Virtual Museum (of Canada): The Next Generation
Steve Dietz, Howard Besser, Ann Borda, and Kati Geber with Pierre Lévy
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................................... 4
Audience .................................................................................................................................................... 5
Interface ..................................................................................................................................................... 5
Content ...................................................................................................................................................... 6
Infrastructure ............................................................................................................................................. 7
Sustainability ............................................................................................................................................. 7
The Idea of the Next Generation ................................................................................................................. 9
Scope.........................................................................................................................................................10
Context .........................................................................................................................................................11
Museums ...................................................................................................................................................11
Networks ...................................................................................................................................................12
Learning ...................................................................................................................................................13
Formal Learning...................................................................................................................................14
Lifelong Learning ................................................................................................................................14
Emerging Technologies + Trends.............................................................................................................14
Broadband ............................................................................................................................................15
Rich Media ...........................................................................................................................................15
Computational Environments ..............................................................................................................16
Intelligent Systems ...............................................................................................................................17
Experience Design ....................................................................................................................................18
Authenticity .........................................................................................................................................19
Sociability ............................................................................................................................................20
Gaming.................................................................................................................................................21
Globalization ........................................................................................................................................22
Definitions ....................................................................................................................................................23
The Museum-Library-Archive...................................................................................................................23
The Virtual and the Real ...........................................................................................................................24
Born Digital .........................................................................................................................................25
Virtual Museum ........................................................................................................................................26
Virtual Exhibit ..........................................................................................................................................27
Audience .......................................................................................................................................................30
Background ...............................................................................................................................................30
Mass Audience vs. Personal Medium .......................................................................................................31
Audience Profiling ....................................................................................................................................33
User Profiling ...........................................................................................................................................34
Interpersonal Communication ..................................................................................................................36
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Cybrid Audiences ......................................................................................................................................38
Interface .......................................................................................................................................................40
Pattern and Randomness ..........................................................................................................................40
Browsing ...................................................................................................................................................40
Recommendation Systems ...................................................................................................................42
Featuring ..............................................................................................................................................42
Personalization .........................................................................................................................................43
Database Narratives: From Tables to Stories ..........................................................................................46
Content .........................................................................................................................................................48
Rich Content .............................................................................................................................................48
Rich Context .............................................................................................................................................49
Richly Open ..............................................................................................................................................49
Poor Quality? ...........................................................................................................................................50
Born Digital Content ................................................................................................................................50
Infrastructure and Architectures ...............................................................................................................51
Modularity ................................................................................................................................................52
Pointing vs. Copying ............................................................................................................................53
Addressing Stability .............................................................................................................................53
Interoperability + Standards ....................................................................................................................54
Sustainability ...............................................................................................................................................57
Integration ................................................................................................................................................57
Capacity Building .....................................................................................................................................58
Partnerships ..........................................................................................................................................58
The Public Sphere and Economic Sustainability ......................................................................................59
Business Models ..................................................................................................................................61
Brand....................................................................................................................................................61
Intellectual Property .................................................................................................................................61
Appendix 1: Pour une Mémoire numérique universelle ..........................................................................63
Avant propos .............................................................................................................................................63
La culture à venir......................................................................................................................................63
La responsabilité des institutions de la mémoire ......................................................................................64
Repenser l’archive ....................................................................................................................................65
Une nouvelle perspective ..........................................................................................................................66
Le langage des idées .................................................................................................................................67
Digitong ..........................................................................................................................................68
Idées ................................................................................................................................................68
Mèmes .............................................................................................................................................68
Syntaxe et sémantique .....................................................................................................................69
Idéographie......................................................................................................................................69
Algorithmique .................................................................................................................................70
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Calcul sémantique analogique .........................................................................................................70
Moments, arches .............................................................................................................................71
Sèmes ..............................................................................................................................................71
Information......................................................................................................................................71
Biology, theory of evolution ................................................................................................................73
Cognitive sciences ..............................................................................................................................73
Collective intelligence in cyberculture ...............................................................................................74
Culture .................................................................................................................................................75
Digital Arts ..........................................................................................................................................75
Epistemology .......................................................................................................................................76
Human development ............................................................................................................................76
Knowledge economy ...........................................................................................................................76
Knowledge management ......................................................................................................................77
Medias..................................................................................................................................................77
Networked society and social capital ...................................................................................................78
Pioneers of cybernetics and cyberculture .............................................................................................79
Semantic Web ......................................................................................................................................80
Sign and Language ...............................................................................................................................80
Visualization & mapping ....................................................................................................................81
Appendix 2: Selected Bibliography ............................................................................................................82
Appendix 3: CHIN Research on VMC ......................................................................................................89
Appendix 4: CHIN Virtual Exhibition History .........................................................................................92
Pure CHIN VE History/Facts ...................................................................................................................95
Appendix 5: Glossary ..................................................................................................................................97
Appendix 6: Contributors and Bios ...........................................................................................................99
Howard Besser .........................................................................................................................................99
Ann Borda .................................................................................................................................................99
Steve Dietz ..............................................................................................................................................100
Kati Geber ..............................................................................................................................................101
Pierre Levy .............................................................................................................................................102
The Virtual Museum of Canada Rethinking Group ................................................................................103
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Executive Summary
The future of the virtual museum is increasingly that of a platform—for its
audiences and its institutional clients. While authoritativeness will remain a
critical differentiating factor for the Virtual Museum of Canada, the key to
sustainability in every area investigated, from audiences to interfaces to content
to infrastructure, is creating the tools and platforms that will allow others—both
individuals and institutions—to create the compelling experiences that will
ultimately make the VMC successful at the scale of its ambitions.
