Museums online. Contradiction or Opportunity?
"A museum is a permanent, non-profit organization, serving the society and its development, which acquires, conserves, research, communication and exhibition, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment. "
-ICOM. Statutes, Art. 2, par. 1 Amended by the 20th General Assembly of ICOM, Barcelona, \u200b\u200bSpain, July 6, 2001 -
Given this definition from the International Council of Museums ( http://icom.museum ), it must be borne in mind that museums, taken together, constitute a sort of "galaxy". Each museum has a certain history in fact, has its own content, its collections and compositions. We consider the museum as a unifying symbol of the diverse cultures of the countries and regions. The museum is itself a means of cultural communication, with their codes and languages \u200b\u200bdeveloped and tested for a long time.
Museums arise as collections of antiquities and art in the major courts of the sixteenth-seventeenth-century Italian and European at the behest of the principles so that they intended to represent (and communicate) their power to small groups admitted to visit. In the nineteenth century in particular, will be open to all citizens, taking full advantage of the function of public interest in conservation of cultural heritage sites and places of education that still hold. So the definition of "public" applied by the institution museum must be understood in a broad sense, as close to the museums owned and operated, there are also public foundations, private institutions or enterprises but also perform the function of public dissemination of culture.
Evidently the nature of museums is not uniform. Besides the so-called "great museums", especially made up of collections of historical and often host large exhibitions, more and more terminals of mass tourism (eg such as the Louvre http://www.louvre.fr , the British Museum http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/ ) were added to Recent experiences such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ , consisting of museums created from scratch.
There are also "local museums, a dense network of museums that are broadcast across the welding of memory in social dialogue, the place of reference for understanding the history of a city, region, facts and people the cultural background of the reality they have contributed. The term "local" does not be misunderstood. The term "local museum" museum is to be understood as rooted in the territory, sometimes very large and representative.
The foregoing is a brief overview of the different types of museums. With it was intended to highlight the many characters of these institutions, however, have fundamental unifying moments in the mission of the storage area of \u200b\u200bmemory and the task of education.
Under these circumstances, it is necessary to clarify what role can be played by Web applications to support (and develop) the activities of a museum. In most cases, at least in its long testing period, the online tool has been used mainly as a means of information, as showcase.
Greater knowledge of the potential of the instrument, along with a better awareness of possible applications, even by those assigned to the industry (directors, curators, researchers etc..) Can now develop Web applications in which the quality of cultural content is requirement. In a word, from the website "showcase" you must tend to a Web site that thesaurus, fully reflecting the identity of the museum, are meant to be, yes of information, but also an instrument - inside and outside - for the dissemination, consultation, research and education on the contents of the museum.
The website of a museum and then tends to become an ever more important not only in comparison to traditional services (reservation requests, ticket sales, catalogs, etc..) But for the conduct of the priority tasks of education reserved for the museum.
At this point it is right to wonder what kind of relationship established between the museum physical and virtual museum so the result is quality?
First a clarification of terminology. Speaking of "virtual reality ..." and "real reality ..." does not recognize the reality of the web is so real that reckless action in that I can actually suffer harm in the bank account. This is an example of a paradox, but that fully corresponds to reality. So that the web is not a virtual reality (virtual = potential, possible, potentially, as opposed to real), but a digital reality .
Second, there is no reason to feel sorry for the discrepancy that there may be between the two sides - digital and physical - of a museum.
sites of the museums do not always include complete online access to all the content of the corresponding physical museum in the world. Often the sites of the museums present a selection of property owned by the museum of the physical world. The reasons are many: it suffices to consider the cost of bringing online the entire contents of the museum, but also the fear that introducing a website, digital, everything on the physical museum can bring down the number of physical visitors to the museum.
On the other hand, digital technology allows you to do things in physical reality, while theoretically possible would be practically difficult, tiring, ...: for example, provide multiple routes of access to a finite set of objects (in physical reality would require re -distribute objects and reconstruct the routes of access; always having time for only one actually traveled by visitors). The digital, then lets you do things in physical reality would be quite impossible; for example an archaeological museum, such as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo http://www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg/ could link and show images of instruments and objects in museums of similar purpose and content all over the world, in fact, in our example, See http://www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg/links.html .
Another example. [I take this example from reference 2, below vd]
Think of the Louvre Museum. That Paris was the first of the major public cultural institutions in the world with an interest in the opportunities provided by Internet to improve the quality - which is already excellent - the services offered by the museum. "Currently http://www.louvre.fr is one of the best web services on the network. The virtual museum of the Louvre is divided into several sections of which it is impossible to give a full description. Of particular interest are the sections ' Collections ' and 'Virtual visit' . The first provides access to the pages describing the various collections that comprise the priceless heritage of the museum. Each in turn leads to the list of nations for centuries and works, which finally get the detailed files on major works, accompanied by images of good quality. One can not help but notice that no visitor to the museum in Paris can see the work with this level of detail. Section 'Virtual visit' you instead of analyzing the architecture of the museum and see all the rooms through a series of 3D Quicktime VR made with good definition.
The extreme case of discrepancies between the museum and paradoxical digital and online museum is a museum that exists only online. A fine example is its Schatzraum (treasury) which gives us access to the site of the Nibelungen Museum ( http://www.nibelungenmuseum.de dedicated , as the name suggests, the myth of the Nibelungs).
Another example of digital-only museum is the Museum's Web Nicolas Pioch ( http://www.ibiblio.org/wm ) One of the first to be born in 1994.
Ultimately, the lack of relevance between the two worlds, digital and physical does not mean that it is always a problem, indeed. Thinking of recreating the physical world that you have a web site would not be possible, on the other hand is not even possible to recreate the digital world of a web site that you have in the physical world. Rather, it could take advantage of the features of both to achieve better interaction and better operational effectiveness and is communicative.
* For a more detailed discussion on the relationship between museums and digital museums physical:
1.Cfr. http://www.minervaeurope.org/
Project Minerva museums.
2.Cfr. http://www.laterza.it/
A chapter of an e-book in Italian on the Internet very well done.
* The directory of Italian museums online:
3. http://www.museionline.it/
ICOM * The directory of online museums:
4. http://vlmp.icom.museum/
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