MuseWeb is an international community consisting of professionals devoted to the field of cultural heritage. Their primary interests lies in innovating the collection, presentation, and conservation of historical assets from previous societies. Since 1997, community members from over 40 countries have been gathering to document revolutionary advancements in the field with the intention to integrate new ideas into currently existing cultural institutions. Our online platforms serve as a digital archive that publishes and presents their most recent activities, projects, and research. Sharing the most updated studies and pertinent information related to cultural heritage research is an integral part of MuseWeb. The annual conference requires presenters to submit papers containing approximately 5,000 words. The academic article will then go through a peer review process before the written piece is published online. Selected papers are published in the annual proceeding. With more than 1,400 papers currently available, our community proudly has grown to over 140,000 professionals who all have contributed to the advancement of cultural heritage research.
MuseWeb (MW) conferences convene annually in North America and Asia with an occasional “deep dives” to sites of digital innovation in the field. Our meetings and proceedings feature advanced research and exemplary applications of digital practice for cultural, natural, and scientific heritage.
Formed by leading professionals from around the world, our community has been meeting since 1997, and recognizing the best in cultural heritage innovation through the GLAMi awards (formally Best of the Web Award) annually. The conference and events have expanded internationally over the years. More than 1,200 papers from the past 20 years of MW conferences are freely accessible online and offer an unparalleled resource for museum workers, technologists, students, and researchers that grows every year.
The products of our meetings and conversations – the MW proceedings, the GLAMi archives, and the discussion Forum, along with more than 1,350 papers from the past 23 years of MW conferences are freely accessible online and offer an unparalleled resource for museum workers, technologists, students and researchers that grows every year.
The MuseWeb Program
MuseWeb offers a range of professional learning opportunities, from plenary sessions to un-conference sessions, from formal papers to informal networking, from museum project demonstrations to commercial exhibits, from professional debates to lightning talks, from how-to sessions to crit rooms, and the Best of the Web awards. Prior to the conference, there are half-day workshops and pre-conference tours. Social events include receptions each evening, and lots of refreshment breaks provide plenty of time to meet and talk with colleagues.
Who Comes to MuseWeb Conference and Event?
All kinds of people from around the world come to MuseWeb. You will find webmasters, educators, curators, librarians, designers, managers, CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, CMOs, directors, scholars, consultants, IT Directors, programmers, analysts, publishers, and developers from museums, galleries, libraries, science centers, and archives – as well as the companies, foundations, and governments that support them – at MuseWeb every year. Organizations attending range from the largest museums in the world to house museums with one full-time staff.
Reach
MuseWeb (formally Museums and the Web) is the largest museum innovation and technology conference in the world…we get about 800 attendees from more than 40 countries each year. We also have a robust online community and reach more than 80,000 community members through our email newsletter, social media, and LinkedIn networks.
Ethos
While the business structure of MuseWeb is an LLC, it is more similar to an open-source software project, some of which exist as non-profits and some which have for-profit management. In either instance, the open-source model is a decentralized development model that encourages open collaboration, meaning “any system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to create value, which they then make available to contributors and noncontributors alike. A main principle of MuseWeb is peer production, with documentation freely available to the community. MuseWeb began as a response to the limitations of running an innovation conference by committee. The expertise necessary for identifying the future of cultural heritage is very much about prioritizing innovation, embracing the bleeding edge, and looking beyond the discipline itself, where the expertise needed to run a sustainable organization tends to be conservative, excel on repeatable processes, and learn from the past.