After reviewing the scope of this project, the general cultural and technical
context in which museums and virtual museums are currently operating, and
definitions of key terms, the authors investigate the literature and important
examples regarding virtual museums in five key areas:





Audience
Interface
Content
Infrastructure
Sustainability
Based on this review, critical issues for the VMC to investigate further and model
for a next generation implementation are identified. The objective is to challenge
assumptions and encourage discussion among CHIN staff, its members and
partners, about which strategic directions in each area should be prioritized over
the next two to three years. Once these are identified, it will still be necessary to
determine which of many possible approaches should be implemented. This
paper helps identify the general destination not the specific route to get there.
The VMC, as a curated and concatenated collection of disparate digital objects,
is a hybrid of some of the traditional functions of the museum, library, and
archive, particularly in relation to issues of access.
Some of the primary trends that this paper explores, such as the hybridization of
the concept of the museum, the increasing interpenetration of physical and virtual
spaces, the advantages of a modular, pan-institutional structure, audience
participation in the creation of content, and the deployment of wireless, locative
media devices might seem to be outside the current CHIN mandate. We are not
incognizant of these parameters, but there is no question that significant aspects
of a potential next generation virtual museum bump up against current
institutional realities. These boundaries are understood by the authors, but we
also want to present, in some cases, “what if” scenarios when we felt the
potential benefit to the underlying mission of the cultural heritage sector is at
least worth discussing. In the end, of course, it will be up to CHIN, following
consultation with its membership, to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of
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such approaches and to determine whether or not and how to make them serve
their needs.
In the Appendices, Pierre Lévy presents a speculative chapter on the idea of a
universal ontology. There are also a selected bibliography of sources, an
annotated bibliography of existing CHIN research on the VMC, a selected
glossary of terms, and brief biographies of the authors.
As stated above, many of the specific recommendations of the report cut across
the categories of audience, interface, content, infrastructure, and sustainability
and relate to two primary ideas:
1. The next generation virtual museum should become exponentially more
audience-centered, even if this appears to mean less focus on the goals
and functions of individual institutions
2. The next generation virtual museum needs to understand for every single
function it performs, how it can be a platform to support efforts by both
individuals and institutions in that area, as well as creating model
applications
Audience




Sponsoring rigorous research about online audiences and their use of
online resources is a critical building block for successful
implementation of the next generation virtual museum.
The VMC should focus on systems that allow users to create and
manage content
The VMC should focus on assistive systems based on what users
need or want, not their demographic profile, however fine-grained; the
VMC should think of the Internet as a medium to deliver customized
learning opportunities—including customized interfaces—to a
potentially vast number of widely distributed individuals.
Without forgoing its commitment to collective memories, the VMC
should focus on developing a lively communications platform that
provides access, communication and social spaces to meet audience
needs to collect, relate, create and donate activities; a platform that
encourages individual points of view but provides access to usable
authoritative information as the audience desires.
Interface

The VMC should model open system projects that have a high degree
of audience participation without undermining the value of the
museum’s subject matter expertise
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

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


If the audience is truly placed at the center of the VMC’s evaluation
process, the trajectory will be toward ubiquity of delivery interfaces.
The VMC should prototype various “meta interfaces” that provide
alternative access to content with specific goals such as sociability,
physicality, and location-awareness
The VMC should prototype “entertaining” applications with game-like
interfaces, which are rooted in appropriate learning theory
Some “sociable interfaces” require specialized physical interfaces. The
VMC should also prototype physical interface projects that activate
sociability and have a level of functionality that is not possible at home
on someone’s off-the-shelf computer.
Browsing is a significant way to access virtual museums, especially for
their non-textual information, and innovative browsing interfaces
should be developed
VMC should evaluate how interest in highly trafficked sites or
information resources can be used to “push” visitors out to other
resources via a contextual browsing interface.
One of the main directions for the next generation of virtual museums
should be personalization. Visitors to the next generation of virtual
museums should be able to collect content from a virtual museum, a
number of or all virtual museums, museum sites or any other
information source, into their personal museum spaces and this should
be the focus of interoperability research.
Collaborative filtering is a potentially valuable tool for audiences, one
which a meta-site such as the VMC should investigate implementing.
In coordination with other “social platform” efforts, the VMC should
incorporate a mechanism for its audience to be directly involved in at
least some featuring on the site.
The personal museum—like the virtual museum—needs to be a
platform that can support interpersonal communication as well as
knowledge management.
Content




The VMC should model experimental projects, such as ones that have
a high degree of audience interactivity yet attempt to retain the value of
the museum’s subject matter expertise.
The VMC should explore a pan-institutional, modular system of
learning objects for the creation of new authored content
The VMC should investigate a structured, external linking system to
provide a richer context for item level content
The VMC should strive to provide "rich content"—rich media that
maximizes the appropriate use of images, video, audio, and
computational media as much as possible and provides as
comprehensive as possible context for individual items
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

The VMC should investigate an open system that enables the
audience to add certain types of information to the core museum
content.
