Steve.Museum

Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project

Links & Resources

This section provides links and downloads for project resources, including papers and presentations, research documentation, software and software documentation, and press clippings, as well as archives of the project's listservs.

Papers and Presentations

2009

Social Tagging: Implications for Cultural Heritage Professionals
Susan Chun. A presentation in the “Discovery This Side of the Virtual Wall” panel at the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS) Annual Conference, Indianapolis, April, 2009. [presentation slides]

Steve in Action: Social Tagging Tools and Methods Applied
Susan Chun, Tiffany Leason, Rob Stein, Bruce Wyman, and Beth Harris. A Workshop at the Museums and the Web Conference, Indianapolis, April, 2009. [presentation slides]

Social Tagging and Museums: Hearing the Visitor’s Voice
Susan Chun. Speaker at the Museums in Conversation Conference (Museums Association of New York/Upstate History Alliance Annual Meeting), Tarrytown, NY, March, 2009. [presentation slides]

Exploring Social Tagging for Enhanced Access to Art Historical Materials
Susan Chun. Panelist in the Committee on Intellectual Property session at the College Art Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles, February, 2009. [presentation slides]

Studying Social Tagging and Folksonomies: A Review and Framework
Jennifer Trant. Article in the Journal of Digital Information, Volume 10, No. 1 (2009). Texas: Texas A&M University Libraries. 2009.

Tagging, Folksonomies and Art Museums: Early Experiments and Ongoing Research
Jennifer Trant. Article in the Journal of Digital Information, Volume 10, No. 1 (2009). Texas: Texas A&M University Libraries. 2009.

2008

Should You Care about Social Tagging? Findings and Recommendations from steve.museum
Robert Stein, Jennifer Trant, and Susan Chun. A presentation at the Museum Computer Network Annual Conference, Washington, DC, 2008.

Steve.Museum: Social Tagging of Art Images
Susan Chun and Daniel Starr. A presentation for the Columbia University Digital Library Seminar Series, New York, November, 2008. [Susan Chun and Daniel Starr presentation slides]

access to art museums online: a role for social tagging and folksonomy?
Jennifer Trant. Keynote address at the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Annual Meeting, Berlin, Germany, September, 2008.

Public and Professional Vocabularies: comparing user tagging with museum documents and documentation
Jennifer Trant and David Bearman. Networked Knowledge Organisation Systems and Services (NKOS) Workshop at the European Digital Libraries Meeting, September, 2008. Blog entry and presentation slides.

Introducing Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project
Susan Chun. A briefing at the New York State Arts Summit, Schenectady, September, 2008. [presentation slides]

Using steve.museum
Willy Lee and Charles Moad. A workshop at Museums and the Web, Montreal, April, 2008.

Agile Methods for Project Management
David Ellis, Michael Jenkins, Willy Lee, and Robert Stein. A presentation and paper for Museums and the Web, Montreal, April, 2008.

Steve.Museum: Social Tagging and Museum Collections
Susan Chun. A presentation at the NFAIS/Palinet Workshop, “The Future of Bibliographic Control,” Philadephia, April, 2008. [presentation slides]

The Steve Project at the Met
Billy Chi-hing Kwan. A presentation at the Visual Resources Association Annual Conference, San Diego, March, 2008. [presentation slides]

Social Tagging Museums: Research and Reflections
Jennifer Trant. A presentation at the NDAP International Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, March, 2008. [presentation slides]

Listening to Our Visitors: Steve.museum and the impact of social tagging for access to online collections
Robert Stein. A presentation at the Institute of Museum and Library Services WebWise Conference, Miami, March, 2008. [presentation slides]

Tag You're It: A Dialog Between Social Tagging and Traditional Classification
Richard Cherry. Participant in an ASIS&T workshop on social tagging, Los Angeles, February, 2008.

