A NETFUL OF JEWELS:

FAR AWAY IN THE HEAVENLY ABODE OF THE GREAT GOD INDRA, THERE IS A WONDERFUL NET WHICH HAS BEEN HUNG BY SOME CUNNING ARTIFICER IN SUCH A MANNER THAT IT STRETCHES OUT INDEFINITELY IN ALL DIRECTIONS. IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EXTRAVAGANT TASTES OF DEITIES, THE ARTIFICER HAS HUNG A SINGLE GLITTERING JEWEL AT THE NET'S EVERY NODE, AND SINCE THE NET ITSELF IS INFINITE IN DIMENSION, THE JEWELS ARE INFINITE IN NUMBER. THERE HANG THE JEWELS, GLITTERING LIKE STARS OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE, A WONDERFUL SIGHT TO BEHOLD. IF WE NOW ARBITRARILY SELECT ONE OF THESE JEWELS FOR INSPECTION AND LOOK CLOSELY AT IT, WE WILL DISCOVER THAT IN ITS POLISHED SURFACE THERE ARE REFLECTED ALL THE OTHER JEWELS IN THE NET, INFINITE IN NUMBER. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT EACH OF THE JEWELS REFLECTED IN THIS ONE JEWEL IS ALSO REFLECTING ALL THE OTHER JEWELS, SO THAT THE PROCESS OF REFLECTION IS INFINITE

THE AVATAMSAKA SUTRA

FRANCIS H. COOK: HUA-YEN BUDDHISM : THE JEWEL NET OF INDRA 1977

CONTENTS

Introduction

Museums in the learning society
Museums and learning
The emerging cultural networks
Museums' unique contribution
New audiences, new services, wider access

Museums and the creative economy

The wider world

Creating the digital museum
Creating the content
Connecting with users
Delivering the content
Maintaining the national resource
Creating the organisational infrastructure

Training

Funding the digital museum
Some funding sources
The number of digital museums
The requirements
The cost

Agenda for action

Conclusion

NEW MUSEUMS

Now, digital technologies are transforming  our society. In work, in education and in the home, people are using the new opportunities. Museums can be a key part of this new future.

The next century will be one of lifelong learning.  Ours cannot be just an information society.  Information is simply the raw material for the future.  We must become a society capable of continual creativity and lifelong learning - in the family and the community, at work, in libraries, archives, schools and colleges.  People will turn increasingly to  museums and galleries as places for learning.

How adults prefer to learn

Learning through digital networks - the National Grid for Learning, the University for Industry, Community Grids for Learning and a host of other initiatives - is central to the Government's vision of the learning society. As individuals take greater responsibility for their own learning, organisations will need to respond by creating new opportunities for this. The Dearing, Kennedy and Fryer reports all recommended that we increase participation in the further and higher education system and put learning within reach of everyone throughout life.

Internet use is growing faster than ever

MUSEUMS AND LEARNING

The museum as a centre for digital learning

* Relevant, participatory galleries and digital exhibits 
* Digital cameras, smart cards and other media for use during a visit
* Content created by visitors as well as by museum staff
* Facilities for searching  the collections I ways that are  relevant to visitors
* Trained staff to help visitors learn
* Interactive web sites and online services
* Online information to help in planning visits 
* Connections between the actual and virtual museum, and with other cultural resources locally and world wide

Over  ten million schoolchildren visit museums, galleries and other public arts venues each year, and museums provide many events and services especially for the formal education sector. Of visitors to museums and galleries, a third are young people in school or family groups.  The Science Museum alone welcomes over 300,000 educational group visitors a year; the Tate Gallery, 115,000. One in five visitors to the Victoria & Albert Museum is a student.  Museums throughout the country are finding similar trends.

People learn in different ways, and we must provide for this diversity. Most adults prefer to learn socially, informally, at their own pace, in comfortable surroundings, and in ways that encourage practical activity and participation. Many prefer to learn at home, and in public cultural institutions like museums, galleries and libraries, rather than formally. Museum collections and works of art have a special potential to engage people and act as a catalyst for debate and interaction with others, for personal research and enjoyment.
 

