What is this thing?

for the January 6th meeting

exercise

1. Take a moment (let’s say two minutes), and consider this object. What might you want to know about it? What about it strikes you, or jumps out at you? What can you know about it?

2. Turn to the person beside you. Introduce yourself. Ask your neighbour how they would describe the object. Where do your descriptions differ, and where are they the same? Why are they different, or same? Take five minutes.

3. As a pair, try to reconcile and then formalize your description. What are the different elements of your description? Take five minutes.

4. Put two of your elements on the board. As a group, what can we observe about this vocabulary?

5. Find someone with a laptop. Visit the Core Standards for Canadian Museums. Which guidance would seem to be most appropriate for our object?

6. As a group, collaboratively re-write this object’s metadata given what we’ve learned. Use this google doc. Link appropriately to other resources, examples, and so on.

you might also find this handbook, esp p56 onwards, helpful. Or not.

reflection

Take a few moments to reflect. What elements of this exercise have surprised you? What parts were hard? Why? Imagine the consequences if you scaled up …