The VMC should pursue a set of external content relationships to
create the most engaging experience for the most objects for the most
people.
Infrastructure





The VMC should provide a platform for needed services, which the
individual museum cannot sustain alone.
In particular, an important role the VMC could play would be to create
a preservation project that could act as an archival platform for any
collection in Canada of virtual art creation.
The VMC must develop a powerful modular architecture that can
support the modularity of content that is proposed; one of the main
challenges for the next generation of virtual museums is to find a
common platform for the great variety of virtual exhibits produced by a
wide range of creators, from museums, allied organizations as well as
individuals.
The VMC should assume that access to content will be ubiquitous
through a diverse range of devices and should structure its delivery
system accordingly
The VMC should focus on developing a lively communications platform
without forgoing its commitment to collective memories
Sustainability
Proposals for specific business models are beyond the scope of this paper, but
some general principles apply regarding sustainability.




The VMC as a national aggregator of content and links to content can
act as a powerful hub for the entire Canadian cultural heritage
community. As a platform of selected services, it can also ensure that
the smaller, “link-poor” sites that nevertheless contain immeasurably
valuable information can sustain themselves in the network ecology.
To most reliably implement next generation services, the VMC should
undertake rigorous evaluation of online audiences that goes beyond
current available research.
Only by adopting (and in come cases helping give birth to) widely
accepted standards and protocols, will the VMC have the
interoperability and sustainability that it will need in the coming years.
The VMC can play an important role in developing institutional capacity
for the integration of the “information environment” into something that
is easily reusable in multiple contexts via the next generation virtual
museum.
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
The issue for business models, strategic alliances, branding, and
marketing is as much cultural as an implementation issue. Parallel to
the way that the VMC is in a position to test “entertaining” applications
while remaining authoritative and pedagogically sound, the VMC also
has the trust of its community to allow it to experiment with potential
business models.
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The Idea of the Next Generation
“Next generation” can mean many things, but generally it refers to something
beyond incremental or evolutionary improvements. For instance, in the summer
of 2003, at a symposium on the “post-digital library,” Clifford Lynch, the head of
the Coalition for Networked Information, asked how the field would spend $1
billion (if it had it). The intent of the strategy was to get people to think about what
next generation of digital libraries might mean beyond improving this or that
strategy, as important and critical as such pragmatic matters remain. He argued
in his written remarks:
“We should recognize the limitations of a research program focusing on digital
libraries as we understand them today. This is likely to lead to mostly incremental
rather than transformative progress . . .. Rather than considering how to redesign or recreate or enhance libraries we might usefully focus our attention on
the human and social purposes and needs that libraries and allied memory
institutions have been intended to address . . .. And we must be careful not to
overly-emphasize the parts of this knowledge ecosystem that are familiar, that
we are comfortable with intellectually, socially and economically, to the exclusion
of the new, the unfamiliar, the disturbing, the confusing.”1
By the same token, attempting to plan for transformative progress to a next
generation can be unpredictable. In the mid-90s the United States’ National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began a program to design a next
generation Reusable Vehicle Launcher—or space shuttle. It wanted to create a
vehicle that would improve on the current technology by an order of magnitude in
key areas.2 NASA’s goals proved wildly unachievable, in part because there were
too many variables that required breakthrough inventions.
Both Lynch’s exhortations and NASA’s experience are worth keeping in mind
when considering the next generation Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC). On the
one hand, it is important not to merely recreate museums online but to focus on
the needs and desires of the user population, and to understand these within an
information ecology that cannot be easily bounded as “museum.” On the other
hand, the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), and its members have
equally real needs and desires that cannot be resolved solely through
theorization. The VMC needs to address these as well.
This paper is designed to take a broad view of the potential for a virtual museum
and from that to come up with some specific recommendations for VMC.
Hopefully, we will not end up in outer space.
Clifford Lynch. “Reflections Towards the Development of a ‘Post-DL’ Research Agenda.” Wave of the
Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 15-17, 2003.
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_lynch.html. Accessed October 25, 2003.
2 http://www.aero-space.nasa.gov/library/showcase/spacetra.htm. Accessed October 27, 2003.
1
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Scope
Several analyses of the current VMC have already been conducted.3 This paper
is not intended as yet another or as detailed design specifications for its next
iteration. We identify broad areas that should be considered and why, if CHIN is
to create a next generation VMC. The objective is to challenge assumptions and
encourage discussion among CHIN staff, its members and its partners, about
what should be prioritized over the next 2-3 years. Once these are identified, it
will still be necessary to determine which of many possible approaches should be
implemented. This paper helps identify the destination not the specific route to
get there.
We do, however, limit our discussion to implementations for which baseline
technologies that are available or may reasonably be assumed to be available in
the next 3 years, even though they may not be widely deployed. Similarly with
standards and other issues, the recommendations and discussions are based on
implementable strategies, although CHIN/VMC may need to assume a
leadership position in certain areas.
