Thinking about Museums

Intention, reflection, and onboarding & offboarding

February 29, 2020 Ed Rodley

Happy Leap Day! I’ve had a bunch of conversations lately that are all converging around the intersection of reflection and learning. I had a meeting

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Engaging with “Engagement”

December 30, 2019 Ed Rodley

Happy holidays, comrades! Here we are, on the cusp of 2020, and I want to ring out the old year by reflecting on some of

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Defining “engagement”

December 4, 2019 Ed Rodley

Imagine a typical museum visitor in the act of “being engaged” by something at the museum. What are they doing? Thinking? Feeling? Can you describe what that “engagement” looks like? How can you know that visitor is engaged as opposed to confused or looking at their email? Is engagement like pornography; hard to define but you know it when you see it? I don’t think so.

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New essay: “The distributed museum is already here–it’s just not very evenly distributed”

November 18, 2019 Ed Rodley

My chapter from “the Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites” by Hannah Lewi, Wally Smith, Dirk vom Lehn, and Steven Cooke

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On keeping your antenna up

October 23, 2019 Ed Rodley

Hello, world! It’s been awhile! Almost a month ago, I hit an important professional milestone. The job I’d come to the Peabody Essex Museum to

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How you can help

January 16, 2019 Ed Rodley

Part Three in a series of posts about the process I’m using to write the book. This one focuses on how you can be part of it.

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My writing tools

January 15, 2019 Ed Rodley

Part Two of many on the process of writing this book. This one focuses on my hard and software tools.

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The rhythms of writing a book in a digital age

January 14, 2019 Ed Rodley

Part One of many on the process of writing this book. This one focuses on three rhythms of writing research based works.

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Useful Dialectics, Part One – Transformation vs. Change

September 28, 2017 Ed Rodley

I’m very excited for MCN2017 in November! The intellectual thrill of beating a session into shape with friends old and new is like a

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“My dear Henry Junior”

November 20, 2015 Ed Rodley

On writing to the audience In my years of working in museums I’ve gotten quite a few letters from members of the public looking for

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Tracing the contours of digital transformation, Part One

September 11, 2015 Ed Rodley

I’ve been thinking a lot about transformation since writing about the Museum Full Stack. It’s been a deep rabbit hole and promises to get deeper,

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“Outsourcing” the curatorial impulse, Part One

October 29, 2014 Ed Rodley

This past Saturday, my lovely and talented wife and I made our weekly trek to the local farmers’ market in Union Square, Somerville. It is,

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