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What is a virtual museum?
A virtual museum is a collection of digitized images, sound files, documents, and data of historical, scientific, or cultural significance available through electronic media. Unlike traditional museums, virtual museums don't house actual objects, missing the permanence and unique qualities of physical museums.
Virtual museums often come from institutional museums and depend on their collections. They utilize the Internet's hyperlinking and multimedia to gather digitized representations from various sources, allowing users to study and enjoy the material. They offer virtual exhibitions and access databases, and they can be a tool for comparative study and research.
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How is a virtual museum different from a traditional museum?
A virtual museum is a collection of data like images, sound, and text of cultural, scientific, or historical interest, accessed via electronic media. Unlike traditional museums, virtual museums don't house actual objects, so they lack the permanence and unique qualities of physical museums.
However, virtual museums use the hyperlinking and multimedia capabilities of the Internet to bring together digitized representations from multiple sources. This creates a powerful tool for research and comparative study, as the user determines how to engage with the material. Many virtual museums have their origins in the websites of traditional museums.
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What technology is used in virtual museums?
Virtual museums use various technologies to create an immersive experience. They utilize digitally recorded images, sound files, text documents, and other data of historical, scientific, or cultural interest that are accessed through electronic media.
The hyperlinking and multimedia capabilities of the Internet allow digitized representations to be brought together from multiple sources. Virtual museums also take advantage of easy access, loose structure, interactivity, and multimedia capabilities. Some offer online tours of key exhibits.
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What kinds of exhibits can you find in a virtual museum?
Virtual museums feature digitized representations of historical, scientific, or cultural items through electronic media. Unlike traditional museums, they don't house actual objects.
Virtual exhibits include online tours, access to collections databases like the French Ministry of Culture's Joconde database, and collections of widely dispersed objects such as ArtServe's classical art and architecture.
Virtual museums utilize the Internet's capabilities, offering features such as hyperlinking, multimedia, and interactivity. Examples include EXPO, with archaeological, architectural, historical, and paleontological exhibits, and the WebMuseum, showcasing Western art with images, text, and music.
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How do virtual museums help people learn about art, history, or science?
Virtual museums are collections of digital images, sound, text, and data of cultural, scientific, or historical significance accessed via electronic media. They enhance learning and research through hyperlinking and multimedia, offering tools for comparative study and subject exploration.
Virtual museums utilize the internet's capabilities to provide easy access, interactivity, and multimedia content. They offer online tours of exhibits and access to databases, such as France's Joconde database, which contains information on artworks from over 60 French museums. Some institutions also compile dispersed objects, like ArtServe at the Australian National University, which is a collection of classical art and architecture images for art history students.
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What are some advantages and challenges of virtual museums compared to in-person museums?
Virtual museums offer unique advantages and challenges compared to traditional in-person museums.
Advantages
Virtual museums provide easy access, interactivity, and multimedia capabilities, allowing users to explore digitized representations from various sources. They can be powerful tools for comparative study and research, offering benefits in material selection for detailed study.
Challenges
Unlike traditional museums, virtual museums lack the permanence and unique qualities of housing actual objects. They heavily rely on the collections of institutional museums. Contemporary challenges for museums include engaging a growing audience through the Internet while balancing the need to remain innovative and relevant.
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virtual museum, a collection of digitally recorded images, sound files, text documents, and other data of historical, scientific, or cultural interest that are accessed through electronic media. A virtual museum does not house actual objects and therefore lacks the permanence and unique qualities of a museum in the institutional definition of the term. In fact, most virtual museums are sponsored by institutional museums and are directly dependent upon their existing collections. Nevertheless, through the hyperlinking and multimedia capabilities of electronic information mediaâparticularly the World Wide Web (a hypermedia system carried on the Internet)âdigitized representations can be brought together from multiple sources for enjoyment and study in a manner largely determined by the individual user. Virtual museums of this type can be a powerful tool for comparative study and for research into a particular subject, material, or locality.
Many virtual museums have their roots in âWeb sitesâ or âhome pagesâ maintained on the Internet by museums in order to disseminate information about themselves. Museumsâ home pages usually contain administrative information such as opening hours, policies, and services. Some include a floor plan of the museumâas does, for instance, the Web site of the British Museum. Virtual museums in this limited sense join the exhibition, the guidebook, the photograph, and the videotape as a medium for promoting and interpreting a museum and its collection.
Extensive sites offering âvirtual exhibitionsââthat is, online tours of certain key exhibitsâare maintained by some institutions, such as the Science Museum in London and the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley. Still other museums or administrative organs provide access to databases on collectionsâfor instance, the Joconde database, maintained by the French Ministry of Culture, from which information can be obtained on important works of art held by more than 60 French museums.
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Several institutions collect representations of widely dispersed objects that may or may not be found in museums. One of the pioneers in this field is ArtServe, a collection of thousands of images, particularly of classical art and architecture, made available by the Australian National University for teachers and students of art history. Virtual museums in this sense offer the student many benefitsânot least in the selection of material for detailed studyâeven though final recourse may be necessary to the original material.
Virtual museums in the fullest sense of the term consist of collections that take full advantage of the easy access, loose structure, hyperlinking capacity, interactivity, and multimedia capabilities of the World Wide Web. Indeed, some early electronic collections were used to promote Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, when it was introduced in 1993. One of the first was EXPO, which originated in 1993 with an online guide to artifacts from the Vatican Library that were on display at the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. EXPO has been maintained since then on servers outside of the Library of Congress network and has been expanded into several âpavilionsââincluding archaeological, architectural, historical, and paleontological exhibitsâwhich have been donated by several organizations. Another pioneer is the WebMuseum, an exhibition of artworks by Western painters from medieval times to the present day that was begun in 1994 by a computer scientist at the Ăcole Polytechnique in Paris. The WebMuseum grew to incorporate reproductions of paintings, background text, and musical selections submitted by a large number of contributors.
A directory to virtual museums and museum home pages on the Internet can be found in the World Wide Web Virtual Library: Museums, a service of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) that provides lists of museums by country as well as other categories. Worldwide museum sites can also be found in the Museum Online Resource Review, which provides keyword searching as well as lists of various kinds, and by the Guide to Museums and Cultural Resources.
Many schools use the Internet to form collections of material on a wide variety of subjects. Advice on building school virtual museums is provided by the Bellingham Public Schools in Bellingham, Wash.
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