Exhibit.so – An Interesting but Underdeveloped Tool

For my exploration of a digital system I chose to work with Exhibit.so, a tool used to, in their words “create, narrate, and share exhibits”. This is a fairly accurate evaluation of the system, as that is all it does, and in my opinion, even those aspects are done poorly. I want to share a bit of my experience with Exhibit.so, possibly note some improvements the system should implement, and place it in the context of museums and how it could be adopted for their use. If you wish to take a look at my exhibit, go ahead and follow this link and enter the password LIS5590.

The Flaws of Exhibit.so

My first issue with the system comes from the start page. Instead of placing the button to create an exhibit at the top, as this is most likely what a user would look for first, the button is two thirds of the way down the page. This is bad web design, but it is far from an egregious error and does not make the service unusable, just a little clunky.

The bigger issue, and one that is unfortunately built into the program, is the reliance on IIIF manifests. This issue doesn’t stem from Exhibit.so however, but the lack of adoption of IIIF in the current culture of museum digital collections. My original plan was to use the manifest of the swords created in my previous post but while Omeka S does allow for the creation of IIIF manifests, I spent about 30 minutes trying to remember the steps to find them and was unable to do so. I consider myself a pretty tech savvy member of society and while I may have just made a silly error, I couldn’t locate the manifest. My second recourse was to use an exhibit from a popular museum. While some have implemented IIIF, many have not. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, does not have IIIF manifests for their general online collection, only the pieces hosted in their Thomas J. Watson Library Digital Collections. The IIF Consortium is made up of a mere 67 members, and among them are “global research libraries, national libraries, archives, software companies, digital agencies, and aggregators” notice that while archives are listed, museums are not. Looking through the list, only one museum is currently a member. Of course, being a member of the consortium is not the only way to take part in IIIF, but it shows a lack of interest in the system by museums that so few are present.

Despite this, I was able to find an image that served the purpose I had, which was to diagram a sword for those unacquainted with the technical terms used when discussing swords. This was the moment that the first issue with the program itself became apparent. This system is meant to be used for the narration of exhibits. This is doable, but there are no tools that allow for precision in this narration. The only thing you can currently do in Exhibit.so is zoom into certain spots on the image. The service would greatly benefit from diagraming tools such as the ability to circle certain things or point them out in some way. Despite this issue, I did feel I was able to, in general, accomplish my goal.

Using Exhibit.so in Museums

Exhibit.so has the potential to be a powerful tool for museums to use in instruction. Like other programs that allow for the viewing of an image or images in a slideshow format with zooming in on specific elements and annotation, museums could use Exhibit.so to give information on pieces in an semi-interactive way without needing the patron to be in close contact with the artifact. Studies such as this one show that interactive kiosks not only help patrons to understand and conceptualize artifacts, but in some cases allow them to self-project and empathize better than just looking at the original artifact. Exhibit.so has the potential to be used in these kiosks as a simple way to explore an object.

Outside of the museum space, Exhibit.so could be used as a virtual museum teaching space, allowing for a more immersive way to view a museum’s collection online. The benefits of virtual museums are numerous and cannot be stressed enough, especially as trustworthy learning tools. Already professors are creating exhibits in Exhibit.so as a way to teach their courses, and museums could also do this as a form of teaching and engagement.

However, my own experience should serve to show just how difficult the implementation of Exhibit.so could be for museums. If the museum does not have IIIF manifests in use already, these would need to be created for their collection, which would take time and funds. Additionally, these exhibits are much more like interactive lectures than simple digital ways to view an object, meaning a staff member would need to be sufficiently educated on the object to create these exhibits. Beyond these technical and administrative challenges, the acceptance of patrons could very likely become an issue. Studies have shown that interactive kiosks can interrupt the flow exploration of family units when some members wish to use the kiosks while others are not interested. With Exhibit.so, these disruptions would definitely take place, as not all members of a group would want to read an informative slideshow on a certain artifact.

Conclusion

The cost to value ratio of Exhibit.so is most likely too low for most museums for us to see widespread use of the tool. While a fun and interesting pedagogical aid, it is simply too simple and clunky in its current form for it to be valuable enough to institutions to place time and money into it. Instead, professors will most likely continue to be the main users of the program, as a way to teach about the artifacts already on display at these museums. However, if IIIF manifests became more commonplace and some updates were made to the tool, Exhibit.so could serve a purpose in both the physical and virtual space of a museum, though as with all educational multimedia objects in a physical museum space, issues of disruption must be addressed and weighed when discussing implementation.