Digital museum

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A digital museum is a digital information system , which can often be found on the WWW , that has grouped digital reproductions of exhibits under museum objectives. As a rule, the real collection objects are not only made formally accessible, but also described in terms of content. The digital copies are used to visualize the real objects, or as born-digital they only exist digitally. Museums are often faced with legal problems, especially with works from the second half of the 20th century and object photographs from this period, which form the basis of the digital copies.

The exhibits in a digital museum do not have to come from just one real museum , but exhibits from different museums can be combined in a virtual museum. Digital museums are similar to digital archives and digital libraries. In digital museums, exhibits are collected, researched and stored, and these serve to convey.

Digital museums are part of the general cultural heritage .

definition

A digital museum is often described as a computer or multimedia-assisted museum. Here, however , a digital museum means the web presence of a museum that also performs its task of information and education on the internet and makes digital exhibits available. This also means that a digital museum, in contrast to a digital archive, tries harder to approach and involve visitors. Digital museums shift the focus from the object to the information that is offered to visitors and are thus completely in the tradition of the information age. Therefore, when preparing exhibits from digital museums, the focus should be placed on the context and removed from the objects. The mere digitization , such as by scanning or photographing, real museum objects and publishing the images on a homepage is insufficient. The objects must be made accessible to the visitor through context and information. The informational added value lies in the possibility of linking, which is much better in digital form than in physical museums.

Compared to the digital museum as an enrichment or extension of the physical museum, a virtual museum according to the ViMM working definition is a digital entity that uses the characteristics of a museum to supplement, expand or enhance the museum through personalization, interactivity, user experience and content enrichment complete. A virtual museum is therefore potentially independent of physical museums. Both the physical and virtual museums share a common commitment to institutional validation of content and applications through curatorial processes.

Content

In the case of museum exhibits, a distinction is made between analog objects, digital reproductions and metadata . The analog objects are the original museum exhibits, digital reproductions differ from the originals or from real reconstructions in that they are mostly reproduced as images. The metadata describe the analog and digital exhibits in order to identify them and make them easier to find in the museums.

organization

Museum portals and museum associations are associations of different museums on different levels. The exhibits of various digital museums can be accessed directly from a museum portal. The museum associations are in contrast to this. These associations serve the common website on the Internet. The participating museums can be visited from a common website.

Technical characteristics of digital museums

Villinger describes the technical implementation of digital museums as follows: In contrast to archives, a digital museum should not be a faithful representation of the real model, but on the contrary make use of the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet and digitization.

The operation of a digital museum must be simple and clearly understandable for the visitor. Contextualization and networking are much more important than technology alone.

The most important standards of digital archives include:

CDWA :

MLIS-ELAN :

Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO):

Object ID :

Dublin Core :

Icon Class :

Advantages and disadvantages of digital museums

  • Availability: Availability is always given, anyone can visit a digital museum at any time, you are not bound by opening times.
  • Spatial aspect: borders, countries and continents do not have to be overcome to visit a digital museum. From an aesthetic point of view, only the original Mona Lisa in the Louvre can be satisfactory; From a scientific point of view, the digitized material may be sufficient to answer a researcher's questions without having to travel far.
  • Individualization: In a traditional museum there is often little time to individually address the visitors. With a digital museum, individual visitors can be better addressed.
  • Relief for museum staff: As a museum has partially or fully digitized its collection and makes it available on the Internet, a decrease in the number of visitors at certain points in the museum can be expected.
  • Interaction: Visitors to the digital museum can get in touch with the museum pieces and actively find out more about them. One disadvantage is that the digital museum exhibits cannot replace the originals.
  • Simulation: Digital processing offers the unique opportunity to make lengthy and / or complex processes quickly and clearly comprehensible for visitors.
  • Networking: In the digital world, networking, especially via links, is a simple endeavor with great impact. Individual objects can be linked to one another without any problems.
  • A part stands for the whole: For existing, traditional museums it is by no means necessary to digitize the entirety of their collections and make them accessible on the web.
  • Obsolescence: The rapid change in technology is a serious problem; it is impossible to foresee which file formats will be used in the future in order to be able to preserve the digital copies in the future.

Legal Aspects

Museums are regulated by law. In these statutes, details on the operation and administration of a museum are laid down in various paragraphs. Not every museum has to have its own museum law. One example is the Vienna Museum Act, which applies to the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna and its branches.

See also

Web links

Meetings

Virtual museums

Germany:

Austria:

Europe:

Earth:

swell

literature

  • Gordon McKenna and Chris De Loof: Athena. Report on existing standards applied by European museums . 2009.
  • Gerald Maier, Thomas Fricke (ed.): Cultural assets from archives, libraries and museums on the Internet. New approaches and techniques . Stuttgart 2004.
  • Friedrich Waidacher: Handbook of General Museology . Böhlau, Vienna 1999.
  • Maksimova, Tatiana. "Virtual museums: an analytical review of foreign publications". [1]

Individual evidence

  1. The VIMM Definition of a Virtual Museum | ViMM. Retrieved April 12, 2018 (American English).
  2. Virtual museum system evaluation through user studies . In: Journal of Cultural Heritage . 26, 2017, pp. 101-108.