THE EMERGING CULTURAL NETWORKS

 Collections. libraries and archives

The new medium can integrate the cultural and education sectors in a way no other medium in history has done.  The Department for Education and Employment's Green Paper, The learning age (Department of Education and Employment, 1997) encourages museums to contribute to provision for lifelong learning. Using the new networks, institutions including museums, galleries, libraries and archives can unite around the government's common goals of education, access, social inclusion, excellence and economic development.

Enabling cultural diversity

Public learning runs throughout this policy.  It is fundamental to the work of all public cultural institutions, and it is also a primary means by which many of their other goals are achieved. The new network will be a personal cultural medium for the age of personal learning.  Museums are at the cusp of this emerging trend.  Given the resources, they can provide much of the varied content and many of the activities that people will demand from the new networks, to a quality and standard that will meet and exceed public expectations.
 
 

MUSEUMS' UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION

Celebrating cultural links

People can make sense of their cultural identities through museums. Through them, people are encouraged to find the links and the relationships between different cultures, and can express and celebrate diversity and connections alike.  The internet richly enhances this potential.
 

NEW AUDIENCES, NEW SERVICES, WIDER ACCESS

Many museums hold archives and libraries as well as collections, and these can generate even higher levels of interest. The Imperial War Museum receives over 80,000 off-line enquiries annually, while since 1995 the number of visits to the Public Record Office’s Family Records Centre has doubled and general enquiries trebled.

Websites are equally popular. SCRAN's website has recorded 1.75 million hits in the fifteen months since its launch; the IWM, 3.3 million in its first year. The  Natural History Museum website records about 150,000 individual visits monthly, the Tate Gallery, twice that number.

On-site information centres are outstandingly popular, too. About 34,000 people use The National Gallery's MicroGallery annually; 5% (13,700) of visitors to the new National Museum of Scotland visited its on-site multimedia room in its first four months; and the National Maritime Museum's on-site search station receives about 700 visitors a week, double the target number it set.
 

Broadening access

 Virtual visits, real visitors

People, wherever they are, will be able to use the electronic networks to reach out across geographical barriers to national, regional and local museums.

By providing more access points to the Community Grids and the New Library Network, museums will provide many more places where people can use the networks. Museums can take their share of the responsibility for ensuring that  no-one is excluded.
 

Providing new services

Museums work for social inclusion

The virtual dimension will complement and enhance encounters with real unique objects by offering a richer context, facilitating interactive services, and adding new learning dimensions.

Electronic networks enable new relationships to develop between the public and their museums. Museums and galleries are social institutions in which people can come together to explore their interests as well as contemporary issues, and share their knowledge of the significance and meaning attached to material artefacts. The new networks offer new ways to achieve this.

How adults prefer to learn
* Most adults are currently engaged in learning
* More than half do so outside the formal education system
* Over half learn so as to improve the quality of their lives rather than to improve work skills or prospects
* The most popular methods of learning are studying or doing practical things alone and exchanging ideas and information with others 
* People felt they learnt most at home (57 per cent) or in libraries and museums (36 and 13 per cent respectively); only 29 per cent felt they learnt most at colleges and universities.
MORI survey  on behalf of the Campaign for Learning 1998
 
 
 

Internet use is growing faster than ever
Internet use has increased 29% in six months, to 16% of the adult population in the UK. The fastest increase is in numbers of users under 25 and over 55.

BMRB International's Internet Monitor for May-September 1998 October 1998

* 44% of homes have a personal computer
* 15% of homes have Internet access
* 72% of computers in homes are used for education
* 10% of adults use the Internet from work
* 61% of adults express interest in using an "IT access point."
Is IT for all? Department for Trade and Industry 1999
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Collections, archives and libraries
Suffolk County Council is developing internet access to information from independent museums, local studies library, record offices, and the Sites and Monuments Register.  Developing an integrated subject thesaurus to facilitate searching will be key to the project.
The Public Record Office is working to develop new links with Places of Deposit for Public Records, which include national museums as well as some local authority archives.
 
