Robert Burns by FotoFling Scotland. Used under Creative Commons.
Sad to see that this has already past, but over the weekend of Burns Day, a twitter account called @ayrshirebard was created to post lines of Robert Burns’ poetry whenever someone donated and you got a dedication.
This is a really neat idea. From the looks of it, about 560 followed the twitter and there were about 580 updates. From the latest posts, it’s hard to tell how many were paid for exactly and how much was usual twitter noise.
I’m surprised that, even with me following some 400 people on twitter, many of them museum people, that I didn’t hear anything about this. Out of the 1950 people the ayrshirebard follows, we only share one person (Hello Ramage!).
It seems @ayrshirebard, or I should say @craigmcgill, went for following those who make up the twitterati. I follow ever single twitter with “museum” in their name. Probably wouldn’t have hurt to generate interest amongst them. If @GettyMuseum, @MuseumModernArt or @ninaksimon got hold of it, I think they could have got a lot more followers/donations.
Thanks for posting these two different sides of the story today. Everyone is finding different ways to deal with this economy and seeing both sides of the story back to back imade it so much more effective. After reeling from sadness at your posting about an American University selling its collections, it was uplifting to then read innovative ways that other institutions are tackling this situation. I completed my BFA at a university in Toronto, and it is appalling to me that an institution would stoop to this level. The foresight seems….well…not there. Discovered your blog only a week ago, and have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. keep it up!