Virtual museum
Encyclopedia
A virtual museum is a museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 that exists only online
ONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....

. 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.

As with a traditional museum, a virtual museum can be designed around specific objects (akin to an art museum, natural history museum, or archive), or can consist of new exhibitions created from scratch (akin to the exhibitions at science museums). Moreover, a virtual museum can refer to the mobile or World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 offerings of traditional museums (e.g., displaying digital representations of its collections or exhibits); or can be be born digital
Born Digital
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives is a book by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser exploring the consequences of the wide availability of internet connectivity to the first generation of people born to it, who Palfrey and Gasser refer to as "digital natives"...

 content such as Net art, Virtual Reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

 and Digital art
Digital art
Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...

.

Pioneers (online before 2000)

The following online museums were pioneers. At that time, web page
Web page
A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...

s were simpler, bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)
In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...

 was scarce, the concepts of the online museum were still developing, and there were limited multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 technologies available within web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

s. 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 citation
Citation
Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source . More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated...

s within Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

.
  • 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.
  • Web Museum, Paris — founded 1994, online 1994. A pioneering virtual or web museum hosted by ibiblio
    Ibiblio
    ibiblio is a "collection of collections," and hosts a diverse range of publicly available information and open source software, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. As an "Internet librarianship," ibiblio is a digital library and archive...

     is the Web Museum, Paris created by Nicholas Pioch in 1994.
  • The Lin Hsin Hsin Art Museum
    Lin Hsin Hsin Art Museum
    The Lin Hsin Hsin Art Museum is notable as a very early example of a virtual museum.This online art gallery website was originally established by the digital artist and poet Lin Hsin Hsin from Singapore in 1994 during the initial expansion of the World Wide Web. The site presents Lin Hsin Hsin's...

    — online 1994.
  • Ljubljana: Open-Air Museum — founded 1993 - online 1996. Ljubljana
    Ljubljana
    Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...

    , the capital
    Capital City
    Capital City was a television show produced by Euston Films which focused on the lives of investment bankers in London living and working on the corporate trading floor for the fictional international bank Shane-Longman....

     of Slovenia
    Slovenia
    Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

     was presented as a huge museum
    Museum
    A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

     where streets were the exposition
    Exposition
    Exposition may refer to:*Exposition *Exposition *Trade fair*Exposition , the debut album by the band Wax on Radio...

    s of the architecture
    Architecture
    Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

     and building interior
    Interior
    Coastal regions of a territory are often the most densely populated due to their greater economic productivity or colonial history. This leads to a contrast with the interior of the territory, which is sparsely populated...

    s were museum rooms.The method of the presentation were interactive maps and interactive Virtual Reality panoramas. http://www.burger.si/Ljubljana/map_Ljubljana_eng.html
  • Virtual Museum of Computing
    Virtual Museum of Computing
    The Virtual Museum of Computing is an eclectic collection of links and online resources concerning the history of computers and computer science. It includes links to other related museums, both real and virtual, around the world, as well as having its own virtual galleries of information...

    — founded 1994. This is an eclectic collection of links and online resources concerning the history of computers and computer science
    History of computer science
    The history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science that emerged in the twentieth century, and hinted at in the centuries prior...

    .
  • The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford
    Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
    The Museum of the History of Science, located in Broad Street, Oxford, is home to an unrivalled collection of scientific instruments from medieval times to the 17th century. Its collection of 18th and 19th-century instruments is also substantial...

    — 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.
  • Virtual Museum of New France
    Virtual Museum of New France
    The Virtual Museum of New France was established by the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation on January 22, 1997. As an entirely virtual museum, it has no physical exhibits and only exists on the World Wide Web at . The mission of the museum is to promote awareness of all facets of life in...

    — online 1997. Established by the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation.
  • The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
    Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
    The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, USA in 1913 as the Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building, with fitted marble walls and domed and...

    - Founded 1910, online 1998. The museum is the largest natural and historical museum in the Western United States and an active research center.
  • WebExhibits
    WebExhibits
    WebExhibits is a virtual museum of science, humanities, and culture that uses information, virtual experiments, and hands-on activities that prompt visitors to think, to formulate questions, and to explore topics from a variety of angles.- Exhibits :...

    — 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. 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
    Science Museum (London)
    The Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....

    in London
    London
    London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

     — 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
    Natural History Museum
    The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

    , which is next door, had recently established the first dedicated museum web server in the United Kingdom
    United Kingdom
    The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

    .
  • ibiblio
    Ibiblio
    ibiblio is a "collection of collections," and hosts a diverse range of publicly available information and open source software, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. As an "Internet librarianship," ibiblio is a digital library and archive...