 
 
 
 

Celebrating cultural links
The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester holds a collection of printed textile samples from local companies.  In the past the textiles were sold in West Africa.  To understand the full story of the textiles and their designs it is necessary to learn how they were cut, worn and used in West Africa.  Digital networks can supply the opportunity to share and discuss the museum's collection with people who bought, sewed and wore these textiles.
 
 

Enabling cultural diversity
Houses and Households - from the Museum of Welsh Life, St Fagans, a CD-ROM for schools, with all text, video and speech in both English and Welsh, allows pupils to explore this popular theme in the National Curriculum.
http://www.anglia.co.uk/
history_HousesAndHouseholds.htm
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Virtual visits, real visitors
The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford has a website that reflects its great collections of scientific instruments. It currently receives about 100,000 individual virtual visits a year (about 1.5 million hits), compared with 35,000 actual visitors.
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/
 

Museums work for social inclusion
Tyne & Wear Museums / local adoption and fostering agency A group of young people in care developed a CD-ROM for the Great City exhibition that reflects their individual views of Newcastle. Through using ICT and digital imaging techniques, they developed motivation, self-esteem, teamwork and communication skills.

Our transport, your transport The London Transport Museum will work with schools from Paddington, an ethnically diverse and socially disadvantaged area. Young learners will use digital cameras to produce an on-line and actual exhibition. This will enable participation in the debate about transport in London, extend the curriculum, and increase motivation
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

MUSEUMS AND THE CREATIVE ECONOMY

The size of the creative economy

Every one of the creative industries is supported directly or indirectly by museums and galleries.  Digital access will enable museums to provide them with a much better service. The print and publishing industries, for example, already make extensive use of museum collections and images. The acquisition of digital reproduction rights has become one of most important new art markets in Europe.

Artists, craftspeople and students place a high value on access to museum collections. And museums are an important market and marketplace alike for high quality products. Designers, makers, manufacturers and customers will all benefit from electronic access to the creative wealth of museums.

This will be particularly significant at local and regional level as the creative industries feature more prominently in regional economic cultural strategies.

Pioneering partnerships

Some of the country's most visionary new public buildings are commissioned by museums and galleries. They provide an international showcase for our industries. In the same way, museums and galleries are entering the multimedia design and software marketplace, as both clients and producers. 

Museums' new uses of multimedia will stretch the boundaries of the information age. By working in partnership, museums and software and design companies will develop ways to deliver information that is relevant to users, in the most appropriate form.

The size of the creative economy
The creative industries generate revenues approaching £60 billion a year. They contribute over 4 per cent to the domestic economy and employ around one and a half million people. The sector is growing faster than, almost twice as fast as, the economy as a whole.  The contribution of the creative industries to the gross domestic product is greater than the contribution of any of the UK's manufacturing industries.
The creative industries Department for Culture Media and Sport 1998
 
 
 

Pioneering partnerships
The Royal Armouries in Leeds was nominated for three EMMY Awards in the US for a series of films made jointly with Yorkshire Television. A further series has been commissioned by the US History Channel. The films can be available over the internet. In this way the Royal Armouries helped Yorkshire Television to break into the US historical documentary market.

THE WIDER WORLD

The USA leads the way. The internet was born there, and fostered by the Information Superhighway initiative, internet use has reached a larger proportion of citizens there than in any other country.

[  President proposes digital library for education  ]

The European Union has recognised the importance of the information economy since the early 1990s. There is funding for a range of projects to exploit the potential of digital technologies. This support will increase under the Fifth Framework Programme, part of which is aimed at expanding the contribution of museums and other cultural institutions to the emerging cultural economy.

[   European connections  ]

In Canada there has been a programme to support and promote the development of digitised museum collections information for more than twenty years. This has recently been extended with a public network, Artefacts Canada, providing access for citizens to museum collections across the country.

