How Web 2.0 is Changing the Nature of Museum Work
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Abstract
George Brown Goode, a former Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian in the late 1880s said that the nature of museum work is not only knowledge creation, but also knowledge dissemination, and, ultimately, learning: ‘The museum likewise must, in order to perform its proper functions, contribute to the advancement of learning through the increase as well as through the diffusion of knowledge” (1991, 337). Elaine Heumann Gurian noted that: “The use of the internet will inevitably change museums. How museums respond to multiple sources of information found on the Web and who on staff will be responsible for orchestrating this change is not yet clear. The change when it comes, will not be merely technological but at its core philosophical” (2010, 95). The catalyst for this change–and for accelerating the pace of change–is Web 2.0.
