Using the Web to Give Life to Museums

Several museums in North Portugal agreed to join efforts to promote their activities among local communities, using interactive and multimedia technologies under the project GEIRA. Traditional Web approaches provide a general purpose environment to describe the main goals and activities of the museums together with some form of a catalogue containing the more relevant art objects in the museums. This approach requires a move towards a more aggressive appeal to invite (young) net surfers to enjoy repeated visits to the same museum site. Curators know how to attract the public to their museums; similar techniques are being applied to the Web, with further refinements.

A short presentation of some of these techniques and how they are being designed and implemented in North Portugal is the main topic of this communication; it includes the use of temporary exhibitions - 3D virtualization of real ones, virtual-only exhibitions, tales of objects, animated guided tours - through a theme, through space, through the time - and educational outreaches - school teacher's guides according to the age levels, pre- and post-quizzes, video clips on the Web showing the children reactions during the previous visit, room for the children to creatively express, and share on the Web, their feelings and ideas.