museumsandtheweb.com - digital heritage

Virtual Museum and Small Museums: ViMuseo.fi Project

maglaine — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 07:22:31 +0000

MW2011

Magdalena Laine-Zamojska, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Abstract

New media are a huge opportunity and challenge for museums, especially for small institutions without digitized resources. The ViMuseo.fi is a research project conducted at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The research focuses on the possibilities of new media in presenting cultural heritage in small Finnish museums. As a part of the research, a tool to present small museums on the Web was developed. The ViMuseo tool is a CMS for creating multimedia presentations, and was designed specifically for small institutions without digitized resources. The possible deployment of the tool is also discussed.

Keywords: virtual museum, small museum, Finland, digital heritage, CMS, local history museums

Program Item Reference:

Virtual museum and small museums. ViMuseo.fi project

Digital Environment for Cultural Interfaces: Promoting Heritage, Education and Research

puffo25 — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:43:12 +0000

MW2011

Andrea de Polo, Alinari 24 ORE SpA, Italy

http://www.decipher-research.eu/

Abstract

DECIPHER proposes new solutions to the whole range of narrative construction, knowledge visualisation and display problems, with a high degree of future proofing. It will produce a step change in the process by combining much richer, event-based metadata with causal reasoning models. This will result in a reasoning engine, virtual environment and interfaces that can present digital heritage objects as part of a coherent narrative, directly related to individual searches and user contexts. This will allow users to interactively assemble, visualise and explore, not just collections of objects, but the knowledge structures that connect and give them meaning.

Keywords: digital heritage, semantic Web, 3D, immersive navigation, virtual environment, cultural knowledge

Program Item Reference:

DECIPHER-Digital Environment for Cultural Interfaces; Promoting Heritage, Education and Research European Based Research Project

Designing an Interactive Visualization to Explore a Pre-Hispanic Collection

Blanca_A — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:57:32 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

Digital Exhibition

Keywords:

digital heritage

Keywords:

interaction design

Keywords:

interactive

Keywords:

Interactive Visualization

Keywords:

interface design

Abstract:

This demonstration presents the current status of the design, and the implementation of a digital interface to exhibit an archaeological collection online. This digital interface is designed to explore online the main pieces of the collection of the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, located in eastern Mexico, by bonding together ideas about visualization of information, context mapping and trails of navigation.

The collection that belongs to this museum consists of important cultural-heritage artifacts of the main cultures that established themselves in the current state of Veracruz, before the Spaniards’ arrival in Mexico: the Huaxteca culture in the north, the culture of Central Veracruz in the centre of the state and the Olmeca in the south. Its total collection preserves and guards about 29,000 Pre-Hispanic artifacts, from which nearly 1,500 are exhibited in its halls.

The project draws on the design of a digital interface that privileges exploration and browsing of visual connections with an open-ended focus; namely, an interface that allows a visitor to place a ‘object/concept’ at the centre of his/her interpretative layer, and thus create a hub of connections. Expressed differently, the interface is based on associations of visualizations and the tracking of diverse mappings set by the visitors themselves. Following is presented an overview of the interaction design space of this digital interface:

When exploring the online collection, the visitor has the choice to select any category as a main hub. For example, when the visitor selects the hub Dualidad (Duality), the interface presents visualizations of an ‘object/concept’ that are connected to this selection, such as the artifacts of smiling faces, twins, and feminine figures. If the visitor decides to access more information about a specific artifact of an smiling face, then the interface displays some other mappings of ‘object/concept’ related to that artifact; for instance, concepts of death, the Ollin (movement) as well as some other archaeological pieces connected to the main hub of Duality. After that, if the visitor continues to explore the collection and decides to discover more about the Ollin concept, this can be selected as the main hub. In consequence, the interface will present a selection of visual results connected to this new category as well as of all the artifacts of the collection that have connections with this latter category.

While there are several projects that have used similar concepts, within the area of cultural heritage there are few studies that investigate on the exploration of archeological information presentation. Therefore, this project aims to contribute on such exploration, by designing an interface based on connections of visualizations, and to the further creation of interpretative layers for the visitors’ exploration.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstration V

Site:

http://mlab.taik.fi/~bacuna/max_Project2008/index.html

Authors:

Blanca Acuña

Virtual museum and small museums. ViMuseo.fi project

maglaine — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:32:14 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Virtual Museum and Small Museums: ViMuseo.fi Project

Keywords:

local museums

Keywords:

digital heritage

Keywords:

Finland

Keywords:

CMS

Keywords:

virtual museum

Keywords:

small museum

Abstract:

There are around 1000 museums in Finland. According to the National Board of Antiquities there are 163 professionally run museums, which are responsible for 326 places open to public[1]. However, there are around 600 smaller museums[2], which cannot afford to digitize and make their collections accessible to a wider audience. The author’s preliminary study has shown that online accessibility and attractiveness of cultural heritage in these small, local Finnish museums is very limited. However, the local museums are very eager to use available Internet solutions to present their collections and communicate with their audience.

ViMuseo (Finnish VirtuaaliMuseo means “virtual museum“) is a project developed at the Department of Art and Culture Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The main objectives of the research are: (1) to investigate the possibilities of new media in presenting cultural heritage in small museums; (2) to analyze the cooperation between the researcher, graphic designers and programmers; and (3) to construct the tool to create multimedia presentations. Participartory design and action research methods are used in this research.

During the demonstration the basic functionalities of ViMuseo will be explained. ViMuseo is an online tool to create multimedia presentations, virtual exhibitions and projects. It is designed for the institutions without digitized resources, which want to be more active in the internet. The tool is a content management system, implemented as a Web application (Web CMS). It is developed with programmers and graphic designers. There are two version of the system: http://www.virtuaalimuseo.fi/04/ and http://vimuseo.fi/08

The system and its interface are user friendly and its usage does not require any professional knowledge of programming. Users (the institutions’ representatives) may register and describe their institutions in a predefined way. They may add objects and use them to create virtual collections, exhibitions and projects. Each object may be constructed by providing textual description, adding Google maps, images, flash animations, movies, music files and downloadable files in most common formats. In this way, the user creates multimedia presentations, which can be used to create virtual collections, exhibitions and projects. A few examples of social tools will also be implemented and tested (comments, tags and Facebook Open Graph).

ViMuseo is a non-commercial project. At this moment, as a part of the author’s doctoral research, it serves only to investigate possibilities of new media and their implementation in local institutions. In 2010 the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture has constituted the working group to investigate the situation of the Finnish regional museums and the possible development tools. If many problems are solved, ViMuseo.fi can be potentially developed as a working system serving local museums.

The research is supported by the grants from the Department of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. This project would not be possible without the help of the Jyväskylä University Museum[3], which provides all the necessary materials and support.

[1] The National Board of Antiquities, Museotilasto 2008 / Finnish Museum Statistics 2008 http://www.museotilasto.fi/user_files/Museotilasto... (13/12/2010)

[2] The Finnish Museums Association http://www.museot.fi/museoala (13/12/2010)

[3] Jyväskylä University Museum https://www.jyu.fi/erillis/museo/en (13/12/2010)

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations III

Site:

http://www.virtuaalimuseo.fi/04

Authors:

Magdalena Laine-Zamojska

International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting - ICHIM07: Proceedings

jtrant — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:18:12 +0000

Trant, J., & Bearman D. (2007). International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting - ICHIM07: Proceedings. International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting - ICHIM07: Proceedings.

Enhancing The Heritage Experience

jtrant — Wed, 02 May 2007 00:57:39 +0000

Anani, N. (2005). Enhancing The Heritage Experience. (Trant, Jennifer, David Bearman, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings.