Top 5: NMPS 2016
Blog intro
Two weeks ago our design and publishing team attended the National Museum Publishing Seminar (NMPS), a biannual conference that brings together designers, publishers, editors, and others involved in the museum world to discuss new developments in the field, at the Radisson Blu in Chicago. Here are their top five highlights from the conference:
Moment 5
5. JELLY BEANS
Instagram post of blue jelly bellies
link
Reason
Light blue, dark blue, speckled blue jelly beans. Everywhere.
4. CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Reason 4
Associate Publisher Charles Kim of MoMA spoke about the museum's line of children’s books illustrating creative careers.
Moment 3
3. THE COMMA QUEEN
Video
Moment
Comma Queen Mary Norris has become well known in the publishing field for her articles and videos that address grammar and punctuation with humor. Over lunch she shared her experiences as an "okayer" at The New Yorker. Watch Norris break down the semicolon.
2. DIVERSITY TEACH-IN
ABOUT
Chicago museum web developer Nikhil Trivedi's teach-in asked attendees the provocative question: "How has your museum benefitted from slavery?" Check out Visitors of Color, a blog where people from marginalized communities share their perspectives on US museums, organized by Trivedi and Porchia Moore, a doctoral candidate in Library Science and Museum Management at the University of South Carolina.
1. Keynote
About
In his keynote address on museums as repositories of knowledge, Rob Stein, the American Alliance of Museums’ executive vice president and chief program officer, emphasized the importance of telling stories in order to make information meaningful for audiences. He drew on the coffeehouses of the 16th century as a model for information sharing today.
Other moment
HONORABLE MENTION: MoMA’s READABILITY SCORE
Instagram post on readability
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About
MoMA's Data Management Coordinator Alex Roediger introduced the Flesch Reading Ease Test that calculates what grade level is required to understand the content. To illustrate his point, he shared a humorous comparison between the museum's labels to other published items, like the iTunes user agreement, Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, exhibition reviews in The New York Times, and a variety of insurance policies.
Additional information
Discover other attendees' highlights: #nmps16.