M.U.S.EU.M. final conference

Perspectives for a pan-European virtual museum of archaeology: the formative

requirements scenery

Tony Kinder

Eddleston Innovation Ltd, Edinburgh

Rome, 24 February 2006

MUSEUM overview• MUSEUM will create a transferable training

module, an operating European Network to pursue the notion of a European Virtual Museum and a shared experimental site piloting the first trial themes of the European Virtual Museum

• Tools:• Qualitative and quantitative• Structured questionnaires and 81 semi-structured

interviews• TNA• Mapping• SWOT• Delphic panel

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Presentation structure

• Definitions and technologies• Virtuality challenges for museums• Characteristics of a virtual museum • Opportunities for virtual museums• Staff profiles and competences• Mapping analysis and best practices • SWOT analysis results• Delphic panel survey and analysis • Prospects for pan-EU virtual museum of

pre-history

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Definitions & technologies • Museum (ICOM): an institution dedicated to the procurement, care,

cataloguing, study and display of cultural objects of lasting interest and/or value

• Virtual museum: multimedia offshoot of their physical museum parents, taking advantage of virtuality as a remotely and nomadically accessible e-service.

…. an organized collection of electronic artefacts and information resources - virtually anything which can be digitized. The collection may include paintings, drawings, photographs, diagrams, graphs, recordings, video segments, newspaper articles, transcripts of interviews, numerical databases and a host of other items which may be saved on the virtual museum's file server. It may also offer pointers to great resources around the world relevant to the museum's main focus …. (McKenzie 1997)

• Differentiates from learning museum and marketing museum • VLE: e-learning materials, internet-based communities, virtual

(combined) exhibitions + ecommerce sales and bookings• Technologies include virtual reality (VR) and computer generated

interfaces (CGIs) supporting switches between artefacts and interactive narratives using digital images of paintings, drawings, diagrams, photos, videos, archaeological sites and architectonic environments

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Museum virtuality challenges (WP2) • Virtual museum is an e-service • Search, assess and transact services• Functionality: connectivity, interactivity

and agility

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High

Low

Low High

Degreeof

Interactivity

Degree of Connectivity

Highinteractivity

lowconnectivity

Highinteractivity

highconnectivity

Lowinteractivity

lowconnectivity

Agility

Lowinteractivity

lowconnectivity

Agility

Agility Agility

Virtual museum characterised by ….• multi-media-interaction - variety of communication routes• multi-disciplinary –knowledge domains and skill sets• multi-sensory – interaction features several senses• multi-dimensional - integrates geometric modelling and scales• multi-temporal – four dimensional if diachronic;• multi-user – P2P interactions and information exchange• hypertext – linkages to hierarchies of data• dynamic - data and models may interact in real time• contextualisation of data (between levels of interaction, URLs,

etc)• polisemicity - meanings distributed according to model geometry• meta-literacy - navigation is guided by metaphors of complex

data• cognitivity – complex realities, perceptions and significances• literacy - guided by educational systems and by virtual

communications • computational cartography

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Virtual museum opportunities • Access• Personalisable (experts, tourists and children)• Customisable to interests and learning processes• complementary too rather than a replacement

for physical museums – a digital alter ego – also marketing channel

• reusable exhibitions and bite-sized e-learning material

• Digital gather, preserve, analyse and catalogue• Costs of reproduction• The impossible museum: cross-national

exhibitions without (costly) physical exhibit movement

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Staff profile and competences

Project Leader

Project champion

Museum Board

Computing expertise

Web expertise

Content expertise

Web design

Web developer

Web manager

Photographer

Communications

Finance expert

e-learning expert

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Mapping & potential best practice transfers• Survey and analysis of best museum websites (WP4 comprehensive

list)

– www.vatican.va/– www.uffizi.firenze.it/– www.louvre.fr/ – www.centrepompidou.fr/– www.newmedia-arts.org/– www.museoprado.mcu.es/– www.nationalgallery.org.uk/– www.british-museum.ac.uk/– www.metmuseum.org/– www.guggenheim.org/– www.hermitagemuseum.org/– www.vangoghmuseum.nl