Some of the primary trends that this paper explores, such as the hybridization of
the concept of the museum, the increasing interpenetration of physical and virtual
space, the advantages of a modular, pan-institutional structure, audience
participation in the creation of content, and the deployment of wireless, locative
media devices might seem to be outside the current CHIN mandate. We are not
incognizant of these parameters, but there is no question that significant aspects
of a potential next generation virtual museum bump up against current
institutional realities. The authors of this paper understand these boundaries, but
we also want to present, in some cases, “what if” scenarios when we felt the
potential benefit to the underlying mission of the cultural heritage sector is at
least worth discussing. In the end, of course, it will be up to CHIN, following
consultation with its membership, to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of
such approaches and to determine whether and how to make them serve their
needs.
Finally, the authors for this paper represent an international approach rooted in
Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. While we recognize that
there are important differences among countries, we also believe that in the
critical areas for a next generation application, the issues are trans-national, and
background context from any of these nations is largely applicable to the issues
CHIN faces in regard to a next generation of the Virtual Museum of Canada.
3
See an annotated bibliography in Appendix 3
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Context
The next generation of VMC is not being planned in a vacuum. This next section
identifies key aspects of the broader philosophical, cultural, and technological
contexts within which the planning is occurring.
Museums
Social, economic, and technological changes are causing transformation of many
elements of the public sector, and museums are no exception. With less funding
available for the public sector, museums are seeking new partnerships and
funding sources.4 Many museums are feeling pressure from their funding
sources to broaden their audiences, in part to justify how many people are
served per dollar given to the museum. As a result of these economic pressures,
there is increasing pressure that museums be run “like a business,” sometimes at
the expense of their chartered mission.5
As a result of technological and social changes, more and more job functions that
were previously separated between museum departments are being handled by
functions that cut across departments. For example, while on-site exhibitions
require the collaboration of staff from registration, exhibits, curatorial, education,
and even technology departments, online exhibits are often generated from a
single department and often do not follow the same procedures. As a result,
traditional museum reporting structures are becoming blurred. 6
The relation between the museum and the visitor, and the museum and the
creator are also undergoing rapid change. Prior to online exhibits, the curator
had exclusive control over juxtaposition and contextualization. But virtual
museums allow both other museum staff and the general public to perform their
own juxtapositions and contextualization. Creators as well as museums are
creating interactive contexts for the visitor (Figures 1, 2).
4
In the US, this has led to a great increase in corporate sponsorship of exhibitions, and in a continued
reliance on wealthy patron assistance for acquisitions.
5 Rina Elster Pantalony’s paper, “A Marriage of Convenience: Museums and the Practice of Business
Doctrine in the Development of Sustainable Business Models” is particularly insightful and useful regarding
the tradeoffs that museums are facing and the necessary planning steps. See
http://www.ichim.org/ichim03/PDF/009C.pdf
6 Besser, Howard (1997). The Transformation of the Museum and the way it’s Perceived, in Katherine
Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 153-169.
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Figure 1 (left): Gallery display of works created by previous visitors to Museum of Contemporary
Art, Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro. Figure 2 (right): David Rokeby, Giver of Names. Visitors create
“installations” from the materials on the floor, which the computer interprets.
The pressure for museums to become more business-like and more interactive
presents significant opportunities but also potential pitfalls.
The VMC can help by providing a platform for needed services, which the
individual museum cannot support, and by modeling projects that have a
high degree of interactivity without undermining the value of the museum’s
subject matter expertise.
Networks
In 1970 Simon Nora and Alain Minc argued that the convergence of computing
and networks would “change everything,” writing in a report to the French
government:
“Above all, insofar as it is responsible for an upheaval in the processing and
storage of data, it will alter the entire nervous system of social organization . . ..
This increasing interconnection between computers and telecommunications—
which we will term ‘telematics’—opens radically new horizons.”7
Arguably, for the past 35 years, society has been testing—and tested by—these
telematic horizons. There is nothing particularly unique about the virtualization of
the museum. It is happening across every domain from libraries to gambling to
just-in-time education to our very bodies. Today, as a recent UN report on ecommerce and development notes, the transformation that Nora and Minc
foresaw is now global and nearly ubiquitous.
“It is now widely accepted by policy makers, enterprises and society at large that
information and communications technologies (ICT) are at the centre of an
economic and social transformation that is affecting all countries. ICT and
globalization have combined to create new economic and social landscape. They
have brought fundamental changes in the way enterprises and economies as a
whole function.”8
Museums, like every other institution, must learn how to not only cope with but to
thrive in a network society. One of the most significant issues for museums and
the cultural heritage sector in general is what proponents of an emerging science
of networks describe as the “power law distribution.”
7
Alain Minc and Simon Nora. The Computerization of Society. Boston: MIT Press, 1970.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Secretariat. “E-Commerce and Development
Report 2003.” United Nations, 2003.
8
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QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Figure 3 “The degree of distribution of a random network follows a bell curve . . .. In contrast, the
power law degree distribution of a scale-free network predicts that most nodes have only a few
links, held together by a few highly connected hubs.” 9
Due to the so-called “tipping effect” of networks, beyond a certain percentage of
use, networks tend to become self-perpetuating and the rich (in links) get richer.
