Report on CHIN's Years of Renewal, 2008-2011

A Renewed Suite of Online Properties

The Web has dramatically evolved since the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) first created the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC) portal in 2001, and last redesigned its institutional website in 2002. Perhaps even more significantly than the technology involved, user behaviours and expectations have changed tremendously.

To address these recent developments and prepare for the changes that are yet to come, CHIN undertook a dramatic renewal of its online properties in 2008-2011. As a result, CHIN unveiled three new properties in December 2009: a corporate website for CHIN and its network of member museums (www.rcip-chin.gc.ca), a new skills development website for heritage professionals and volunteers (www.pro.rcip-chin.gc.ca), and a colourful and dynamically engaging portal for Canadian and international audiences (museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca).

Consultations and concept testing with museum personnel guided the project from start to finish. Website architectures were completely redesigned, a new technical infrastructure was implemented, and new Web tracking software was adopted, as were the latest industry-standard best practices in statistical analysis. Given these changes, a new baseline number for visitor statistics is now being established, and it will be communicated in future reports.

New features, including a multi-faceted search engine that provides more comprehensive results; user-centered navigation; and a flexible design will help CHIN meet evolving needs for years to come.

These new online properties are strengthening our capacity to:

• reach and serve the general public and heritage workers;
• attract new users;
• facilitate the use of social media and other emerging technologies;
• increase the visibility of member museums;
• focus on members' projects and collections; and
• collectively brand Canadian museum content.

The Museum Network by the Numbers

CHIN serves as a national centre of excellence to nearly 1,500 museums and other member heritage institutions across Canada, enabling them to connect with each other and their audiences through digital technologies. Complete information about membership in CHIN can be found in the corporate website's Membership section.

Launched in late 2009, CHIN's corporate website focuses on CHIN's museum member network and also includes: access to the VMC Investment Programs and Calls for Proposals; and a log-in for member museums to update their profiles in the VMC, Artefacts Canada records, and other types of content contribution.

By the end of 2008-2009, CHIN's museum network included 1,348 member heritage institutions. One year later, that number had climbed to 1,423, and by 2010-2011 the network's membership stood at 1,476, an average gain of more than one new member per week over the preceding three years.

CHIN members have access to ongoing support by the CHIN Helpdesk through email and a 1 800 line. Questions are typically related to the contribution of digital content, the use of CHIN software, and membership benefits. During 2008-2009, 2,682 service requests were received, dropping to 2,349 in 2009-2010 and 1,800 in 2010-2011. Numerous other requests for assistance go directly to CHIN staff in other units, such as the Virtual Museum of Canada Investment Programs Secretariat.

In early 2011, CHIN undertook a survey of member institutions to assess their satisfaction with CHIN's array of professional products and services. The 2011 Member Institution Satisfaction Survey concluded with a 30.5% response rate. The number of completed responses more than doubled from the 146 answers to the last such survey in 2006 to 394 in 2011. Satisfaction with CHIN's professional websites continued to be high (88% for the corporate site and 86% for the Professional Exchange, compared with 85% in 2006). Comments suggested that the Artefacts Canada contribution tools, its searchable online database, and the Community Memories software are the products which stakeholders believe could most benefit from enhancements.

Canada's provincial and territorial museum associations play a crucial role in helping CHIN fulfil its mandate across the country. They do so by providing valuable input into CHIN's programs and services, and by championing these amongst their members. In February 2009 and March 2010, CHIN held its annual meetings with the senior management of the associations to exchange insights and plan collaborative efforts. In 2010, the Canadian Museum of Civilization graciously hosted a reception and organized a private guided tour for the visiting executive directors and learning coordinators. During their stays in the region, the visiting participants also met their counterparts at the Canadian Museums Association and the Canadian Conservation Institute.

Research Activities

One of the ways in which CHIN supports its museum member network is by overseeing an informal research network that connects thought-leaders and researchers with heritage professionals. By doing so, CHIN hopes to channel into the broader museum community the theoretical and experimental innovations taking place in Canada's larger museums, lecture halls and research labs.