• EU-funded G7 Multimedia Access to the World's Cultural Heritage's initiative

• Detailed analysis of databases e.g. COMPASS (British Museum) multi-level interrogation

• Use of 3D and multimedia archives

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Virtual museum best practice • Logistic information - information on hours, location, etc. • Information on collections, including descriptions and

examples. • An online searchable database of the collections or part of

the collections.• Information on physical exhibits.• Online exhibits of physical exhibits. • Virtual tours of exhibits or galleries.• Online only exhibits not connected to a physical exhibit.• An educational section - information for teachers, parents,

children’s activities • news/calendar/events;• Information on membership: e.g. how to become a member

or donate to the museum.• An online museum store, perhaps with an ecommerce

facility.• The use of plug-ins to view particular sections and pages.

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Virtual museum: e-learning best practice • Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht website

(nhmmaastricht.nl) features a high level of interactivity aimed at capturing and retaining user interest, especially targeting children.

• Musée national des arts Asiatiques's website also target child visitors (www.museeguimet.fr).

• Kongens Kunstkammer's website (www.kunstkammer.dk/) invites visitors to create their own exhibition

• Relation of virtual to physical museum e.g. visitor numbers increasing depending on layering of content e.g. attractive for Louvre, not for Dallas Museum of Art

• Galleria degli Uffizi - 155 visitors in this time period, each traversed an average of 12.8 pages and downloaded an average of 382.5 kilobytes: need for sizeable servers

• Japanese survey – importance of clear and crisp navigability to retention

• Overall: complementary standards, user-focused design and building/servicing communities

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SWOT analysis (WP4)

National Archaeological Museum (Athens)

• €6.5m annual budget, 270 staff, 800,000 visitors

• Greek civilisation: Neolithic to late Roman period

• Government funded, ODYSSEUS joint website

• DVD & audio guide in preparation

• Weakness: no internal web competences, little training

• Opportunities to build on international reputation

• Unable to mount transnational virtual exhibitions

Museum für Vor-und Frühgeschichte (Berlin)

• Budget and ICT part of Museums of Berlin

• Low visitor numbers, 40 staff, strong digital presence

• 180,000 artefacts (Palaeolithic to medieval) European regions and Eurasia

• Completing digital catalogue• ICT competences strong but

out-sourced• Training programme • Unable to mount

transnational virtual exhibitions

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SWOT analysis (WP4)

Muzeul National de istorie a Romaniei (Bucharest)

• 100k visitors, €8m budget, 155 staff

• 500 BC to present e.g. 3,000 gold artefacts

• 10% digital catalogue• National ICT group, limited

connectivity and hardware• Need multi-linguality• 4 staff with web

competences, learning from out-sourcing

• Urgent need for training + connectivity and hardware

Budapest History Museum

• 200k visitors, 200 staff and €6m budget

• 1.8m artefacts: late Bronze and Neolithic + middle ages and modern

• Good ICT infrastructure and national network

• Server capacity and ICT competence constraint

• Opportunity to build from international visitors

• Need multi-linguality, training and hardware

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SWOT analysis (WP4)

National Museum of History (Sofia)

• €1m budget, 70k visitors and 170 staff

• National pre-history collection

• Internationally renown research

• ICT training programme

• Partial digital catalogue, no website

• Need multi-linguality, training and hardware

Museo Nazionale Preistorico

Etnografico Luigi Pigorini (Rome)

• €5m state funded, 77 staff, 50k visitors

• 200,000 prehistoric and ethnographic artefacts

• International research reputation

• Expanding e.g. American ethnographic section

• Digital catalogue and website

• ICT training challenges• Needs to upgrade web

presence

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SWOT analysis (WP4)

Naturhistorisches Museum Prähistorische

Abteilung (Vienna)• State funded, 250 staff,

500k visitors• International renown

Imperial prehistory collections

• Digital catalogue; state-of-the-art website (outsourced)

• ICT training programmes

• Challenges: e-learning and multi-lingual content

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SWOT summary

Staff Budget Visitors Foreign Cost per Visitors pertotal (€ m) visitors visitor staff