Google, for example, gets bigger in part because it is bigger. The standard curve
for the distribution of many things in network society is not the familiar bell curve;
it is the power curve, where relatively few number of sites are highly linked—and
hence trafficked—while most are comparatively link poor. The reason this
matters for the museum community it that if it is to meet its core mission, it needs
to find ways to both compete on the power side of the curve and to sustain itself
on the “very many nodes with only a few links” axis as well.
The VMC as a national aggregator of content and links to content can act
as a powerful hub for the entire Canadian cultural heritage community. As
a platform of selected services, it can also ensure that the smaller, “linkpoor” sites that nevertheless contain immeasurably valuable information
can sustain themselves in the network ecology.
Learning
An entire paper could be devoted to issues of museums and education. In terms
of the role of the next generation museum, two key issues are at stake. Formal
education often has specific requirements, which museums must help fulfill, if
they are to find a lasting role in the classroom, and learning happens in many
contexts outside of the classroom. The virtual museum has much to offer in both
settings.
9
Diagram and caption from Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA:
Perseus, 2002, p. 71.
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Formal Learning
Museums have begun collaborating both with formal educational environments
(such as universities, grade schools, teachers) and with other informal
educational environments (such as public television). These collaborations have
taken a variety of forms, ranging from universities providing technological
expertise to small museums, to educators creating learning modules for selfpaced instruction based on museum artifacts and descriptive metadata, to
educational researchers evaluating the impact of museum education
departments on various age groups.10
In the context of K-12 schooling, teachers want resources aimed at their grade
level, often in order to meet requirements mandated at the local, regional or
national level. The VMC should incorporate lesson plans when possible that are
written for a particular audience or suggest how the material can be used for a
specific context, especially in regard to educational requirements.11
Lifelong Learning
Education is no longer viewed as age-dependent; it encompasses both preschoolers, senior citizens as well as, potentially, anyone outside of the formal
schooling process. Issues of life-long learning become particularly important for
virtual museums. The audience for a virtual museum is geographically
dispersed, and potentially much wider and more diverse than the audience for a
physical museum. In addition, it is possible to address both specific sub-groups
of learners as well as learning needs based on functional requirements (see
Audiences section for more about audience segmentation and user profiles).
The key to creating the next generation of learning functionality—for the
classroom and lifelong learners—is twofold: 1) rigorous evaluation of
online audiences and 2) for the VMC to implement a robust system that
enables the creation of modules from disparate sources by both formal
educators and users themselves, including the integration of information
from outside of the VMC system-context.
Emerging Technologies + Trends
“The future of computing is ubiquitous, aware, embedded and distributed.”12
“Digital Resources for Cultural Heritage: Current Status and Future Needs, A Strategic Assessment
Workshop.” August 25-26, 2003, Washington, DC, Supported by The Institute of Museum and Library
Services, Final Report prepared by Angela Spinazze.
11 Spinazze op cit. More information is available at www.teachersdomain.org, a collection of the National
Science Digital Library, funded by the National Science Foundation.
12 Gennari, J., Harrington, M., Hughes, S., Manojlovich, M. and Spring, M. (2003) “Preparatory Observations
Ubiquitous Knowledge Environments: The Cyberinfrastructure Information Ether.” Wave of the Future: NSF
Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 15-17. http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_spring.html.
Accessed February 17, 2004.
10
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There are innumerable ways to break down research areas in technology
investigations, but for the purposes of this paper and the VMC, we consider
several broad, interrelated areas to have the most potential for impact.
Broadband
Broadband might simply mean that access to the Internet is becoming
widespread and robust, from the Internet 213 and other high-speed networks to
the increasing penetration of T1 and greater bandwidth at businesses to cable
and DSL in the home. The U.S. Federal Communications Division defines
broadband technologies to encompass “all evolving high-speed digital
technologies that provide consumers integrated access to voice, high-speed
data, video-on-demand, and interactive delivery services.”14
According to the International Telecommunications Union, global broadband
subscribers grew 72% in 2002. Canada ranked third with just over 11 broadband
subscribers per 100 inhabitants.15 As a benchmark for things to come, Korea,
which is generally considered to be approximately three years ahead of the
global average in converting Internet users to broadband, 94% of Internet
subscribers have broadband connections.16
The interest in broadband is not simply a matter of speed. Horrigan and Raine’s
research for the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that “broadband
users spend more time online, do more things, and do them more often than dialup Internet users,” and that they use the Internet to:



become creators and managers of online content;
satisfy a wide range of queries for information, and;
engage in multiple Internet activities on a daily basis.17
The ramifications of widespread fast access to the Internet and its impact on use
patterns in relation to the VMC are discussed below, but it is important to
highlight here the Pew findings about the observed behavior of users.
Rich Media
Faster Internet connections allow for greater deployment of “rich media,”
meaning a range of possibilities from larger images to audio and video streams
to complex, hyperdocuments using a range of software to real time
communications. As Liroff puts it:
13
See http://www.internet2.edu/. Accessed 1.19.04.
FCC Strategic Goals: Broadband. http://www.fcc.gov/broadband/. Accessed December 4, 2003.
15 John B. Horrigan and Lee Rainie, “The Broadband Difference: How online Americans’ behavior changes with high14
speed Internet connections at home.” Pew Internet & American Life Project.
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=63. Accessed February 17, 2004.
“Number of global broadband subscribers grows 72% in 2002.” International Telecommunications Union.
http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2003/25.html. Accessed December 4, 2003.
