McGovern co-director Paul Reynolds is half way through his study tour of some of the major Museums and Galleries in London. He has been meeting the heads of online at the Tate, the British Library, British Museum, and the Imperial War Museum. Still to come is the Victoria and Albert Museum. On route he has also been to see Culture 24 in Brighton.

He reports, "Everyone has been just fantastic - very open and welcoming. My self appointed task was to ask them the same question, "By definition I can see what you are doing online. What I can't see is why you are doing it, the strategic question, and how you are doing it, the operational question. I wanted to see if there was a pattern in their responses, and what we might learn from that here in Australasia.

I was also keen to offer some of our examples of good practice - e.g. Digital NZ  and the National Library of Australia Newspaper project.'

Paul reports the responses have been very illuminating. He plans to write something up on the trip when he returns to Auckland in mid September.

Note: Jan Finnis from Culture 24 is a keynote speaker at the upcoming National Digital Forum in November in Wellington. Details here