Staff at the National Park Service Northeast Museum Services Center faced a familiar institutional problem: highly specialized work that mattered, but remained largely invisible to the public. This case study follows their decision to experiment with blogs, Facebook, and Twitter despite limited staff time and internal skepticism. The project reframes social media as a way to explain hidden professional work, connect collections with audiences, and make institutional expertise more understandable and accessible.
Tag Archives: musesocial
Posts about museums using social media for engagement, outreach, interpretation, audience development, and public participation.
Video Netcast: Jennifer Souers Chevraux on making museums relevant in the digital age
Jennifer Souers Chevraux argues that museums can remain relevant by thinking beyond their buildings and cultivating meaningful relationships with audiences through both experience design and new media. This short video introduces her broader approach to engaging a new generation of patrons and reflects an early moment when museums were beginning to treat digital participation not simply as promotion but as part of the visitor relationship itself.
Audio Podcast: Jennifer Souers Chevraux on the role of museums on the social web
Jennifer Souers Chevraux discusses how museums and cultural organizations can use new media to deepen audience relationships rather than simply advertise programs. The conversation considers relevance, participation, experience design, and the changing expectations of a generation increasingly accustomed to interacting with organizations online. Her argument anticipates a broader shift from treating digital media as a communications add-on to seeing it as part of how institutions cultivate communities.
Nina Simon on museum participation and curating a second life in the social space
Museum 2.0 founder Nina Simon argues that the most important lesson of social media for museums is not necessarily the technology itself, but the participatory philosophy behind it. This conversation examines audience involvement, the time required to sustain online engagement, and ways museums can redesign visitor experiences around contribution and interaction even without a digital tool. It captures an early articulation of participation as an institutional practice rather than a social-media campaign.