KonzeptioNerd

Miscellaneous Museum

In a recent alterbox-newsletter, Jakob Nielsen excuses England’s King George III for the unevolved information architecture of his coin collection. We learn four things, says Nielsen:

1. Alphabetical order is usually a bad way to structure items.
2. For a better structure, you need to understand the underlying dimensions of interest.
3. New info may cause you to restructure things for better access.
4. Two or more structuring principles may be better than a single one.

Alternatively, a collector might embrace the miscellaneous - like the Lucern Museum of History.

The HM Lucern is called the depot and that’s basically what it is. Items are stored in huge steel shelves, grouped, more often than not, by size and likeness, but not according to any curatorial decisions.

Visitors may stroll along the shelves or borrow a scanner from the reception. About 80 percent of the exhibts are barcoded and the scanner serves as a guide, displaying metadata (like dates) and textual information.

Those who cannot do without a little curation may stop by the stairs and select a guided walk from the wall display:

Neat, very very neat. And fun to walk through. And touch. There’s not much to touch at the Lucern Museum of History, but some pieces in the permanent exhibition are indeed hands-on. And there could be longer texts and more images on the scanners, but I’m sure they’ll be getting there.
They even have a way of dealing with the coin-problem:

Just scan the barcoded coins in the drawers to pull up enlargements and info on the computer screen. Of course, they’re still lacking tagging and categories, but with all this in place, I’m sure they’ll get there soon enough.

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