As a result:

• research partners gain access to a vast and diverse network of heritage institutions with which they can undertake practical applications of their work;
• museums gain access to thought-leaders, innovative projects, and perhaps even additional R&D resources; and
• Canadians ultimately benefit from richer and more engaging heritage digital content.

CHIN conducts regular environmental scans which help define its research agenda. CHIN collaboratively explored many research topics in 2008-2011: the use of mobile technologies; the Agora Research Initiative (precursor of the current VMC Teachers' Centre); a review of potential gaps in subjects covered by the Virtual Museum of Canada; various digital content standards; and search engine optimization, to name but a few.

International research projects in which CHIN took part include the international Nomenclature Committee, and the Documentation and Conservation of Media Arts (DOCAM) Research Alliance. CHIN actively contributed to DOCAM until its conclusion in March 2010. The five-year initiative was led by the Fondation Daniel Langlois, and involved both academic and heritage institutions. Legacy resources for CHIN's member institutions include Media Art and Museums: Guidelines and Case Studies and the Cataloguing Guide for New Media Collections.

The results of CHIN's research efforts are shared through the Professional Exchange. A compilation of the most significant additions to the site in 2008-2011 can be viewed in New and Updated Online Resources.

Special Projects

CHIN and partner museum associations investigated new ways in which small-to-mid-sized museums may take advantage of multimedia content to improve visitor experiences and promote their organizations. These projects included:

Nurturing Artefacts Canada

In 1972, Canada became the first country to undertake the development of a national inventory of museum holdings. Almost 40 years later, Artefacts Canada continues to demonstrate significant growth.

By 2011, the number of contributing heritage institutions had grown to 460 heritage institutions, thereby ensuring a steady growth in the number of readily accessible museum object records and accompanying images. Over this three-year period, the number of records increased by nearly 8%, while the number of images grew by over 21%.

Images are, of course, also accessible to the public via the Virtual Museum of Canada's Image Gallery. Recently added images include costumes, music boxes, maps, and paintings.

To learn more about how heritage institutions can contribute to this national inventory, visit the Artefacts Canada sub-section in CHIN's corporate website at www.rcip-chin.gc.ca.

Collection Management Projects

CHIN works with provincial museums associations to document, manage, and digitize key artefacts in museum collections. Participating museums create enriched records that provide information about a work's background and significance and which often include images. The records are added to the Artefacts Canada database and are accessible to researchers in Canada and abroad. The benefits for museums include:

• an inventory and description of museum collections to support research;
• training on descriptive standards, digitization practices and standards, and digital preservation;
• hands-on knowledge of image editing software;
• an introduction to collections management software; and
• an understanding of the Artefacts Canada database and the importance of using it to reach wider audiences.

Over the period covered by this report, collections projects took place with the following provincial museum associations:

• Community Museums Association of Prince Edward Island
• Association of Nova Scotia Museums
• Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Ontario Museum Association
• Société des musées québécois

Young Canada Works Interns

Through the Young Canada Works (YCW) Building Careers in Heritage Program, CHIN facilitated the placement of 44 interns at CHIN member institutions. Interns assisted their employers with Web development, research and cataloguing practices related to CHIN projects such as Artefacts Canada. They also worked on the Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage (DOCAM) partnership.

The YCW program allows students and recent graduates to put their skills into practice and gain valuable work experience. Participating members, in turn, often learn new practices from the interns and are able to take part in projects in which they might not otherwise have been able to participate.