2007

Do You See What I See? Social Tagging and Access to Museum Collections
Douglas Hegley, Matt Morgan, Robert Stein, and Jennifer Trant. A presentation at Museum Computer Network, Chicago, November, 2007. [presentation slides]

Social Tagging and Access to Collections
Jennifer Trant. A presentation for the International Seminar Electronic Documents: Management and Preservation, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, November 6, 2007. [Podcast]

Social Tagging and Art Museums: The steve Research Project
Michael Jenkins. A presentation at the NFAIS Humanities Roundatble, New York, October, 2007. [presentation slides]

The eye of the beholder: steve.museum and social tagging of museum collections
Jennifer Trant, David Bearman and Susan Chun. A paper in International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM07): Proceedings, J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. 2007.

Cataloguing by Crowd? Folksonomies, Taxonomies, and the Social Tagging of Museum Collections
Susan Chun. A presentation at the Continuous Access to Cultural Heritage (CATCH)/Netherlands Organisation for Cultural Research (NOW) Annual Meeting, Delft, The Netherlands, September, 2007. [presentation slides]

Steve.Museum: The Adventures of Libraries 2.0
Willy Lee. A presentation for the College of St. Catherine MLIS Program, September, 2007.

Improved Access to Art? A steve update
Jennifer Trant. A presentation for the Dublin Core Annual Meeting, Singapore, August 2007.

What We Talk About When We Tag About Art
Susan Chun. Keynote presentation at the New Media Consortium’s Pachyderm Annual Conference, Dallas, September, 2007. [presentation slides]

Hearing the Visitor's Voice
Susan Chun. A presentation at the Innovative Ideas Forum, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia, April, 2007. [presentation slides]

The Visitor’s Voice: Social Tagging and the Museum Collection
Susan Chun. A presentation at the Riksförbundet Sveriges Museer (Association of Swedish Museums) Annual Meeting, Stockholm, March, 2007.

Understanding Searches of an On-line Contemporary Art Museum Catalogue
Jennifer Trant. Draft paper, released January, 2007.

Research Proposals, Reports, and Documentation

IMLS Interim Report for “Steve in Action.”
Submitted by the New Media Consortium in fulfillment of requirements for the National Leadership Grant awarded in 2008.

IMLS 2008 Grant Application
Susan Chun, Robert Stein, and the New Media Consortium. “Steve in Action: Social Tagging Tools and Methods Applied.” A proposal to the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services for a National Leadership Grant in the Advancing Digital Resources category, February, 2008.

IMLS 2008 Grant Application
Judith Klavans, Jen Golbeck, Dagobert Soergel, Susan Chun, Robert Stein, and the University of Maryland. “T3: Text, Tags, Trust.” A proposal to the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services for a National Leadership Grant in the Research and Demonstration category, February, 2008.

IMLS Final Report for “Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum.”
Submitted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and Robert Stein in fulfillment of requirements for the steve Project’s National Leadership Grant, March, 2009.

Final Research Report for “Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum.”
Jennifer Trant. An appendix to the final report submitted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art to the IMLS, March, 2009.

IMLS Interim Report for “Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum.”
Submitted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and Robert Stein in fulfillment of requirements for the steve Project’s National Leadership Grant, December, 2008.

IMLS Interim Report for “Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum.”
Submitted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and Robert Stein in fulfillment of requirements for the steve Project’s National Leadership Grant, September, 2008.

IMLS Interim Report for “Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum.”
Submitted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and Robert Stein in fulfillment of requirements for the steve Project’s National Leadership Grant, March, 2008.

IMLS One Year Report for "Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum"
Submitted by The Indianapolis Museum of Art and Robert Stein in fulfillment of requirements for the steve Project’s National Leadership Grant, October, 2007.

IMLS Interim Report for "Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum"
Submitted by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Susan Chun in fulfillment of requirements for the steve Project’s National Leadership Grant, March, 2007.

IMLS 2006 Grant Application
Jennifer Trant, Susan Chun, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Researching Social Tagging and Folksonomy in the Art Museum." A proposal to the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services for a National Leadership Grant in the Research and Demonstration category, February, 2006.

Technology Background
Brief description of development methodology and tools.

Guide to Term Review
Instructions for museum staff performing term review activities. Fall, 2007

Software and Software Documentation

Software Roadmap
High-level software development roadmap

Research Terminology
Glossary of terms used in data collection and analysis

Steve Tagger Software on SourceForge
The Steve software is distributed through SourceForge. We also keep our code here using SVN.