17 Ibid.
16
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“The broadcast program is becoming the executive summary of the materials
collected by a producer in the course of preparing a program. And, all of those
materials, whether they ended up in the broadcast or not, are of interest to
viewers of public television.”18
With broadband, not only does it become possible to deliver rich media
productions related to a museum’s collections and exhibitions programs, but the
traditional boundaries between museums, schools, and broadcasters become
fuzzy.
The VMC will need to consider ways to both compete and cooperate with
rich media productions that potentially use museum-based or museum-like
information.
Computational Environments
The potential for ubiquitous networking—access to a network anytime, anywhere,
from any device—is quickly moving from the research labs to practical
applications. Whether it is the increasing number of location-aware, handheld
audio (and some video) tours being deployed in museums, the soon-to-be
standard RFID (radio frequency identification) tagging of merchandise, the
increasingly common wireless “hot spots” in cafes and other locales throughout
the urban environment, or the commercial appearance of Internet-capable coffee
pots, the network is potentially ubiquitous.
As access becomes ubiquitous through the network, one key effect is to shift the
emphasis in relation to content from the producer to the user. Where is the visitor
accessing museum information? If it is on a cell phone, deliver it one way; if it is
in a virtual reality environment, deliver it another way. If a visitor wants to know
about a particular object or idea, what are the appropriate boundaries for
retrieving information? Only information from institutions that are members of
CHIN? Any museum? At a sixth-grade reading level? What about alternative
points of view or comments by other visitors? Related “entertainment?” As
sound? As video? As interactive? Labeled official and unofficial? And so on. Put
another way, the information marketplace becomes a buyer’s market.19
We suggest that if audience is placed at the center of VMC’s evaluation
process, the trajectory will be toward ubiquity. Users will have expectations
and options, and what they want to know doesn’t always map precisely or
solely to what any single institution has to offer. Often the user will want to
be able to create her personal cache of information. This does not mean
that the source or quality or authoritativeness of information doesn’t
matter. This is the potential advantage of a VMC based on a modular
18
Spinazze, op cit.
For more about the information marketplace see Michael Dertouzos. What Will Be: How the New World of
Information Will Change Our Lives. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
19
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architecture with the capability to create “personal museums.” The VMC
can be a trusted vehicle for this exploration.
With the merging of ubiquitous networks, small and powerful computing
capabilities, and location-aware devices, it is clear that one of the dominant
arenas for future “experiences”—to use the broadest possible term—involves
embedding the network in physical environments. “Computational environments”
is intended to encompass a number of such approaches from the idea of “calm
technology” promoted by Marc Weiser and Rich Gold at Xerox PARC20 to HP’s
Cooltown—“the intersection of nomadicity, appliances, networking, and the
web”21—to the kind of augmented reality capabilities being research at MARS
Exploratory Media Lab in Germany22 as just a small cross-section of current
research efforts. For the purposes of VMC, computational environments can be
considered and extension of ubiquitous access to networked content via
specialized physical interfaces, which are also able to take advantage of locationaware functionalities such as global positioning satellites (GPS).
The next generation of the VMC should not only have a modular
architecture of learning objects, which can be personalized, but it must be
structured in such a way that it can be delivered appropriately to
increasingly diverse environments, and the VMC should consider modeling
a location-aware project that takes these issues into consideration.
Intelligent Systems
In some ways this is such a broad heading that it is almost useless in terms of
identifying specific technologies or functionalities. However, we think it is useful
for highlighting some particular issues in the coming age of ubiquitous, aware,
embedded and distributed computing.
One is in relation to so-called information overload. A recent study from the
University of California Berkeley estimated that in 2002, 5 exabytes of
information were stored in print, film, magnetic, and optical media. An additional
18 exabytes of information flowed through the telephone, radio, TV, and the
Internet. For comparison the 19 million books and other materials in the Library
of Congress comprise approximately 10 terrabytes. 5 exabytes is 500,000
See Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, “Designing Calm Technology,”
http://www.ubiq.com/weiser/calmtech/calmtech.htm. Accessed December 24, 2003 and “Rich Gold: 19502003. Research from Goldographic Laboratories from All Over the World,” http://www.richgold.org/.
Accessed December 24, 2003.
21 See http://cooltown.hp.com/cooltownhome/index.asp. Accessed December 24, 2003.
22 See http://www.imk.fraunhofer.de/index.en.html. Accessed December 24, 2003.
20
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Libraries of Congress.23 If, potentially, all of this information is accessible and
inter-connectable, how can we avoid a Library of Babel?24
There is no easy answer to this question, and it involves a variety of answers
from issues of trust in the network to legal regimes limiting the public sphere to
unresolved questions about the semantic web.
One solution is for the VMC to produce and/or sponsor a necessarily limited
number of rich media projects—virtual exhibitions on specific topics. Inevitably,
these stellar results will be surrounded by literally millions of objects that do not
have such a rich context. Is this the online equivalent of a museum only being
able to display 1% of its permanent collection?
Development of the Semantic Web or a universal ontology25 as a way to create
pan-institutional context is an external process that the museum field should
monitor and participate in, but it cannot be controlled by the VMC. There are
other areas, however, in which museums are perfectly capable of innovating. For
instance, a “meta interface,” mentioned above, can link not only the contents of
the VMC but external databases and resources that could more automatically
provide a greater context for any given object.
