the three bears are. Good luck!

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I dont know how far we can go with this but as Lanc35 suggests I will make enquiries about what we can do with wifi. There would not be a problem with misuse as we dont even have a broadband connection to the museum (we live at the virtual end of the earth!).

People should never under-estimate the ‘shoe-stings’ that most of the UK’s volunteer managed collections operate on! 😉

Empedia was a grant-funded scheme that was launched just before the last DCMS-cull, and that is in part why it hasn’t been expanded!!

That is of course, the ideal, TO and my impression is that you all do a very good job at NAM, but it is probably more difficult for smaller museums with fewer resources, as has been implied earlier in the thread.

Most museums will be expected to use a mix of interpretation methods; at NAM for example the QR codes are displayed alongside normal printed displays on floor standing display stands.

The App based systems can also assist some visually impaired people, by providing basic audio commentaries to help enhance their visits.

These ideas are very laudable in their way but museums shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there is still a number of older people who are not equipped with smart phones and for whom the more conventional presentation of information is still important. A declining number I’ll concede but nevertheless a number still likely to be interested in visiting.

You could set up a wifi network and allow people to watch (stream) the videos on their own devices.
You may wish to consider restricting your wifi network to certain sites to stop potential abuse of the network.. or just have your media server on the network.

If you can’t get power to the floor, is it possible to set up projectors on the ceiling to play on screens, although this seems costly.

Can you place some tablets or the DVD players next to the exhibits (but secured)? and recharge them up weekly etc?

This is a QR code based system that is being used at NAM http://empedia.info/maps/28

It has not been developed beyond its initial set-up; with NAM’s limited Wi-Fi coverage most of the time it relies on QR codes accompanying the exhibits.

There’s another App-based example on this AHL site as well http://www.visitlincolnshire.com/aviation/trails.aspx I believe this was developed by the same provider that did the Empedia system.

Hi Alex
Someone on another site gave me this:-

Maybe better to use a QR Code and/or a mobile URL? Assuming network connect to the PC? WiFi that just gets the app on the phone? Or they can use their own cell networks.

Download from a PC is a pain on these devices.

There should be some apps, or mobile web stuff just for that purpose.

Yes: http://www.mytoursapp.com

Turn your city walks, museum tours and audio guides into mobile applications.

http://www.audioconexus.com/products/tour-apps/

Developed to address the gap between proprietary multimedia guides and organizations seeking to provide multimedia experiences, Tour Apps offer an affordable alternative to expensive devices.

http://www.tourappbuilder.com

Tour Buddy offers its clients the opportunity to create and maintain their own smart phone app through our user-friendly App Builder Website that allows you to preview the app screens while you build it. You can also download your app content to our IOS Demo App and test drive it.

But I am not sure if any of those are simple enough (for us simple folks!), meanwhile portable DVD players seem pretty cheap so maybe we could hire those to visitors (maybe keeping their car keys as collateral?).

Meanwhile, lets see if anyone else comes up with interesting suggestions.

I have been thinking/wondering along the same lines, as we have similar challenges. The trick would be to develop a smart phone App. I will be interested to see how this discussion progresses…