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By jonathan, Section VLmp
Posted on Sat Feb 1st, 2003 at 01:37:51 PM GMT
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Weaving the Museum Web: The Virtual Library museums pages.
Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems,
36(4):236-252, 2002.
Abstract
Museums have been discovering the Internet over the past few years like many other information provision sectors. Rather uniquely, they span both educational and commercial sectors, with a concentration of the original object even in this virtual world. The author has set up and developed the Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) since 1994, an online international distributed museum directory. This is part of the WWW Virtual Library and is also supported by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). The directory is probably still the foremost such resource, but commercial pressures are building, and the resource must develop to ensure its long-term future. This paper explores the important developments so far, the current situation especially with regard to automatically collected virtual visitor statistics, and possible future directions for the VLmp directory and related resources.
The author
Jonathan Bowen is Professor of Computing at South Bank University, London, UK.
Keywords
World Wide Web, online museums, virtual library, access statistics, education, museophile
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Background
The human race has used its developing knowledge and expertise to invent and create new technology since the dawn of civilization. It is likely to continue to do so at an accelerated rate, poised as we are at the beginning of the Information Revolution. Previously, technologies such as the telephone took decades to become widely available in the home. Now with the availability of the World Wide Web, advances in acceptance of this new technology's use are measured in years rather than decades.
The web is being increasingly used by a wide variety of people, and in all important industrial and related sectors, such as broadcasting, newspapers, hospitals, police, government, etc. Like other sectors, museums have been learning to use the World Wide Web technology at a rapid rate since it has become widely available from the mid 1990s onwards.
Museums are somewhat unique in that their size and the resources available to them varies enormously. Large internationally recognized institutions may have the resources or be able to attract sponsorship for significant investment in their website. Smaller museums are often run almost completely with the support of volunteers and the availability of a website may depend on the interest and expertise of an enthusiastic individual.
The museum profession itself is quite widely fragmented on a worldwide scale. Countries with a significant number of museums tend to have national bodies, but even these may be split according to museum type. For example, within the UK, the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) is specifically for museums not set up by local or national government. Even where national bodies do exist, they have typically not led the way with respect to online development for museums (with a few notable exceptions). The availability of the Internet is an opportunity for the museum world to become less fragmented in the future.
This paper explores development of online museums, especially with respect to an online museum directory established by the author before many museums had even heard of the World Wide Web. Some current access statistics are given, which allow information such as the location of virtual visitors and their software/hardware platform to be monitored. The paper ends with a discussion of possible developments in the coordination of online museum websites.
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