Together, these emerging technologies and trends will begin to create the kind of
seamless and hybrid computing environments that are more than the sum of their
parts. As one leading lab puts it:
“A premise of the Locative Media Lab is that next generation, location aware,
mobile devices will be different animals. Their capabilities taken together and
integrated will create a new platform quite different from the traditional
understanding of what PC's, mobile phones, PDA's and the Internet are (and are
capable of).”26
Experience Design
“In thinking about museums of tomorrow, we might ask what kinds of bodies,
what kinds of sensoriums, are artists and visitors going to bring to the museum, if
they are not already do so--distributed selves, multi-tasking, love of sensory
derangement, high arousal thresholds. These are the people who have cut their
teeth on computer games, chatrooms, extreme rides, raves, and the like.”
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimlett27
23
Varian, Hal et al. (2003). How Much Information? 2003: Executive summary
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm#summary
Accessed February 17, 2004.
24 Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” Labyrinths, New York: Penguin, 1970. See
http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html. Accessed March 17, 2004.
25 See Pierre Levy
26 See http://www.locative.net/. Accessed December 15, 2003.
27 http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000015
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Authenticity
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Figure 4 Fort Kearny Regional Historic Park, Nebraska (left); The Great Platte River Road
Archway Monument spanning Interstate 80.
A personal story. Returning from vacation in the Western United States one year,
the family of one of the authors came to Fort Kearny, Nebraska, site of one of the
fabled Oregon Trail “nodes.” Being a good museum family interested in
authenticity, we went to the original Fort Kearny site. Basically, beyond the sod
roof of a blacksmith’s shed, there was a large, grassy expanse more or less
uninterrupted except by worn signage identifying a particular quadrant as
formerly a sleeping quarters, a stable, etc.28 It couldn’t have been more boring. A
few miles up the road, actually spanning the 4 lanes of the interstate highway
was The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, complete with an
awesome entrance, realistic dioramas “playing” dramatic narratives, locationtriggered audio devices, multimedia presentations, and so on.29 Never mind that
the overarching theme of the Great Platte River Road was the interstate highway
system as the apotheosis of the Oregon Trail and the frontier spirit, it was an
EXPERIENCE.
It’s an extreme example, perhaps, but the point is that authenticity and a space
for contemplation may not be enough to lure the broader audiences that
museums seek—or more importantly for them to fully understand what they are
looking at. Too often, however, the issue of creating an entertaining experience is
confused with being “just entertainment.” Especially if museums are looking
beyond “museum-goers” as a potential audience, the quality of engagement and
level of interaction is important.
Whether it is the Archway Monument, EuroDisney or the Millennium Dome,
numerous commercial enterprises all around the world are consciously
packaging “culture”—not just thrills and oddities—for contemporary audiences.30
Ultimately, the issue is not whether to try and create such experiences, the issue
is how to do so in a way that sustains institutions’ core values. As Rina Pantalony
notes:
28
See http://www.esu3.org/nebraska/ftkearny/ftkear.html. Accessed December 4, 2003.
See http://www.archway.org/index.htm. Accessed December 24, 2003.
30 See http://www.urlwire.com/news/072402.html and http://go-newyorkcity.com/manhattan/0025index.html,
29
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“The type of economy is changing from a product economy to an experience
economy and audiences/visitors becoming more demanding and less focused,
due in part, to the diversity and sheer volume of entertainment available.
Museums are, like never before, required to understand and expand their
“market share” and compete for audience so that they are able maintain their
relevancy. Ignoring or downplaying audience satisfaction in developing museum
programming may no longer be an option.”31
The VMC should experiment with creating an entertaining application to
better evaluate how the strategies of entertainment can be used to meet
mission goals.
Sociability
Most museum visits are made in groups of two or more. There is increasing
emphasis on the need for museums to support sociable learning and social
interactions, both in physical spaces and online.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Figure 5 (left) The Dialog Table allows for multiple people to access digital resources at the same
time, encouraging the possibility of social interactions. The table program is based on networks of
relationships between objects a visitor might see in the galleries with other works in the collection
based on a number of criteria.32
Figure 6 (right) Warren Sack, Conversation Map.33
Dialog Table, pictured above, is a project by Marek Walczak and others. Through
the use of embedded screens that don’t cut off participants from one another; an
innovative tracking technology that allows multiple participants to use the touch
screen at the same time; and specially designed activities that encourage
collaboration, the Dialog Table is a new type of physical interface to museum
content designed to encourage—and take advantage of—sociability.
31
Pantalony, op cit.
See http://dialog.walkerart.org. Accessed January 19, 2004.
33 Warren Sack, Conversation Map. http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~sack/CM/quick-start.html. Accessed
Feb. 9, 2004.
32
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In the virtual realm, artist and theorist Warren Sack argues that there is an
important new public space, which he calls “very large scale conversations.”34
One of his goals is to create tools so that participants can better understand the
social dynamics and meaning of these conversations, which are generally among
widely distributed participants, who do not necessarily know each other well, and
which take place at varying periods of time with significant intermediate “chatter.”
It is notable that this new space of public discourse, which has never before been
seen according to Sack, is really only made visible let alone more useful through
a new kind of interface.