The following institutions participated in the YCW program through CHIN in 2008-2009:

• Cataraqui Archaeological Research Foundation
• Community Museums Association of Prince Edward Island
• Federation of Nova Scotian Heritage
• Grimsby Museum
• Inuit Art Foundation
• La fondation Daniel Langlois pour l'art, la science et la technologie
• McCord Museum
• Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Ontario Museum Association
• Peachland Historical Society
• Société des musées québécois
• St. Mary's Museum
• The Royal Ontario Museum
• Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia

The following institutions participated in the YCW program in 2009-2010:

• Association of Nova Scotia Museums
• Cabbagetown Regent Park Museum
• Canadian Air and Space Museum
• Community Museums Association of Prince Edward Island
• Fort McMurray Historical Society
• Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia
• La fondation Daniel Langlois pour l'art, la science et la technologie
• Literary and Historical Society of Quebec
• Musée d'art de Joliette
• Musée du Fjord
• Muséocabinet
• Museum and Collection Services, University of Alberta
• Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Museum of Health Care at Kingston
• Ontario Museums Association
• Société des musées québécois
• The Creamery Square Heritage Society
• The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
• Theatre Museum Corporation
• University of Alberta, Department of Anthropology
• Wolfville Historical Society's Randall House

The following institutions participated in the YCW program in 2010-2011:

• Canadian Air and Space Museum
• Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum
• Friends of the Farmers Bank of Rustico
• Grimsby Museum
• Literary and Historical Society of Quebec
• Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
• Musée des Filles de Jésus
• Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent
• Musée minéralogique et minier de Thedford Mines
• Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Museum Association of Nova Scotia
• Museum of Health Care at Kingston
• Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame
• Ontario Museum Association
• Peace River Museum
• Société des musées québécois
• Société historique de Madawaska
• Theatre Museum Corporation

International Activities

CHIN's focus lies at the intersection of digital technologies and modern museum practices, fields of study which are borderless by nature. In order to fully assume its responsibilities as a national centre of excellence, CHIN actively pursues and maintains working relationships with counterparts around the globe.

New and Updated Online Resources

While the design and configuration of the website defined this period, meeting the evolving needs of museum professionals and volunteers remained paramount. As a result, CHIN continued to develop and enhance its online professional development materials.

Many of the following new resources were developed in collaboration with member museums and post-secondary institutions.

In Person Professional Development

Organized under the theme of "Making the Connection: Museums, Visitors and New Technologies", CHIN's Digital Heritage Symposium was one of the highlights of 2008-2010. Ninety professionals and students from heritage institutions, universities, and associations located across Canada and abroad attended the event, which was held at the University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology on February 4 and 5, 2010. Another 75 individuals participated via webcast. Survey results, as well as anecdotal feedback and related Twitter postings, were overwhelmingly positive.

As is customary, CHIN also continued to bring its information booth, presentations and workshops to professional gatherings across the country. CHIN staff addressed questions from, and provided advice to, members on topics as varied as using social media, documenting collections, adopting standards, creating videos, contributing to Artefacts Canada, producing online heritage projects, and submitting proposals to the VMC Investment Programs.

CHIN shared its expertise with professionals and volunteers at the following conferences.

CHIN also delivered a number of presentations and workshops specifically tailored to the needs of students or recent graduates in museology. In doing so, CHIN aimed to ensure that emerging professionals enter the field aware of CHIN's resources and services.

On a final note, CHIN offered a three-day series of workshops for professionals from Canada's national museums on how to apply Web optimization strategies. The workshops took place in September 2009 at CHIN's offices in Gatineau, the Canadian Museum of Nature and the National Gallery of Canada. Topics included search engines, writing for the Web, website architecture, Web analytics, and social media. Much of the content that was shared can be found tagged under search engine optimization in the Professional Exchange.

A Renewed Portal at virtualmuseum.ca

The Virtual Museum of Canada's (VMC) two complementary activities (the operation of the VMC portal at virtualmuseum.ca, and investment in content development) have enabled Canadian heritage institutions to collectively achieve and share a remarkable online presence.

The portal, in particular, allows information on the largest and smallest museums to be found with equal ease. Moreover, it ensures their content is not left buried in never-ending search results.

As described in the first section, CHIN undertook an extensive redesign and enhancement of all its online properties over the period of 2008 to 2010. This renewal was most crucial, however, for virtualmuseum.ca. Given that the portal strives to appeal to all audiences, at home and abroad, it absolutely must succeed in meeting current user expectations.

In addition to enhancing virtualmuseum.ca's existing features, such as the secure and customizable Teachers' Centre, the redesign led to various innovations. These include the introduction of a leading-edge internal search engine that allows users to more easily and effectively find what they are seeking; and a new section titled VMC Lab. In it, users are exposed to groundbreaking and experimental digital projects underway at Canadian museums, such as the panoramic Joe Fafard at the National Gallery of Canada and the McCord Museum's 3D-enabled Air, Land, Sea: A Story about Exploration!

Following the soft launch of the renewed VMC portal on May 29, 2009, CHIN spent the remainder of that year testing and closely monitoring the portal's performance. In December, a final version of the new virtualmuseum.ca was unveiled.

That same year, CHIN's marketing team began developing a social media strategy to leverage the reach of YouTube, Flickr and other channels to more effectively engage target audiences in VMC content.

In 2010, these efforts were complemented by an emphasis on social media experimentation within VMC Labs projects. One example is Canada's Got Treasures!, which was kick-started by Canada's national museums, Library and Archives Canada and the National Capital Commission. Over 24 weeks, more than 50 national treasures were highlighted through narrated video clips and images. The initiative was promoted through social media, with Canadians and other heritage institutions being encouraged to contribute information on their chosen treasures of significance.

Also in 2010, CHIN, six Canadian museums and ten high schools released Young Curators of the Future. This VMC Labs project enabled teenagers to virtually experience the work of an art curator. Working with their area museum or gallery, participants chose one or more artworks, then conducted research, wrote texts, and created curatorial records that consisted of images, text, and audiovisual content.

By March of 2011, the VMC portal offered visitors 605 online exhibits in total, and 1480 learning objects.

Engaging Teachers and the Public Off-Line

In addition to sending a monthly VMC Teachers' Centre Newsletter to interested elementary and secondary school teachers, CHIN continued to promote museum learning resources at conferences across the country. These included events organized by the Association québécoise des utilisateurs de l'ordinateur au primaire-secondaire, Avancement pédagogique des technologies de l'information et de la communication en Atlantique, the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario, the Association of Canadian Studies, the Ontario History and Social Sciences Teachers' Association, the Alberta Teachers' Association Social Studies Council and the Association canadienne d'éducation de langue française. Throughout the summer of 2008, CHIN also maintained a booth at the Government of Canada Pavilion during Quebec City's 400th anniversary celebrations.

In 2009, the VMC was featured in The Source, a free guide that provides more than 25,000 elementary and secondary teachers with information on supplementary educational resources. The publication is published semi-annually to coincide with the beginning of each school semester.

VMC Investment Programs

The VMC investment programs were devised to meet the needs of museums of all sizes and disciplines. As a result, two components are administered. The Virtual Exhibits component is dedicated to innovative online productions and what are termed learning objects, while the Community Memories component enables smaller museums with no more than five full-time employees to produce online exhibits that explore their local history. The latter provides standard investment amounts and easy-to-use software. It also encourages participating institutions to involve community members in the development of these exhibits.

In 2009-2010, CHIN analyzed the content currently available through the VMC's Virtual Exhibits section in order to identify gaps in the VMC's ability to reflect Canada's diverse heritage and collections. Results have been shared with the VMC Editorial Board to aid its members in their deliberations. They will also be shared with CHIN member institutions to encourage museums with appropriate collections to consider submitting a proposal for consideration.

VMC Awards and Distinctions

While other VMC exhibits also merited attention and praise over the past couple of years, a handful of VMC Virtual Exhibits stood out for the impressive number of accolades they received.

Networks

Skills Development

Digital Content Development

While some of these indicators may be adjusted over time, CHIN will endeavour to be as consistent as possible in providing comparable numbers over the years to come. These performance measures will help us better understand how well we are delivering our products and services, and identify opportunities for improvement in the ways in which CHIN "enables museums to connect with each other and their audiences through digital technologies".

* To reflect industry best practices, these figures do not include non-human visits such as those made by search engine crawlers (spiders) and internal server traffic. These are now filtered out of all Web visitation statistics.