From Collection Management to Content Management in Art Documentation: The Conservator as an Editor

ABSTRACT

It has been widely acknowledged that reinstallations and re-executions of contemporary artworks substantially rely on available documentation. Especially for installations and performances it is crucial to record the artist’s intent, past iterations, and tacit knowledge involved in staging the artwork. The growing presence of contemporary artworks in museum collections increases the importance of documentation as a central focus of collection care. However, collections management systems have limitations in adequately presenting these often rich forms of documentation. Consequently, documentation required for presenting a specific complex artwork is often dispersed across multiple systems, drives, and dossiers inside various departments. In recent years, several initiatives responded to these challenges by implementing a digital platform supporting the conservation of contemporary art. Collaborative networked software such as wiki came into focus as a prominent choice for managing the related documentation. The wiki promises to integrate diverse material in one place and accommodate much-needed requirements such as multiple iterations of an artwork, relations between its elements, and multimedia content. This paper takes the case of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)’s experimental use of MediaWiki to determine whether and under what conditions a wiki is capable of supporting collection care sufficiently in terms of documenting time-based media art. The case further illustrates the consequence of adopting a content management system as knowledge base for conservation. While collections management systems are designed primarily to handle objects using forms, wikis are publishing platforms in the first place and provide a different kind of framework for artwork records. They are designed to employ text and media to compose articles. We propose to conceptualise this consequential role of conservator as a manager of content, an editor.     

Slovakian Students’ Knowledge of and Attitudes toward Biotechnology

This study examined university students’ knowledge of and attitudes (n = 378) toward biotechnology in Slovakia, a conservative country where the distribution of genetically engineered products are banned by law. We found a significant positive correlation between attitudes and the level of knowledge; however, although students enrolled in biology courses have better knowledge of biotechnology, their attitudes toward genetic engineering were similar than those of students who do not study biology. Females showed poorer knowledge and lower acceptance of genetically engineered products than did males. Overall, Slovakian students have poor knowledge and numerous misunderstandings about what genetic engineering means, which suggests that science curriculum with respect to this topic should be greatly re‐evaluated and teaching strategies should be improved accordingly.     

mLearning in a Europe‐wide network of schools

This paper presents a European Community supported project which investigated whether the use of electronic and mobile technologies in the hands of young learners might engage them in learning activities and start to change their attitudes towards learning. The mLearning system was implemented in a Europe‐wide network of 14 schools with over 500 students and 46 teachers participating in the implementation. In the paper special focus is given to three different mLearning contexts/scenarios implemented within the setting of one of the Europe‐wide network of schools.

mLearning in einem Europaweiten Netz von Schulen

Dieses Papier präsentiert ein von der Europäische Gemeinschaft unterstütztes Projekt, das erforschen sollte, ob der Gebrauch von elektronischen und mobilen Technologien in den Händen von jungen Anfängern diese im Lernen von Aktivitäten anregen und dazu führen könnte, ihre Einstellungen zum Lernen zu ändern. Das mLearning System wurde in einem Europaweiten Netz von 14 Schulen mit mehr als 500 Schülern und 46 Lehrern durchgeführt. In diesem Papier wurde der besondere Schwerpunkt auf drei unterschiedliche mLearning Zusammenhänge/Drehbücher gelegt, die innerhalb eines der europaweiten Netze von Schulen angelegt sind.

Le mLearning dans un réseau d’écoles à l’échelle européenne

Cet article présente un projet soutenu par la Communauté Européenne qui a examiné si l’usage des technologies électroniques mobiles mises entre les mains de jeunes apprenants pourrait les amener à se lancer dans des activités d’apprentissage et commencer à changer leur attitude vis‐à‐vis de l’apprentissage. Ce système de m(obile)‐learning a été mis en place dans un réseau trans‐européen de 14 écoles avec une participation active de la part de plus de 500 élèves et de 46 professeurs. Dans l’article on met un accent particulier sur trois contextes/scénarios de m‐learning mis en route au sein d’un réseau transeuropéen d’écoles.

El mLearning dentro de una red paneuropea de escuelas

Este artículo presenta un proyecto apoyado por la Comunidad Europea en el cual se investigó si el uso de tecnologías electrónicas y móviles por parte de jóvenes alumnos pudiera conducirles a lanzarse a actividades de aprendizaje y empezar a cambiar su actitud con respecto al aprendizaje. Este sistema de m‐learning fue aplicado dentro de una red transeuropea que incluye 14 escuelas con más de de 500 alumnos y 46 profesores participando en la aplicación. El artículo hace hincapie en tres diferentes contextos/guiones de mLearning aplicados dentro de una de las redes transeuropeas de escuelas.     