The UK has benefited from large scale and continuing investment in libraries and digital resources and services for higher education. This was initiated by the Follett Report (Joint Funding Council's Libraries Review Group Report: Higher Education Funding Councils: 1993), and has ensured that the UK continues to be among the world leaders in library and research provision.

Underpinning all these developments is the recognition that in a global, multinational world, cultural networks are an important means of expressing and preserving cultural identities. And digital cultural resources are seen as essential to the growing cultural economies. Fifteen or more countries ? from Sweden to India; from Canada to Australia ? have established national cultural networks.

[  Developing Australia's cultural economy  ]

These networks provide a source of cultural material and cultural expression that can be accessed from anywhere in the world by people interested in learning about the national culture.  They also enable those working in the cultural sector to communicate with each other, exchanging ideas and experience.

Many museums and galleries in the UK already play an important international role. They work as members of world-wide networks, based on the common language of their collections and objects. Information and communication technology will enhance this activity and open up international possibilities for more of them.

President proposes digital library for education
Tucked away in the $1.7 trillion budget proposal is an item that could help bring digitised versions of photographs, memorabilia, documents and other items from the nation’s cultural treasure trove into American classroom. 
New York Times 4 February 1999
 

European connections
A European Museums’ Information Institute is proposed that will create partnership between:
* the member states of the EC;
* museum content providers and the information and communications technology sector;
* and the mediators of European culture and the ‘learner’ in the widest definition of that word.
EMII will ensure that knowledge and expertise spread throughout Europe, and harmonise existing work. Ultimately, its success  will be measured by the impact it has on unlocking museums’ information assets for the enjoyment and learning of the widest European citizenship.
 

Developing Australia’s cultural economy
The Australian Cultural Network is a Web gateway that gives public access to Australian cultural organisations, online resources, news and events. ACN is also an exchange centre where cultural workers and organisations can communicate with each other.
http://www acn.net.au

CREATING THE DIGITAL MUSEUM

• 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

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

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

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

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

Large scale demand requires large scale services
 

CREATING THE ORGANISATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

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 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 ITC (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
 

TRAINING

Making a start on training

Skills are needed:
* To digitise, manipulate, and maintain museum collections information, images and other resources
* To develop new approaches to maximise the learning opportunities offered by digital museums
* To define and manage multimedia projects
* To enable customer care staff to help visitors to use information and communication technology
* To work with others to enable community projects and create cultural resources

Museums have two kinds of training responsibilities. The first is to train their own staff in the skills of using digital technologies and museum resources to enable public learning and participation, and to assist users. The second is training for the museums' public, to enable both adults and children to make creative use of cultural resources in their communities.

Training for volunteers must also not be overlooked. Volunteers play a productive role in museum services. Many small museums are crucially dependent on them. This is another opportunity offered by the new technologies: to engage the enthusiasm, skills and interests of volunteers to help create digital resources.

Making a start on training
Chipping Norton Museum is entirely volunteer-run. With training and equipment, the  archivist, who has mobility problems, would be able to digitise the collection, conduct research, develop Internet resources and answer enquiries without leaving home.

In the National Portrait Gallery, front of house staff have received training so that they can use the Gallery's collections database to answer enquires from the public.
 

FUNDING THE DIGITAL MUSEUM

Much can be done if these funding agencies adopt policies to make full use of the public national resources of museums. We hope that they will take account of what museums and galleries can contribute, and involve them in the development of their policies. But, if the full vision of museums in the learning age is to be realised, there needs to be significant additional and dedicated funding.

Popular attractions

SOME FUNDING SOURCES

The New Opportunities Fund

The Heritage Lottery Fund

Higher Education Funding Councils

Department for Education and Employment

The Department of Trade and Industry

Government sponsoring bodies

Local Authorities

Regional Development Agencies

The European Union

THE NUMBER OF DIGITAL MUSEUMS

This number could achieve:

*  an effective geographical spread across the whole of the UK
*  a variety of interactive services and collections content
*  access to significant collections and educational expertise wherever they are found
*  effective community involvement.