    — founded 1992, online 2000. An online exhibition with the backing of the Library of Congress
    Library of Congress
    The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

    , ibiblio hosted EXPO Ticket Office with exhibits including a Vatican Exhibit and even a virtual "restaurant" and "post office". This looks very simplistic now, but was novel in 1991.
  • The Museum of Fred - Founded 1999, online 2000. The museum features thrift store paintings from the collection of Fred Beshid.

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 museums that exist only online, or those that have a physical building but offer extensive online exhibits, interactive online features, multimedia, and searchable or browsable collections (content museums, learning museums, virtual museums).

The following are a few other museums online:
  • International Museum of Women
    International Museum of Women
    The International Museum of Women, , headquartered in San Francisco, California, is an online museum that covers women's issues world-wide.- Creation and expansion :I.M.O.W. was founded as the Women's Heritage Museum in 1985...

    is an online-only museum that does not have a physical building and instead offers online exhibitions about women's issues globally as well as an online community. Online exhibitions include "Imagining Ourselves" (launched 2006) about women's identity, "Women, Power and Politics" (2008), and "Economica: Women and the Global Economy" (2009).
  • Google Art Project
    Google Art Project
    Google Art Project is an online compilation of high-resolution images of artworks from galleries worldwide, as well as a virtual tour of the galleries in which they are housed...

    is an online compilation of high-resolution images of artworks from galleries worldwide, as well as a virtual tour of the galleries in which they are housed. The project was launched on 1 February 2011 by Google
    Google
    Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

    , and includes works in the Tate Gallery
    Tate Gallery
    The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

    , London
    London
    London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

    ; the Metropolitan Museum of Art
    Metropolitan Museum of Art
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

    , New York City
    New York City
    New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

    ; and the Uffizi
    Uffizi
    The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

    , Florence
    Florence
    Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

    .
  • Movement Museum - Movement Museum is virtual online formation of open setup.
  • The Museum of Soho, London - The Museum of Soho, London.
  • http://artla.com/ artla.com a contemporary online art gallery at the Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California.
  • Virtual Museum of Modern Nigerian Art
    Virtual Museum of Modern Nigerian Art
    The online Virtual Museum of Modern Nigerian Art is a non-commercial initiative whose primary aim is to provide an easily accessible educational resource that can serve as first point of reference for students, teachers and art enthusiasts interested in learning about modern and contemporary art...

    — the VMMNA is the first of its kind in Africa. Hosted by the Pan-African University, Lagos
    Pan-African University, Lagos
    The Pan-African University, Lagos is a private, non-profit educational institution in Lagos, Nigeria.The university had its origin as the Lagos Business School , established in 1991...

    , Nigeria this virtual museum offers a good view of the development on Nigerian Art in the past fifty years.
  • Blue World Web Museum — the Blue World Web Museum's Mission is to provide a virtual museum educational experience in the fields of maritime art and related activities.
  • Tucson LGBT Museum - the Tucson LGBT Museum was the worlds first LGBT all virtual museum with no physical building and comprehensive online historical photographic, text, audio, and video exhibits about Tucson Arizona's LGBTQ history from the 1700's to the present day (the exhibits include LGBT related historical exhibits of other communities where the Tucson LGBT delegations often traveled). Online exhibitions are extensive documenting not only the LGBT history but also the time periods and events that influenced them. The project was began in 1967, and culminated in the opening as an all virtual museum in September of 2011.
  • UK's
    United Kingdom
    The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

     Culture24
    — 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
    Virtual Museum of Canada
    The Virtual Museum of Canada is Canada's national virtual museum. With a directory of over 3,000 Canadian heritage institutions and a database of over 600 virtual exhibits, the VMC brings together Canada's museums regardless of size or geographical location.The VMC includes virtual exhibits,...

    Canada
    Canada
    Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

    's national virtual museum. With over 2,500 Canadian museums, the VMC brings together Canada's museums regardless of size or geographical location.
  • Virtual Museum of Slovenia — National project by Slovenian Ministy of culture and Boštjan Burger
    Boštjan Burger
    Boštjan Burger is a Slovenian informatician, geographer, a panoramic and VR panoramic photographer and a speleologist. He was founder of the Burger.si website and had retired as computer programmer in the 1990s to become a geographic researcher on the hydrology of waterfalls. He used VR panoramas...

