Distributed Access to Canadian Cultural and Natural Heritage:
Learning with Museums
Kathleen Christensen
Steamship Museum
Muskoka, Ontario
Canada
Calum Ewing
Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Canada
Danielle Boily
Canadian Heritage Information Network
Hull, Quebec
Canada
Session: Distributed Access to Canadian Cultural and Natural Heritage: Learning with Museums
Tuesday, August 22, 10:15 - 11:15
This session will look at the development of and participation in the new Learning With Museums project by the Canadian museum community and CHIN. This project enables museums of all sizes and at different stages of Web connectivity to reach educators nationwide. Kathleen Christensen will speak to these as a staff person of a small museum, with her own ambitions concerning her museum's website, developing it into an educational tool that enhances the school curriculum and promotes further understanding and appreciation of her museum's unique collections, programs and interpretative themes. Danielle Boily will discuss the development of the project from CHIN's perspective.
About Kathleen Christensen:
Kathleen Christensen earned a Masters of Arts in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, U.K. (1988) and has worked in small, industrial museums for over fifteen years in both Alberta and Ontario. She is currently working at the R.M.S. Segwun Heritage Centre and Steamship Museum in Gravenhurst. This museum, while only 1400 sq ft., had over 20,000 visitors in 1999 from May to October. Most of these were RMS Segwun passengers, the oldest coal-fired, steam driven steamship in Canada. Very active with Alberta Museums Association, including a time on the Standards Committee, she moved to Ontario in 1997 and had a desire to become more active in the OMA and CHIN and willingly participated in projects, working particularly on the curriculum review.
About Danielle Boily:
Danielle Boily is the Manager, Public Programs, at the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN). Her many responsibilities include the coordination of virtual exhibitions. She joined the staff at CHIN in 1982.
Ms. Boily, an art historian, began her career with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Since joining CHIN in 1982, she has worked extensively in various areas involving the continually changing information technology tools used by Canadian museums to manage and disseminate information about their collections. Over the years, she has been responsible for computerized collections management systems operations and methods, working groups on documentation standards, customized courses on heritage information management techniques and, since 1998, she has managed the CHIN Public Programs Division.
Ms. Boily is a member of various national and international organizations and professional committees.