In further phases, by 2007 all museums should be able to play their full role in the National Grid for Learning, from the very smallest museum, managed by a dedicated team of volunteers, to the largest National Museum.
 

THE FUNDING NEEDS

Our cost estimates are informed by the calculations in the recent Library and Information Commission Report Building the New Library (1998).
 
 

Content creation and online activities

Museums are highly inventive places, and with the stimulus of proper resources we can expect a wave of innovation that will deliver experiences that we cannot yet predict. We would expect bids for funding for content to include a wide variety of elements, such as:

* Basic digitised collections information, images, sound and moving images to be managed as a permanent resource
* Multimedia productions and on-gallery interactives derived from these
* Interactive and participative services and productions
* On-site information and interactive centres requiring hardware, digital equipment, and internal networking.

Funding must therefore include an element to encourage experimentation. Every project should also provide for evaluation, and many will include training.

Museums innovate

Museums will be eligible to bid for projects within the £50 million already allocated for content on the New Library network. Over and above that, we estimate the necessary additional investment to create content and activities to be £35 million.
 

Connections and access: the infrastructure

The average cost of providing a broadband connection to an appropriate managed network would be about £25,000 for each of the 400 connected museums - a total infrastructure cost of £10 million.
 

Content delivery and organisational infrastructure

[   Cooperative rights management  ]
 

Maintenance and sustainability

This is a new service for museums.  Pressures to continue to provide their existing services at ever higher quality will become ever greater, so funding cannot be released by redeploying existing resources.

There are two first sight sources for funding:

* Central funding
Fund the services centrally through general museum funding.  This could be through increased grant-in-aid or local authority funding, or it could be left to individual museums to set priorities for this from their existing funding level.

* Funding through income from digital services
There are sources of income from digitisation that will help to defray costs. The guiding principle is that content created with public money must be made available for educational purposes free at the point of use. However, organisations such as schools and libraries can be charged license fees, and museums can charge commercial providers and publishers, both print and digital, for the use of their digitised assets and services.

Collections of information - the new national resource

Experience in SCRAN and elsewhere shows that it is not possible to generate sufficient income to completely cover the cost of maintaining these resources and services. While a few museums with collections of high commercial reproduction value may enjoy large scale income, the vast majority of museums will not. In our opinion additional permanent funding will be needed, because museums will be providing more services, and maintaining more permanent public assets. We identify this as a serious issue, but we make no estimate of the cost.
 

Training

THE COST

The sums involved are not large in relation to the benefits that will flow from them.  Indeed, they will enable the museums, galleries and archives sector to add value to the investment that has already been committed to the National Grid for Learning and the New Library Network.
 

The cost of digital museums: first phase to 2002

                     TOTAL:                   £ 55  million

Information centres within museums - a popular resource
The Micro Gallery is the National Gallery's multimedia information centre. Opened in 1991, it is a complete multimedia guide for visitors, who can access information about all 2,200 paintings in the Gallery's collection, look up artists, places, and other historical contexts, and print out a selected tour. 

COMPASS is the British Museum's public multimedia system for the Millennium. Specially prepared to appeal to a wide public, it will give access to records for 5,000 objects, and related 'Encyclopaedia' information. It will be accessible through 60+ on-site terminals, and the Web. COMPASS will demonstrate just what can be done with the latest technologies, and highlights the effort needed to create suitable content for public use.
 
