Click the link at the very top of this page, or here, and enjoy. More fancy features to come, this is just a start.

Many thanks to Jessica Griscti, bibliographer extraordinaire, for helping to make this happen.

Suggestions? Missing books? Useful? Not useful? Comments open below.

The sculpture is artist Hans Hemmert’s “German Panther”, 2007.

More from the Museum:

Chart your own course at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City with AMNH Explorer—a new app that is part custom navigation system, part personal tour guide for the Museum’s world-famous halls. Providing turn-by-turn directions, AMNH Explorer takes visitors from the edge of the universe to the age of the dinosaurs. Choose from a variety of Museum-designed tours or create your own from a list of popular exhibits, specimens, or artifacts. AMNH Explorer also lets you share your adventures with friends and family by linking directly to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Download AMNH Explorer now and start planning your next visit or use your iPhone® or iPod® touch to discover the Museum’s must-sees from anywhere in the world.

More from the New York Times here. Links to the entire media frenzy here.

“Ceaseless World Expo!”

Denmark, completely the opposite, with a beautifully designed building and little else to “do” (not that anything more is needed):

And finally, the hauntingly beautiful, award-winning UK pavilion, the “Seed Cathedral”:

This memorable floor tile installation, from the newly-opened Schindler’s Factory in Krakow, Poland (a branch of the Historical Museum there) works for several reasons:

• it deliberately puts a offensive symbol underfoot so visitors can trample it
• it uses a simple but powerful repeating pattern over the whole floor
• visitors may not notice it right away: even better
• cost of ownership: nearly zero,  it is as low-tech as it gets

Frighteningly elegant. Read more in the New York Times. See a short video tour of the museum shortly before opening here.

And there are two more. From Barcelona, the exhibition of the book ‘PEZ DE PLATA rBARCELONA: REFLECT, RECYCLE, RESPOND’, credited to designers María de Ros of María de Ros architect (Spain) and Marcos Basso of 02_Basso Architects (Spain):

And from Portland, Oregon, the China Design Now exhibition, credited to designers Ziba and Portland Art Museum:

A great, simple video of what everyone involved in interactive installation projects knows, but sometimes can’t articulate. By the Environmental Health Clinic at NYU, led by Australia-born conceptual artist Natalie Jeremijenko. Don’t let the name confuse you, it is a provocative design studio camouflaged as a university health think-tank, also apparently sometimes called the “x Design Project”. You figure out the rest.

Liberally excerpted from the Vimeo blurb (see here for more of the blurb, which is great, and more videos, which are also great):

This video illustrates that if you hold constant the institutional context (in this case a contemporary museum), and the information presented (in this case the curatorial information); and you only vary the technological interface, you can reveal the Structures of Participation around the differing interfaces—same info, same context, but very different experience. Because of the tight coupling, it can be very difficult to make sense of what is actually changing as we change our socio-technical system. In the first case (a) the traditional public display of text on museum wall, which, because of the social convention of quiet-while-some-one-is-reading, you can be standing next to someone, but not talk to them and never hear anything of what they are thinking. Secondly, the technological shift we have all witnessed in contemporary museums as the curatorial information is presented as an audio tour, as a privatized audio environment via headset (or similar). This has the effect of synchronizing people temporally, but precludes local discussion–you can’t hear what anyone nearby is saying. In the third case the curatorial information is presented via a deliberately triggered (pull) small located speaker (the Located Sound Speaker or LSSn). This creates a shared audio context for a small group, momentarily synchronizing people spatially and temporally, and providing an opportunity for local comments and discussion.

More on the exploits of Ms. Jeremijenko in this article and YouTube video from GOOD Magazine.

In case you missed it, Robin Pogrebin’s Brooklyn Museum article in the New York Times yesterday (“Brooklyn Museum’s Populism Hasn’t Lured Crowds”), has created quite a stir. The article itself is very much worth reading, if you are someone interested in successful visitor experiences of whatever kind. Just don’t expect pat answers, the jury is still out. Perhaps indefinitely.

One of the better responses I’ve seen thus far has been from the most mysterious, anonymous, hardworking museum twitterer around, @museumnerd, who posted this reply.

So what do you think?