The authorial perspective of the museum professionals involved in the creation of the six on- line resources selected was obtained through semi-structured interviews. Interviewees held high-level positions in their museum’s hierarchy at the time of the interview, except for one case in which the interviewee was not part of that institution anymore. Worth mentioning are the strategies used to recruit candidates for interviews. In a couple of cases, a professional con- nection between the researcher and interviewees existed prior to research. This made it easy to contact them and request a meeting for the interview. With the remaining case studies, the process was more complex. Some issues have been described in the literature on “expert in- terviews” (Flick 2010, 166-168); these include difficulties in identifying the right experts and convincing them to give an interview. Persistence and creativity was required to overcome these difficulties. For two of the case studies, the snowball method (Lewis-Beck et al. 2004) was used. Museum professionals were contacted through Twitter and listservs. Their responses were positive and the contact details of their colleagues were furnished. Web forms to con- tact the institution were used on three occasions. Through the form, the institution was asked about the person responsible for the pertinent online resource and the purpose of the interview was explained. Institutions easily provided the contact information of the relevant persons, and they referred us to the right professional. These steps, however, secured only two interviews. An additional online resource was initially selected, but, after having a conversation with the potential interviewee, participation in the study was declined. During the interviewee recruit- ment process, the interview questions were made available in advance to candidates. This not only guaranteed their agreement with the interview contents, which required consent for data collection in accordance with the University of Glasgow regulations, but also helped some par- ticipants to prepare their responses in advance.
The willingness to participate in the research and interview was in part supported by my affil- iation with academic institutions as Ph.D. candidate at the University of Glasgow and Visiting Scholar at the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University in New York City. Prior to and during the interviews, participants were informed about other art museums participating in the research and the general scope of the project. Interviewees were keen to know the time frame for completion of the research and the affiliations of other professionals participating in the same study. Consent forms (approved by the University of Glasgow School of Arts Ethics Committee) were also provided as a means to ensure that permissions for appropriate use of the data and identification of participants had been provided.
review relative to authorship matters and professional experiences and reflections were taken into consideration. The interviews provided information about online resources that portray as- pects of the process, institutional frameworks, decisions made, and conceptions existing before, during, and after the creation of the resources. Given the narratological approach of this re- search it is necessary to mention that the interviews were not conceived as narrative interviews, which would elicit narratives of topically relevant stories (Flick 2010, 180). So the aim was not to construct stories of the creation of the online resource but instead to obtain a description of online resources and the principles that guided their conception.
The formulated questions cover broad themes to allow comparison between case studies. Ad- ditionally, the broad formulation of the questions helps to formulate a definition of online re- sources as generally as possible. A semi-structured interview model was chosen over struc- tured and unstructured ones. This allowed us to have “more control over the topics of the in- terview than in unstructured interviews” and to avoid the “fixed range of responses to each question” common to structured interviews (Ayres 2008). Moreover, in forming questions, the language used avoids narratological jargon. Prior professional insider knowledge of the thesis author demonstrates that while museum practitioners produce narratives in online resources, their knowledge of narratology is not extensive.
According to these principles the interview questions were:
• From your point of view, how does this online exhibition/online publication/interactive feature take advantage of the digital medium to tell art history differently?
• What characteristics of the digital are the most and least beneficial for art museums to tell art history online?
• Where did the team look for inspiration and ideas in order to develop this online exhibi- tion/online publication/interactive feature? (e.g. other media, other museums, etc.) • What departments and what kind of professionals are involved within the production of
this online exhibition/online publication/interactive feature?
• What are the main challenges the museum face during and after the development of a highly curated multimedia exhibition or publication?
• To what extent are curators engaged in the production process? What is their role? Should curators acquire more digital skills?
• What do you think are the main differences between an online publication and an exhibi- tion?
• What should be the next developments of online exhibitions/online publications/interactive features in art museums?
Ultimately, six interviews with seven museum professionals relative to the selected online re- sources were completed between June 2016 and December 2016. All interviews presented the same set of questions, with a minor grade of customisation pertinent to each case study accord- ing to the semi-structured interview model. There was a certain level of flexibility in the order in which the questions were made. Interviewees had the printed questions in front of them dur- ing the interview for reference and sometimes they jumped from question to question when they felt it was necessary. Some interviewees anticipated and answered later questions in their responses to earlier ones. The question relative to whether an online resource is an online pub- lication or an exhibition needed more clarification that the others. Further explanation about the scope of the research was needed in order to clarify the purpose of the question.
Generally, in-person interviews were held in familiar locations to interviewees, such as their museum offices. Obtaining the University of Glasgow Principal’s early career funding for a research stay at the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University during June and July 2016 greatly facilitated the recruiting and interviewing arrangements. However, in a couple of occasions, interviews were conducted remotely via Skype when logistical arrangements for face-to-face could not be made. An audio recorder installed in a smartphone was used to store the audio during the conversation and facilitate data transcription and analysis at a later stage.