Museums are for history. Or art, but often not unless its creator is, well, history.

So it can’t be a good sign for the newspaper industry that a museum recently opened to pay it homage.

The Newseum opened in early April in Washington, DC, to mixed reviews. So even though the weak dollar means museum visits in the States are cheaper than a visit to your local friture, there might be better places for media wonks to spend their holidays.

Journalism enthusiasts interested in the future of the news industry are better to traverse up the East Coast to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which is part of Harvard Law School. In fact, on 15 May, the Boston-based Center will host Berkman@10, a two-day anniversary conference.

The 10-year old Berkman Center is a non-profit which prides itself on seeking knowledge which is not already recorded. Simply stated, it actively studies the way in which information is communicated via Internet and what this means for society and law. It hosts discussions to this end on terra firma and online.

Lest this start sounding geeky – although to Berkmanites, the word “geek” is pretty high praise – have a look around the organisation’s multi-faceted site. It is a bastion of new ideas, of forward thinking.

The Center’s weblog hosts research reports, video lectures, overviews, links to university course materials, staff blogs and a calendar of events. It even recently re-released several “classic” audio-visual presentations, including Ethan Zuckerman’s history of the digital community.

Any journalist interested in the future of the business of communication should bookmark this site, which is at the forefront of analysing and understanding the Internet. The Berkman Center is a principle participant in a startling number of high-profile projects, among them Global Voices , the Center for Citizen Media, the Opennet Initiative and stopbadware.org.

Of course, if its spoonfeeding you need, it’s possible to subscribe to a weekly e-mail bulletin with updates, the Berkman Buzz.

The Berkman Center grew out of the Center on Law and Technology, founded by professors Charles Nesson and Jonathan Zittrain. The latter is the author of the recently-released book, The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It.

After receiving a $5.4 million grant a year later, the organisation rewrote its mission statement to include the intent of researching and pioneering “development in cyberspace, a vision that, even in its early stages, was characterised by the dynamic collision of multiple fields – technology, law, business, politics, social and cultural studies.”

At present, the Center advises governments and lawmakers, NGOs, nonprofits, corporations and foundations. Its staff, fellows, professors and students are knowledge leaders on the future of the Internet and related technologies, the need for solutions in the field of intellectual property and the Internet’s impact on democracy.

And while it won’t act as a legal advisor, many of the Center’s materials are available as references and are licensed under Creative Commons – a practice which is one of many which make this Center anything but antiquated.

Published: May 6, 2008