A netful of jewels

A NETFUL OF JEWELS: NEW MUSEUMS IN THE LEARNING AGE

A Report from the National Museum Directors' Conference 1999

CREATING THE DIGITAL MUSEUM

Ordsall Hall, Salford, website visitors' book

This is a very interesting site and helped me very much with a school project J Smith 25.2.1999
I was born next to Ordsall Hall and now live in Texas. It is nice to stay in touch with my heritage J Camillieri 16.11.1998
My daughter is studying at Salford University. If I get over to GB I hope to see your wonderful facility T Bohnlein 26.9.1998
I walked past Ordsall Hall every day to visit my girlfriend. I now live in Cornwall. Your website is great and made me decide to come and visit. M Manning 15.9.1998
This is brilliant. We should have one for every museum. K Lowe 7.7.1998

http://www.btinternet.com/~ordsallhall

The new digital museums must have at their core public access and participation. There is a critical gap between the vision offered by museums in the shape of the many small pilot projects that exist, and the resources that are presently available to realise it. This gap needs to be tackled urgently.

In April 1999, about 300 UK museums had websites. A number provide outstanding demonstrations of the use of the new cultural media. But the majority are excellent examples of what can be achieved through enthusiasm despite a shortage of resources.

Digital museums will deliver access and services in a variety of ways:

* Centres in museums, for information access and participative activities
* Interactive gallery exhibits, participatory activities, personal digital guides, etc.
* Online information and services delivered via the internet, some free and some for subscription
* Through multimedia publishing media, CD ROMs, digital television, commercial service providers, etc.

Common to all these will be the digitised content and services which will enable access to collections and information, participative input, and two-way interaction between users, staff, and museums' many publics.

As in the New Library Network and the National Grid for Learning, what is required is a combination of infrastructure, content, and organisational arrangements. And once created, this new national resource must, like the collections themselves, be sustained and maintained.

CREATING CONTENT AND PARTICIPATION

People want museums to provide collection related information and they want interactive, participative services, too. Both are essential to the digital museum. Users want integrated resources from museums, libraries, archives, universities and other arts, humanities and science institutions world-wide.

More of the collections for more of the people

To produce this richly varied content requires, above all, the knowledge of museum expert staff - curators and others. It requires the basic multimedia content components to be created and readily available in permanent digital collections. It requires research and development in information science and interface design to ensure that we maintain world class technical and design quality. It will require complex relationships and rights management between the public and private sectors.

The public also has an important role to play. The interactive capability of digital networks makes it possible for many people to tell their own stories though museums. As well as drawing on resources for their own purposes, they interpret them and contribute to them. Teachers, for example, will use the basic resources to create their own productions for other users. Content creation becomes an ongoing process.

Museums put the C into ICT

MAINTAINING THE NATIONAL RESOURCE

The digital assets of museums already represent a valuable and growing national resource that needs to be managed and securely maintained. Museums will need to preserve their basic digital collections. These will be stored in multimedia repositories, related to museum collections management systems. Interactive and participative programmes, too, represent an ongoing requirement for maintenance.

Standards have to be established and implemented to ensure both technical quality and educational and content standards. International standards for resource location and interoperability make a reality of the vision of museums connected world-wide. Standards for terminology ensure that users can always find what they want.

As online services develop, they will of their nature encourage similar museums to work more closely together and to develop links with libraries, archives and educational establishments, and community groups. National or regional museums will join digitally with local museums, and with other institutions that have related or complementary collections such as libraries and archives.

CONNECTING WITH USERS

The networks for museums will be provided by the existing and new public and learning networks such as JANET (the Joint Academic Network), the New Library Network, the Community Grids, and the National Grid for Learning. Museums must have connections to these.

Many people will go online to digital museums and galleries from their own homes. Others will use the growing number of Community Grid access points in libraries, learning centres and in museums themselves. Many museums will also need interactive information centres for their own particular services.

The new digital services must have the ability to respond to people's different interests and to their diverse requirements and cultural and learning preferences. To do this, gateways to the networks need to be developed - portals to online resources of all kinds - in combination with search and navigation tools. These gateways are as important as are any of the resources to which they lead. Indeed, gateways will be at the heart of the National Grid for Learning itself, and museums and galleries are already a popular feature of it.

Gateways to the networks

DELIVERING CONTENT AND PARTICIPATION

Digital museum content and services must be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This represents a major commitment to sophisticated technical data management and online activities and interactive environments on high capacity servers. Some museums may be able to guarantee this level of service, or be capable of offering such facilities on behalf of others. But it is likely that central or regional data delivery services, or kitemarked managed services, will be needed, like those established by the academic sector or planned for the New Library Network.