Interpreting the age of the ruins of St. John the Baptist's church with multivariate analysis

Two multivariate statistical tools – principal components analysis and cluster analysis – were applied to aid in the interpretation of the historical development of St. John the Baptist's church (?i?e, Slovenia). With these methods it was possible to distinguish between the types of mortar used in the Romanesque and Gothic time periods. The investigated structure is a ruin with poorly preserved fragments of historical mortars, so tracing the individual stages of its construction proved to be a demanding task. Its chemical composition was determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and the results of the content of various oxides were statistically evaluated to interpret the age of the southern wall of the church.     

Teaching in a natural history museum: what can we learn from Estonian elementary school teachers?

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Natural history museums are great places for learning new concepts and enhancing social skills and motivation. However, it is often difficult for teachers to...     

Material properties of historic parchment: A reference collection survey

Historic parchment is a complex biological material, and due to various methods of production or inks used, unknown environmental histories of objects and heterogeneous nature of animal skin, it represents a particular analytical challenge. Due to the number of variables it is likely that patterns in degradation of these historic objects can only be revealed by surveying the material properties of a significant number of real objects. In this work, a sacrificial collection of ca. 100 historic parchments (fifteenth to twentieth century) was characterized using a range of techniques available to conservation practitioners that can usefully be used to reliably and rapidly characterize parchment. We focused on micro-destructive methods, such as shrinkage temperature (T_s), as the most widely used indicator of parchment degradation. Lipid content, roughness, and ink pH were additionally measured, while a limited number of samples containing iron gall ink were also examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and SEM-EDX, to explore the distribution of ink components. Even in the absence of detailed environmental histories, it is possible to acknowledge the significance of the effect of iron gall ink and its acidity, and of lipids on parchment degradation, as measured using T_s. This research reports valuable reference data, while the collection remains accessible for further research.     

Correcting Students’ Misconceptions about Automobile Braking Distances and Video Analysis Using Interactive Program Tracker

The present paper informs about an analysis of students’ conceptions about car braking distances and also presents one of the novel methods of learning: an interactive computer program Tracker that we used to analyse the process of braking of a car. The analysis of the students’ conceptions about car braking distances consisted in obtaining their estimates of these quantities before and after watching a video recording of a car braking from various initial speeds to a complete stop and subsequent application of mathematical statistics to the obtained sets of students’ answers. The results revealed that the difference between the value of the car braking distance estimated before watching the video and the real value of this distance was not caused by a random error but by a systematic error which was due to the incorrect students’ conceptions about the car braking process. Watching the video significantly improved the students’ estimates of the car braking distance, and we show that in this case, the difference between the estimated value and the real value of the car braking distance was due only to a random error, i.e. the students’ conceptions about the car braking process were corrected. Some of the students subsequently performed video analysis of the braking processes of cars of various brands and under various conditions by means of Tracker that gave them exact knowledge of the physical quantities, which characterize a motor vehicle braking. Interviewing some of these students brought very positive reactions to this novel method of learning.     

The Croatian Collection at The New York Public Library

It is generally known that the New York Public Library (NYPL) is one of the most important repositories of Slavic intellectual and cultural documents, literature, and scholarly writings outside Europe. The specifics of the Croatian collection are not so well known, however. In an attempt to provide scholars with an overview of the NYPL's resources, this report describes the holdings of three of the Library's research divisions: the Slavic and Baltic Division, the General Research Division, and the Map Division, which are located at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. Although the divisions function autonomously and are at a physical remove from each other within the institution, their Croatian holdings are uniformly cataloged within one electronic database (CATNYP), which can be accessed via the web at http://catnyp.nypl.org.     

Quality of religious education in Croatia assessed from teachers’ perspective

The main aim of the present study was to examine the quality of religious education in Croatian primary schools when assessed from teachers’ perspective. Religious education teachers (N?=?226) rated the impact of certain factors on the existing quality of religious education in primary schools and expressed their expectations about the future status of this aspect of education. In addition, teachers rated different sources of their professional satisfaction as religious education teachers. We identified understandable latent dimensions of teachers’ opinions, expectations and satisfaction where retained dimensions are modestly interrelated. The conducted regression analyses suggest that teachers with different professional status-related personal attributes are fairly uniform in their views, expectations and satisfactions. An interesting finding of this study concerns the relationship between school-based Catholic religious education and the parish-based catechesis, where an existing relationship represents a weak source of religious education teachers’ satisfaction. This represents a valuable empirically driven insight regarding the Catholic religious education in Croatian schools with some importance to the broader context of religious education in general.