Tagger Software Documentation on SourceForge
Documentation for the tagger software is also available through the steve SourceForge site. Available documentation includes the steve API spec and documentation, the data specification, and install guides.

Trac
The steve software development process is managed using Trac's software tools. Visit the steve Trac site to find bug reports, development tasks, and a crude roadmap. Trac also has a nice front end to the SVN code repository if you want to look at a particular bit of code.

Steve in the News

The steve project receives frequent mentions in print and online. Here are some selected references:

Cyberarts 2008
Leopoldseder, Hannes, et al. Hatje Cantz, 2008.
Honored as an honorary mention winner in the digital communities category of Prix Ars
Electronica 2008, a profile of the steve project was featured in the catalogue of the competition.

The Indianapolis Star
September 30, 2007
“Your art online: IMA shatters storehouse model, providing cyber access to whole collection”
Feature article describing the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s leadership role in bringing
innovative online collections projects to their website and featuring the steve project.

The New York Times
March 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/arts/artsspecial/28social.html
“One Picture, 1000 Tags,” an article in the New York Times annual “Museums” section, describes the steve project and other museum social tagging initiatives.

CIO Magazine
April 1, 2006
http://www.cio.com/archive/040106/et_main.html
Len Steinbach, from the Cleveland Museum of Art, is interviewed for CIO Magazine's article on tagging. In a sidebar to the article, Len talks about one museum rationale for participating in a tagging project: "Steinbach says his museum hopes the tags will make its collections more useful to teachers. "Wouldn’t it be neat if teachers of science could find all the drawings and paintings that had the moon in it?" he says."

The New York Times Magazine
December 11, 2005
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10914F938550C728DDDAB0994DD404482
Daniel Pink mentions the steve project in the "Folksonomy" entry in the Times Magazine's annual "Year in Ideas" issue: "Now folksonomies are moving into new realms. At the Art Museum Community Cataloging Project, officials from the Guggenheim, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a half-dozen other establishments are taking a folksonomic approach to their online collections by allowing patrons to supplement the specialized lexicon of curators."

Thomas VanderWal: Off the Top
November 17, 2005
http://www.vanderwal.net/random/archiveout.php?monout=200511
Thomas VanderWal, credited with coining the term "folksonomy," suggests that the steve project “could be the most important folksonomy and tagging endeavor that is ongoing. The importance is in part their work, but the research into tagging and folksonomy is insanely helpful and seems to be the best work out there at the moment. The work proves the strong positive significance that tagging and folksonomy plays in connecting people to objects and information.”

More references are collected at http://del.icio.us/jtrant/steve.museum.

Discussion List Archives

From Fall 2005 through Spring 2008, the steve project maintained two public discussion lists--steve.discuss, a general email list for announcements, questions, and discussion, and steve.tech, a more specialized list for technical discussions. The project has begun a transition from the listserv format to project Forums. Archives of the listserv discussions for the project's public lists, along with the steve.dev, the list used by the project's development team, are available here:

steve.discuss List Archive

steve.tech List Archive

steve.dev List Archive

Project Background Archives

2006

Annual Meeting 2006 Executive Summary
Executive Summary of 2006 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2006.

2005

“Back End” Working Group report #1 from 2005 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2005.

“Back End” Working Group report #2 from 2005 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2005.

"Front End" Working Group report from 2005 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2005.

Cybercataloguer Front End Functionality
Working Group report from 2005 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2005.

Research Questions
Summary Working Group report from 2005 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2005.

Issues in Term Analysis
Working Group report from 2005 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2005.

Environmental Variables for Testing
Working Group report from 2005 Steering Committee meeting at Grindstone Island, July, 2005.

Community Cataloguing Application, Description of V1.0 Prototype
Specification for the 2005 ccat "green prototype" developed by Tom Leonhardt and the Guggenheim Museum, July, 2005.

"Steve" Glossary / Data Dictionary
July, 2005 (NOW SUPERSEDED)

"Steve" Data Model
July, 2005 (NOW SUPERSEDED)