 

Museums innovate
The Smithsonian Institution in the USA is developing ways of visualising the contents of its complex object databases. The relationship between objects and related material in the database is displayed as a dynamic web of associations that the user can manipulate to pursue their interests.
http://www.si.edu/revealingthings/
 
 

Cooperative rights management
Scotland's cultural institutions have jointly set up a company to manage digital intellectual property rights. Digitised assets contributed to SCRAN are governed by a licence agreement protecting the contributors' commercialisation rights. Licensed members can download multimedia assets,  copyright-cleared for free educational use. SCRAN collects and distributes the income to the museums.
http://www.scran.ac.uk
 
 

Collections of information - the new national resource
The Science Museum is developing its collections management system to hold object information; contextual information about people, places and inventions;  text, images, sound and movie clips, and other multimedia resources. This digital collection forms the basis for all kinds of multimedia productions, online and off-line.

For example, The Feather Trade and the American Conservation Movement is an online multimedia exhibit created by the Smithsonian Institution. Software was used to draw much of the content directly from the museum collections database.
http://www.si.edu/nmah/ve/feather/
ftintro.htm
 

AGENDA FOR ACTION

For government

* Develop a strategy for a comprehensive national cultural network, including museums, galleries, archives and libraries

* Set a target for 400 digital museums to be online by 2002
 

For the education sector

* Work with museums to develop their potential to supply lifelong learning materials of all kinds
 

For the museum sector

* Develop coordinated strategies for creating digital content, activities and authored resources, and for training in both creating and using these materials.  Seek funding accordingly from appropriate sources

* Develop relationships with each other and with related content providers - libraries, archives, local databases such as sites and monuments records and species distribution databases
 

For local authorities

* Build local museums and galleries into development plans for Community Grids for Learning

* Develop local strategies to exploit the potential of digital museums as community and learning services
 

For the private sector

* Develop financial agreements that ensure a fair return on both public and private investment without compromising the principle that resources created with public funds should be available free at the point of use

CONCLUSIONS

This report has shown how, with appropriate investment in information and communications technology, museums and galleries can make a key contribution to:

*  Supporting the learning society

*  Access and social inclusion

*  Excellence and support for the creative industries.

The proposed funding of £55 million over three years is a significant additional investment. It will, we estimate, enable the creation of 400 digital museums by 2002. In the following five years, we envisage every UK museum becoming connected to the Grid. The outcome will be an enormous increase in the number of people who can use the resources of our museums, and in the range and quality of services and information provided for them for learning and for enjoyment.
 
 

2002: OUR FUTURE MUSEUMS

* There has been a measurable increase in the number of visitors to museums and galleries as a result of digital museums

* 75% of all UK museums have some collections information online, many through cooperation with connected museums

* Quality-assured gateways offer a variety of access to all museum and gallery online resources

* All Registered museums have websites linked to the National Grid for Learning

* One in three homes have accessed digital museums

* The majority of school children has used museum resources as an integral part of the curriculum in the last 12 months

* Museums and galleries of all sizes are benefiting from additional revenue streams derived from digitised resources
 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Editorial Committee
David Dawson (MGC), Louise Smith (mda), Alice Grant (NMSI), Roland Jackson (NMSI), Jane Carmichael (IWM)
Consultant author: Nick Moore

Task Group members
Sue Grayson Ford (engage); Louise McGill (National Institute of Adult and Continuing Education); Diane Lees (Galleries of Justice); Julian Tomlin (Whitworth Art Gallery); George Mallen (System Simulation); members of the NMDC advisory group on ICT for public access to collections.
 

Advice and assistance

The Museums and Galleries Commission - for support throughout the preparation of the report and consultation process, and for funding the distribution of the report to registered museums;

The mda - for their involvement in  the preparation of the report, and use of their website for consultation;

The UK Area Museum Councils, and their nominated representatives for their advice, and in particular North West Museums Service, West Midlands Regional Museums Council, and the North Eastern Museums Council for hosting consultation meetings in February and March.

All the hundred or so  representatives of museums, galleries, the library, archive and information and education sectors and the private sector  who attended consultation meetings or provided written comments on drafts of the report.

• Represent the interests of national museums to government and other stakeholders;
• play a key role in the development of policies and a national agenda for UK museums;
• increase awareness of the work of its members and their contribution to society and the economy;
• discuss and present views on other matters of common interest to its members.

Member institutions