Richard Schwier

This is something that came up several times with my students too, when we started to discuss the nature of the museum. I think we should start a discussion thread that deals with:

1. purpose(s) of the collection
2. audiences for the collection

I also like your notion of how we tie it into other similar initiatives, and how we differentiate it in a way that makes sense.

Thanks, Colby!

I do hope you're right about building a community of practice. One of the things we've found in our research with instructional designers is that there is a profound sense of "local" community, but not much of a connection or identification with a larger, more distributed community.

Okay... let's break the walls of the box.

Thanks, David. I had never seen either of these. I really like the look and feel of the Tech Museum. Despite some quibbles I might have with the visual design of the Museum of Unnatural History, I love the content! They've done an excellent job of pulling together some of the topics that I seem to have an unnatural interest in!

Nice, Heather! I hadn't seen this site before, and I like the narrative feel. The idea of attaching a blog and wiki to the site is also compelling.

That's a good thing to keep in mind, Christine. Our voices, and our history, shouldn't be confined to the most prominent folks. I've been picking up the odd blog post on micro-celebrities, and it's just like you say -- there are many people who contribute enormously, but who might only be known by a smaller group of lucky people.