PanelPrint Meet Digital, Digital Meet Print: A Matchmaking

It’s no longer print or digital, both sides are increasingly interconnected and that’s a good thing

Rainbow “Best Friends Forever” necklace set.

November 21, 2013 | MCN | Montreal

  • Session Recording (slides and audio): YouTube
  • Intro Slides: PDF
  • Audience Participation Cards: PDF

I moderated this panel around the intersections of print and digital work in museums. As part of the session, we asked audience members to fill out cards and share them back with us: “Share an example of something digital you’d like to see in print, or something in print you’d like to see digital”. There are some interesting responses, and for their trouble some won BFF necklaces and a jar of Goober PB&J.

Session Description

In a tale of two departments, there was a time not so long ago when a museum’s Publications department would publish a book and Digital Media would put a picture and description of it up in the shop section of the museum’s website, and maybe add a link to it from the exhibition page, and that was it. That was the extent of their interaction. The future for these two disciplines is instead increasingly interconnected, perhaps even interdependent.

This session will include brief presentations by each of the panelists, as well brainstorming with the audience about common interests and concerns: How is multi-platform content best defined and handled? Can our workflow be effectively and meaningfully reconfigured away from the false dichotomy of print versus digital? What do museum audiences and content generators assume about how and where print and digital information is delivered? How can we exceed or even overturn those expectations? As the line between print and digital increasingly blurs, who’s in charge, and are traditional departmental divisions still meaningful? This is an opportunity to see what other institutions are doing, to learn about publishing tools and approaches that are working or not, and to start defining your own interdisciplinary digital publishing vision for the future.

Other Speakers/Participants

  • Pamela Horn, Head of Cross-Platform Publishing, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
  • Steven Waldron, Art Director/Creative Director, Harvard Art Museums
  • Robert Weisberg, Senior Project Manager, Editorial Department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

thanks for visiting!