Establishing Meaningful Services over the Cloud for Museums

Giannis Stoitsis, Kostas StratisGreek Research and Technology Network

Museums hold a wealth of high quality content

which can be used to support education

but to preserve, curate and educate we need

even when machinery exists there are problems

• hardware maintenance• technical support• interoperability limitations

– no APIs for the dissemination of collections• hardware costs

the cloud approach

Teachers

Pupils

Parents

the cloud approach

Teachers

Pupils

Parents

Storage and Processing Monitoring/Management/Allocation layer

Virtualization of Infrastructure Layer

Virtual Machines

Virtualization of Infrastructure LayerVirtualized Infrastractures Management LayerGUI tools and APIs

Cloud provider A Cloud provider B Cloud provider B

what can be hosted on the cloud

• Collections management tools– APIs for content dissemination in large networks

• Educational tools• Educational portals for museums based on

their digital collections• Metadata aggregation infra

what museums need to have

… only a browser and internet connection

CASE 1: EDUCATIONAL TOOL OVER THE CLOUD

Educational Pathway Authoring Tool

Educational Pathway Authoring Tool

Cloud service workflow

how it works

Demo

comparing costs for hosting educational tool at museum and cloud

Cloud• cloud hosting = 20 euros/month• set up effort = 1hr• back up included

• Total for 5 years = 1200 euros

Hosting at museum• 1 server+monitor+ups = 1200 euros• set up > 1 day effort or 100 euros• hardware maintenance effort =

difficult to be defined but significant

• Total for 5 years = 1300 +personnel for hardware maintenance+ costs of unexpected HW breakdowns e.g. supplier, hard disk

Costs of software support could be the same for both

cases

After 5 years the HW should be renewed/upgraded

CASE 2: SETTING UP EDUCATIONAL PORTAL OVER THE CLOUD

Educational portal for Natural History Museum of Crete

Demo

how it works

Metadata aggregator for Educational Content

Search API

Template customizationhtml, css, Ajax, JS

Clou

dM

useu

m

Edu tool of NHMC

Edu Tool of Museum B

Edu tool of Museum C

Metadata aggregator for Cultural Content

Search API

Collection Management Tools of Museums

how it works

Metadata aggregator for Educational Content

Search API

Template customizationhtml, css, Ajax, JS

Clou

d

Edu tool of NHMC

Edu Tool of Museum B

Edu tool of Museum C

Metadata aggregator for Cultural Content

Search API

Collection Management Tools of Museums

widget in Facebook page of museum

More info• prototyping

– www.greenlearningnetwork.org/nhmc/– https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kdc55xju0g4

• info points– stoitsis@ieee.org– www.natural-europe.eu

Thank you