Chapters covering on-line networks, digitizations of collections, cultural intellectual property, public access, finance, and management provide analyses of emerging information technology and the opportunities and challenges these changes present for museums.

Dive into the world of Steampunk where machines are functional pieces of art and the design is only as limited as the artist's imagination.

HOW TO BE AN EXPLORER OF THE WORLD: Portable Life Museum by Keri Smith, author of Wreck This Journal, an interactive guide for exploring and documenting the art and science of everyday life (Product Description). Korean edition translated by Shin Hyeon Rim. In Korean. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

An introduction to the wonderful world of Heath Robinson, with carefully selected drawings from throughout his illustrious career, and a lively and informative commentary.

In these visionary essays, Roy Rosenzweig charts the impact of new media on teaching, researching, preserving, presenting, and understanding history. Negotiating between the "cyberenthusiasts" who champion technological breakthroughs and the "digitalskeptics" who fear the end of traditional humanistic scholarship, Rosenzweig re-envisions academic historians' practices and professional rites while analyzing and advocating for amateur historians' achievements. While he addresses the perils of "doing history" online, Rosenzweig eloquently identifies the promises of digital work, detailing innovative strategies for powerful searches in primary and secondary sources, the increased opportunities for dialogue and debate, and, most of all, the unprecedented access afforded by the Internet. Rosenzweig draws attention to the opening up of the historical record to new voices, the availability of documents and narratives to new audiences, and the attractions of digital technologies for new and diverse practitioners. Though he celebrates digital history's democratizing influences, Rosenzweig also argues that we can only ensure the future of the past in this digital age by actively resisting the efforts of corporations to put up gates and profit from the Web.

Museum Informatics explores the sociotechnical issues that arise when people, information, and technology interact in museums. It is designed specifically to address the many challenges faced by museums, museum professionals, and museum visitors in the information society. It examines not only applications of new technologies in museums, but how advances in information science and technology have changed the very nature of museums, both what it is to work in one, and what it is to visit one. To explore these issues, Museum Informatics offers a selection of contributed chapters, written by leading museum researchers and practitioners, each covering significant themes or concepts fundamental to the study of museum informatics and providing practical examples and detailed case studies useful for museum researchers and professionals. In this way, Museum Informatics offers a fresh perspective on the sociotechnical interactions that occur between people, information, and technology in museums, presented in a format accessible to multiple audiences, including researchers, students, museum professionals, and museum visitors.

What is the relationship today between museums, galleries and learning? The Responsive Museum interrogates the thinking, policies and practices that underpin the educational role of the museum. It unravels the complex relationship of museums with their publics, and discusses today's challenges and the debates that have resulted. The highly experienced team of writers, including museum educators and directors, share their different experiences and views, and review recent research and examples of best practice. They analyse the implications of audience development and broadening public access, particularly in relation to special groups, minority communities and disabled people, and for individual self-development and different learning styles; they explore issues of public accountability and funding; discuss the merits of different evaluation tools and methodologies for measuring audience impact and needs; and assess the role of architects, designers and artists in shaping the visitor experience. The latter part of this book reviews practical management and staffing issues, and training and skills needs for the future. This book is for students, museum staff, especially those involved in education and interpretation, and senior management and policy-makers. This is a much-needed review of the relationship between museums and galleries and their users. It also offers a wealth of information and expertise to guide future strategy and practice.

The manufacture and decorative use of wire in Southern Africa traditional arts dates back to the first millennium AD. With advancements in telecommunications, a new type of wire -- multi-colored plastic-coated copper wire, often referred to as telephone wire -- came into being. Beginning in the late 1960's, Zulu night watchmen started weaving scraps of this wire around their traditional sticks. This new material was also applied to making izimbenge -- beer pot covers -- that had been traditionally made from grass and palm. Today, there is wide variety in the creative use of this wire, and, in post-Apartheid South Africa, Zulu craft artists are imbuing old forms with the colourful contemporary material of telecommunications. The result is a vibrant, distinctive new folk form gaining international attention. This is the first and only publication to document the development of this transitional art. Including more than two-hundred examples of baskets, this book traces telephone-wire weaving from its roots to its most current forms, featuring the works of the most renowned contemporary weavers. The accompanying text -- from some of the foremost experts in African art and craft -- traces the history of telephone-wire weaving as well as discussing its significance to South African culture and art history. Today telephone wire baskets are at the heart of growing markets for South African products and sustainable cultural industry in Zululand.

American wildlife biologists first began fitting animals with radio transmitters in the 1950s. By the 1980s the practice had proven so useful to scientists and nonscientists alike that it became global. Wired Wilderness is the first book-length study of the origin, evolution, use, and impact of these now-commonplace tracking technologies. Combining approaches from environmental history, the history of science and technology, animal studies, and the cultural and political history of the United States, Etienne Benson traces the radio tracking of wild animals across a wide range of institutions, regions, and species and in a variety of contexts. He explains how hunters, animal-rights activists, and other conservation-minded groups gradually turned tagging from a tool for control into a conduit for connection with wildlife. Drawing on extensive archival research, interviews with wildlife biologists and engineers, and in-depth case studies of specific conservation issues—such as the management of deer, grouse, and other game animals in the upper Midwest and the conservation of tigers and rhinoceroses in Nepal—Benson illuminates telemetry's context-dependent uses and meanings as well as commonalities among tagging practices. Wired Wilderness traces the evolution of the modern wildlife biologist’s field practices and shows how the intense interest of nonscientists at once constrained and benefited the field. Scholars of and researchers involved in wildlife management will find this history both fascinating and revealing.

In this second edition to Museum Librarianship, the author offers guidance in planning and providing information services in a museum--beginning or revitalizing the library; collection development and the bibliographic process; technical services; administration; space and equipment requirements; fundamental services; extended information services; and the information partnership between museums and their libraries. The Internet and other electronic resources are fully covered. The focus of this new edition has shifted slightly from mainly dealing with the start-up aspects to an emphasis on the goals of library and information services in a museum, and the processes through which such services can be achieved. The author's underlying goal is to help enhance and enrich the encounter of the museum-goer with enduring objects, in a time when we all seem to be assailed on every side by random noise and flickering image.