Prähistorische Abteilung of Vienna 200 unknown 350,000 35,000 unknown 1,750

National Museum of History, Sofia 170 1,050,000 69,460 14,227 409 409

Museum für Vor-und Frühgeschichte, Berlin 40 unknown 40,000 2,000 unknown 1,000

National Archaeological Museum Athens 270 4,000,000 800,000 500,000 2,963 2,963

Budapest History Museum 167 6,232,000 200,000 130,000 1,198 1,198

L.Pigorini, Rome 77 5,000,000 48,000 1,440 623 623

National de istorie a Romaniei of Bucharest 155 7,731,444 49,043 2,593 316 316

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e-Readiness summary from SWOT

Potential visitor

numbers

Connectivity Interactivity Agility

Pigorini, Rome

NAM, Athens

MVF, Berlin

MNR, Bucharest

BHM, Budapest

NMH, Sofia

NHM, Vienna

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Delphic panel survey

Italy29%

Germany13%

Romania21%

UK12%

Greece12%

Bulgaria13%

Italy

Germany

Romania

UK

Greece

Bulgaria

Archaeologist58%

Museum professional 13%

Marketing and PR5%

Finance5%

ICT professional13%

Training/innovation 6%

Method: after reading SWOT, experts (blind) from 6 museum states + UK completed 97 questionnaires on challenges of building pan-EU virtual museum -> analysis.

Experts

Distribution of experts

119

13

5

10

3

2

1

1

4

3

1

1

3

7

1

1

2

1

4

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Italy Germany Romania UK Greece Bulgaria

Training/innovation

ICT professional

Finance

Marketing and PR

Museum professional

Archaeologist

Experts by states

Delphic panel results analysis

• Ninety-three percent of panel members make positive comments on the prospects for a virtual museum.

• Eighty percent of panellists state that IPR protection is important. Of the 20% demurring: three give no answer and five are don’t know.

• Fifty-seven percent of panellists favour a virtual museum presenting materials on sciences, arts, local history, twelve favour art and thirteen (including all of the Bulgarian respondents) mention local history.

• Sixty-two percent of panellists favour a multi-channel strategy including web advertising, Internet communities, specialist journals, universities and schools.

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Delphic panel results analysis

• Half of the panellists (37 or 47%) mention the products from the SWOT (virtual visits, specialist information, books and novelties) and seventeen (20%) educational materials and/or specialist exhibitions.

• Overall, 32 (39%) favour a freely access model funded by grants, sponsorship and advertising, with 31 (38%) favouring a model of institutional subscription coupled with individual pay-as-you-go and supported by sponsorship and advertising.

• Key success factors from business planning perspective include specific target customer requirements and project cashflow.

• The panel is virtually unanimous is concluding the virtual museum is unlikely to detract from physical visitors to museums.

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Delphic panel results analysis

• Most museum respondents focus upon lack of technology, training and staff as constraints on the development of a virtual museum, whilst most business respondents focus on the need for a clear business model, business partners and investment.

• The main opportunity for the virtual museum arises from exploiting the quality of the museum collections.

• It seems clear that until the project has a full business plan, based upon a clear business model, there is unlikely to be business investment, however, it may be that business sponsorship becomes available.

• Desirable partners include e-learning experts, a computer graphics firm, tourist and cultural networks, learning institutions (especially Universities and secondary schools).

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Prospects and perspectives for a pan-EU virtual pre-history

museum • e-learning and international multi-museum virtual

exhibits are key products • virtual learning environment architecture with high

levels of connectivity, interactivity and agility with choice of access arrangement

• business model: subscription, B2C virtual content, ecommerce and physical museum marketing arm

• market nichés: institutions, researchers, learners and tourists

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Route to market

• Strengthen network and network building• Competence training• Organic growth + potential sponsors +

business partners (e-learning company + network provider + training)

• Intra-organisational change management within museums exploiting virtuality

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In conclusion ….

• Prospects for pan-EU virtual museum of pre-history promissory

• ICT potentially widening access to Europe’s diverse cultural heritage

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