    . Project started in 2000 and ended in 2004 with vizualisation of over 106 Slovenia
    Slovenia
    Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

    n museums exhibition
    Exhibition
    An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within museums, galleries and exhibition halls, and World's Fairs...

    s with 1.162 museum locations.http://www.burger.si/MuzejiInGalerije/VirtualRealityMuseumsOfSlovenia.pdf
  • Museum With No Frontiers
    Museum With No Frontiers
    Museum With No Frontiers , an international non-profit organization founded in 1995 as a result of the Barcelona Declaration by Eva Schubert, with the goal of launching a formal partnership between the European Union and its Mediterranean neighbours, which recently resulted in the constitution of...

    — launched its international website in 2007.
  • National Museum of the U.S. Air Force - launched in 2010, it is a comprehensive tour of the world's oldest and largest aviation museum, featuring more than 360 aerospace vehicles on over 17-acres of land.
  • Hampson Museum -- 3D artifacts selected from the collections at the Hampson Archeological Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas
  • Virtual Museum of Patagonian Fossils - Corals, petrified forests, trigoniids (form of bivalve mollusks). Bilingual in Spanish. Built by staffperson at Centro Atómico Bariloche (Argentina).
  • mheu - virtual museum that offers thematic exhibitions comprising a range of works including pictures, literature, sound and video.
  • Come2tell - 2008 Virtual online museum of Prehistoric Venus Figurine.
  • Carnamah Historical Society & Museum - a West Australian community historical society with a small virtual museum.
  • The East Indies Museum - the online museum exhibiting an eclectic array of artworks from insular southeast Asia, including antique textiles, wayang puppets, keris, masks, folk art, silver ...
  • Museum Syndicate -an on-line museum of worldwide art of painting, architecture and photography including rare art master pieces which are difficult to find elsewhere
  • The Museum of Online Museums – catalogues and curates museum websites

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
Cultural heritage
Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations...

, 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
Museums and the Web
The annual Museums and the Web conference is the leading international conference in the field of museums and their websites. It has been organized by Archives & Museum Informatics each Spring in North America since 1997.- Overview :...

.

In 2004, Roy Hawkey of King’s College London reported that "Virtual visitors to museum websites already out-number physical (on-site) visitors, and many of these are engaged in dedicated learning".

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.

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
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...

, VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language
VRML
VRML is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional interactive vector graphics, designed particularly with the World Wide Web in mind...

) and now X3D
X3D
X3D is the ISO standard XML-based file format for representing 3D computer graphics, the successor to the Virtual Reality Modeling Language . X3D features extensions to VRML X3D is the ISO standard XML-based file format for representing 3D computer graphics, the successor to the Virtual Reality...

(successor to VRML) for viewing. There have been introduced various kinds of imaging techniques for building virtual museums, such as infrared reflectography, X-Ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...

 imaging, 3D laser scanning
Laser scanning
In modern engineering, the term `laser scanning' is used to described two related, but separate meanings. The first, more general, meaning is the controlled deflection of laser beams, visible or invisible...

, IBMR (Image Based Rendering and Modeling) 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. Another interactive three dimensional spatial environment is QTVR. Being a pre-rendered, fixed environment it is more restricted in regards to moving freely around in 3D space but the image quality can be superior to that of real-time rendered environments. This was especially the case in the mid 1990s when computing power and online speeds were limited.

Domain names

Museums have a variety of top-level domain
Top-level domain
A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...

 names. Most are .org
.org
The domain name org is a generic top-level domain of the Domain Name System used in the Internet. The name is derived from organization....

. Some are .gov
.gov
The domain name gov is a sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The name is derived from government, indicating its restricted use by government entities in the United States. The gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration , an independent...

, or governmental domains for other countries. A few are .edu
.edu
The domain name edu is a sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The "domain is intended for accredited post-secondary educational U.S. institutions" and this intention is strictly enforced....

, either as part of a larger educational institution, or grandfathered in when .edu regulations changed (e.g. with the Exploratorium
Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco with over 475 participatory exhibits, all of them made onsite, that mix science and art. It also aims to promote museums as informal education centers....

). The .museum
.museum
museum is a sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet used exclusively by museums, museum associations, and individual members of the museum profession, as these groups are defined by the International Council of Museums .In joint action with the J...

domain name used by some museums, as organized by from MuseDoma.

See also

  • Virtual Library museums pages
    Virtual Library museums pages
    The Virtual Library museums pages form a leading directory of online museums around the world. The resource was founded by Jonathan Bowen in 1994, originally at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory in the United Kingdom. It is supported by the International Council of Museums and Museophile...

  • Museology
    Museology
    Museology is the diachronic study of museums and how they have established and developed in their role as an educational mechanism under social and political pressures.-Overview:...

     (also called museum studies) is the study of how to organize and manage museums and museum collections.
  • Mobile museums (in RVs) - A different kind of mobile museum, when a museum is on an RV and drives to audiences

External links


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