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Virtual museum

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A virtual museum is a museum that exists only online. A virtual museum is also known as an online museum, electronic museum, hypermuseum, digital museum, cybermuseum or Web museum. The term used depends upon the backgrounds of the practitioners and researchers working in this field.

The virtualization of physical museums can increase interest by students learning about their collections: “Virtual visitors to museum websites already out-number physical (on-site) visitors, and many of these are engaged in dedicated learning”.[1]

Virtual museums include museums that hold art originally created digitally, such as Net art, Virtual Reality and Digital art. The term is often used to refer to a museum that takes advantages of the Internet to display digital representations of its collections.

Contents

[edit] Pioneers (online before 2000)

The following online museums were pioneers. At that time, web pages were simpler, bandwidth was scarce, the concepts of the online museum were still developing, and there were limited multimedia technologies available within web browsers. Some online museums began in other (not web site) electronic forms, or were established by existing physical museums. Some online museums have become significant sources of scholarly information, including extensive citations within Wikipedia.

  • Museum of Computer Art (MOCA) - Founded 1993. Directed by Don Archer, a non-profit corporation under charter from the Department of Education of New York State (US). MOCA was awarded .museum top-level domain (TLD) status by the Museum Domain Management Association (MuseDoma) in 2002 and is hosted on the Web as http://moca.virtual.museum.
  • Virtual Museum of Computing - Founded 1994. This is an eclectic collection of links and online resources concerning the history of computers and computer science.
  • The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford - Opened 1683, online 1997 - Located in one of the earliest purpose-built museum buildings in the world, the Museum was able to initiate a website relatively early because of the advantageous networking facilities and expertise available in their university environment.
  • WebExhibits - Founded 1999, online 1999. WebExhibits is an interactive, web-based museum that encourages visitors to think about and explore scientific and cultural phenomena in new ways.[2] Exhibits include “Investigating Bellini’s Feast of the Gods,” “Causes of Color,” “Color Vision & Art,” Pigments through the Ages,” “Butter,” “Van Gogh’s Letters,” and “Poetry through the Ages,” “Calendars through the Ages,” and “Daylight Saving Time.”
  • the Science Museum in London - Founded 1857, online 1999. One of the major science museums in the world was able to establish an early web presence partly due to the proximity of Imperial College, but was also spurred on by the fact that the Natural History Museum, which is next door, had recently established the first dedicated museum web server in the United Kingdom.

[edit] Other online museums

Most physical museums now have an online presence, with varying degrees of online information. At one end of the spectrum, museums provide simple contact and background information, and a listing of exhibitions (brochure museums). On the other end of the spectrum are museum with extensive online exhibits, interactive online features, multimedia, and searchable or browsable collections (content museums, learning museums, virtual museums).[3]

The following are a few other museums online:

  • UK's 24 Hour Museum - Online guide to public museums, galleries, libraries, archives, heritage sites and science centres in the United Kingdom.
  • Hampson Virtual Museum - Allows visitors to digitally "check out" the museum's virtual objects for analysis and study. The museum consists of hundreds of high-resolution, laser-scanned representations of Native American pottery. The objects can be viewed and downloaded in formats that include Adobe's 3D PDF, "obj" and VRML/X3d. The museum also provides free access to downloadable software that can be used to conduct metric analysis of the digital objects. The digital objects can be freely reused under a Creative Common's 3 license.
  • Virtual Museum of Canada is Canada's national virtual museum. With over 2,500 Canadian museums, the VMC brings together Canada's museums regardless of size or geographical location.

[edit] Research and scholarship

The digitalization of museums is task that has combined efforts, budgets and research from many museums, cultural associations and governments around the world. For the last few years, there have been projects related to Information Society Technologies dealing with: preservation of cultural heritage, restoration and learning resources. Some examples of contributions in the field of digital and virtual museography: Euromuse.net (EU), DigiCULT (EU), Musings, Digital Museums Projects.

The leading international conference in the field of museums and their websites is the annual Museums and the Web.

In establishing virtuality and promoting cultural development, the goal is not merely to reproduce existing objects, but to actualize new ones. Information and communication technologies are not merely tools for processing data and making it available, but can be a force and stimulus for cultural development.[4]

[edit] Interactive environments

There are several types of interactive environments. One is to re-create 3D space with visual representations of the museum by a 3D architectural metaphor, which provides a sense of place using various spatial references. They usually use 3D modelling, VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) and now X3D(successor to VRML) for viewing. There have been introduced various kinds of imaging techniques for building virtual museums, such as infrared reflectography, X-Ray imaging, 3D laser scanning, IBMR (Image Based Rendering and Modelling) techniques. In the case of EU-funded projects, the ViHAP3D, a new virtual reality system for scanning museum artifacts, has been developed by EU researchers.

[edit] Domain names

Museums have a variety of top-level domain names. Most are .org. Some are .gov, or governmental domains for other countries. A few are .edu, either as part of a larger educational institution, or grandfathered in when .edu regulations changed (e.g. with the Exploratorium). The .museum domain name used by some museums; e.g. see online list from MuseDoma.

[edit] See also

  • Museology (also called museum studies) is the study of how to organize and manage museums and museum collections.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.futurelab.org.uk/
  2. ^ Michael Douma (2000). Lessons learned from WebExhibits.org: Practical suggestions for good design. In: Museums and the Web 2000. Proceedings. Ed. by David Bearman & Jennifer Trant.
  3. ^ Schweibenz, Werner. "The Development of Virtual Museums". ICOMNEWS. no. 3. 2004
  4. ^ Collective Storytelling and Social Creativity in the Virtual Museum: A Case Study Elisa Giaccardi Design Issues 2006 22:3, 29-41
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