Large scale demand requires large scale services

CREATING THE ORGANISATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Networked content provision is underpinned as much by organisational arrangements as by hardware. As academic providers have proved, many important digital services for museums can only be provided cooperatively and sometimes centrally.

Project selection
As in the New Library programme, it is likely that funding for museums and galleries will be bids-based and every project will need to be evaluated according to the eligibility of the proposer and the degree to which the project fits with the policy criteria. Quality assurance must be built into every aspect of the development and delivery process to ensure that value for money is achieved.

Production quality
Standards and guidelines will be laid down to ensure the products and services developed under this initiative can be viewed as part of a consistent and coherent whole. These will include standards for digitisation and storage, captioning and indexing, usability, educational quality and interoperability.

Rights management
Establishing a coherent cultural network will depend on the strategic coordination of complex relationships with contractors, publishers and broadcasters. Large museums will have the resources to act for themselves, but many others will need to work within collaborative groups.TRAINING [Level one heading]Museum staff, volunteers and a wider public will require new skills to create, manage and maintain participatory and truly interactive digital applications. Museum people will need to understand experiential learning and the techniques of information management and multimedia creation. They will also need to draw on inputs from a wide range of disciplines, in the arts, sciences and humanities.

More of the collections for more of the people

* More art
Collage provides electronic access to the 20,000 images of the Corporation of London's wonderful visual collections. Searchable on various topics, Collage is available both in the gallery and on the internet.
http://collage.nhil.com

* More collections
Artefacts Canada The Canadian Heritage Information Network's database provides online public access to over 2.5 million artefacts drawn from over 80 Canadian institutions.
http://www.chin.gc.ca/

* More for schools
The National Museums and Galleries of Wales worked with teachers to develop curriculum material on the Romans, based around the collections at the Roman Legionary Museum in Caerleon.

* More information
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Museum of Technology website with basic catalogues of parts of the collection not on display has received 70,000 individual visits since its launch in April 1997.
http://www.eldred.demon.co.uk/
reme-museum/index.htm

* More research
A consortium of European museums is designing an Online Register of Scientific Instruments. Researchers will be able to find, for example, the astrolabes in all the museums. Collections become more accessible, and scholars can pool the results of their research.
http://www.isin.org/

Museums put the communication into ICT (information and communications technology)

* New links for the community
My Brighton was made by members of the local community. Brighton Art Gallery and Museum provided training, equipment and resources, and the public showplace for the evolving production.

* New links to classrooms
The Ulster Museum has used video conferencing equipment to hold a series of highly popular events that linked schools across the UK.

* New links to art
In the Picture is an exhibition specially designed for children and their families to explore the culturally diverse collections of Bradford Art Galleries & Museums. The online exhibit includes images, poems, and other examples from the exhibition.
http://www.bradford.gov.uk/in_the_picture

* New links for schools
The Science Museum's STEM project encourages teachers and students to publish and share on the Web their ideas for making effective educational use of the museum.
http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/education/stem

* New links to exploration
JASON was an international project, in which the Horniman Museum and the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside were participants. School visitors could use digital communications to pilot remotely controlled vehicles in deep water exploration or inside a live volcano crater, for example.

Gateways to the networks
The National Maritime Museum has established PORT, a curated online gateway to maritime internet resources. Each has been selected and described by a librarian or subject specialist. Services and material developed by the Museum's Centre for Maritime Research are also available on the site.
http://www.port.nmm.ac.uk/

Large scale demand requires large scale services
The Arts and Humanities Data Service is funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils on behalf of the academic community to collect, catalogue, manage, preserve and promote the re-use of scholarly digital resources, including those of museums. Current projects are as diverse as Museum of London excavations and the art collections of the Imperial War Museum.
Website: http://www.ahds.ac.uk

Creating the digital museum

..	Digital museums	Actual museums
Creating the content	Museum curators and educators Schools, FE and HE institutions Communities and volunteers External contractors	Curators Educational services Events and programmes Exhibition designers Construction companies
Connecting with the users	Home access Public access points Delivery networks, e.g. the Joint Academic Network (JANET), the National Grid for Learning, Community networks Gateways and finding aids Search and navigation tools	Visits to the museum Print publications Community groups
Delivering the content	Data delivery services Managed service providers Multimedia publishers	Museum buildings Galleries Events and programmes Enquiry services Commercial publishers
Maintaining the national resource	Developing standards Digital repositories Museums collection systems	Collection stores Building maintenance Managed storage environment
Setting up the organisational infrastructure	Project selection Production values Rights management Managed service providers Multimedia publishers	Grant giving bodies Picture libraries