Museum Shares Collection on Facebook
As pointed out by Sheila Brennan, the Brooklyn Museum has released a Facebook application called ArtShare to display their art collection using the Developer Platform. You can add pieces of their collection that rotate on your Facebook profile page, and share them with your friends.
The WPBook plugin I wrote for Wordpress that embeds your blog into the Facebook canvas could be adapted for an Omeka plugin to display a collection in a similar fashion. In addition to retemplating the content of the site, the plugin would push FBML to a user’s profile to customize the way item appears. I don’t have immediate plans to build this - it remains on a rainy day to-do list, but if there’s interest then I could be persuaded to create this sooner than later.
If a Facebook Application seems too large of a task, Facebook recently unveiled Pages, which allow institutions, companies, and products to essentially have their own profiles. Prior to this, Facebook had banned profiles for non-individuals. For an example of a page, I set one for CHNM that you can be a “fan” of. Similar to user profiles, pages can add applications designed for them, including have a wall where visitors can leave comments. CHNM will start pulling in future blog posts using a feed application added to our profile, and maybe we’ll toss in some other apps for good measure. Maybe superpoke? Well, maybe the virtual bookshelf is more useful.
At the time of writing this, 19 museums around the world and 145 libraries have already created their own Facebook pages. It will be interesting to see if these pages replace similar groups, which I previously suggested for libraries and museums that were looking for an easy Facebook presence.
Posted in Facebook Platform, Museums, Omeka, WPBook
I'm a digital humanist and graduate of American Studies, currently working as a web developer and