The VMC can and should create new model “meta interfaces” to its
distributed contents of learning objects, similar to the idea of the
Conversation Map, so that visitors can begin to better understand VMC
also as a new kind of museological space that goes beyond the traditional
search engine or exhibition-specific interface.
Some “sociable interfaces” require specialized physical interfaces. The
VMC should also create model physical interface projects that activate
sociability and have a level of functionality that is not possible at home on
someone’s off-the-shelf computer, as the Dialog Table attempts.
Gaming
“We learned to crawl alongside the PC. We came of age with the Internet. Earlyadopting, hyperconnected, always on: Call us Children of the Revolution, the first
teens and tweens to grow up with the network. It takes a generation to unlock the
potential of a transformative ecology – we are that generation. From IM to MP3 to
P2P, we lab-test tomorrow’s culture. While others marvel at the digital future, we
take it for granted. Think of it as the difference between a second language and a
first. And imagine the impact when full fluency hits the workplace, the shopping
mall, and the living room. In the past, you put away childish things when you
grew up. But our tools are taking over the adult world. Check it out: The
technology is trickling up.”35
Today’s youth are the “born digital” generation. It is impossible to raise the issue
of entertainment without discussing gaming. In one study of British Columbia
teens it was found that “Eighty per cent of teens said they played at least
occasionally and the average amount of time spent gaming for the sample was 5
hours per week.”36 Today, in the United States, more than twice as many people
Warren Sack, “Discourse Architecture and Very Large-Scale Conversations,” in The Digital Order, Robert
Latham and Saskia Sassen, editors. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming.
35 “Born Digital: Children of the Revolution.” A Wired Special Report. September 2002.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/borndigital.html. Accessed December 24, 2003.
36 See “Video Game Culture: Leisure and Play Preferences of B.C. Teens”
A report from the Media Analysis Laboratory Simon Fraser University, Burnaby B.C. October 1998 at
http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/research_documents/studies/video_games/video_game_culture.cfm.
34
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play video games as watch movies and three times more than read books.37
Arguably, gaming is to current generations what the television was to earlier
generations. The issue then wasn’t whether to make a TV show (although that is
happening more and more, now), the issue was to acknowledge that potential
museum visitors were used to getting their information in a format other than
printed words. Today, video is an accepted exhibition strategy, and it is evaluated
on how well it is used, not whether to use it.
Games have a particular resonance in relation to learning potential for several
reasons. According to Janet Murray in her seminal book Hamlet on the
Holodeck38, two of the key characteristics of digital environments are that they are
immersive and they allow for agency. It is precisely these characteristics that a
Natural History Museum (London) study identified as of greatest interest to
younger audiences for an exhibit about Charles Darwin, allowing them to move
about in a virtual, immersive recreation of the Beagle and to control various
factors, such as the direction of the ship.39
The VMC must unashamedly create compelling experiences and should
experiment with game-like interfaces that are strongly content-based for
these born-digital generations.
Globalization
The VMC is presented via a global network. As such, its reach and its potential
audience are global. Currently, VMC’s audience is “mainly composed of North
Americans, particularly Canadian,” although there are visitors from 140
countries.40 Whether and how to engage with this potential global audience is a
significant issue that presents an opportunity but also implies a responsibility to
understand the VMC’s offerings within a much larger context. This is perhaps
particularly relevant in relation to language41, but it is also a question of what
knowledge can be assumed, which audiences are looking for information, and
how to present Canada’s role in the world.
For more information see “Economic Impacts of the Demand for Playing Interactive Entertainment
Software,” Interactive Digital Software Association, 2001. http://www.theesa.com/releases/EIS2001.pdf and
“The Relevance of Video Games and Gaming Consoles to the Higher and Further Education Learning
Experience,” JISC, March 12, 2003. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/tsw_02-01.rtf
38 Janet H. Murray. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: The Free
Press, 1997.
39 James Johnson, “The Virtual Endeavor Experiment: A Networked VR Application,” in David Bearman and
Jennifer Trant (Eds.), Museum Interactive Multimedia 1997: Cultural Heritage Systems Design and
Interfaces, Selected Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in
Museums, (ICHIM 97). Le Louvre, Paris, France, September 1-5, 1997.
40 For comparison, in 2003 fully 25% of the Walker Art Center’s over 3 million online visitors are from outside
the United States.
41 In an online survey of VMC users, almost 25% responded to the French-lanuguage version of the survey.
37
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Definitions
The Museum-Library-Archive
Though libraries, museums, and archives all look like similar repositories housing
cultural resources, there are some fundamental differences in mission, in what is
collected, in how works are organized, and in how the institution relates to its
users.
The traditional library is based upon the individual item, which is generally not
unique. Archives manage groups of works and focus on maintaining a particular
context for the overall collection. Museums collect specific objects and provide
curatorial context for each of them. These distinctions of the fundamental unit
that is collected, affect each institution’s acquisition policy, cataloging,
preservation, and presentation to the public.
Libraries and museums are both repositories, but libraries are user-driven. The
role of the library is to provide access to a vast amount of material, which the
user freely roams, making his/her own connections between works. Museums,
historically, are curator-driven. They have only provided limited access to
holdings, usually through a particular interpretative exhibition context, as
provided by curatorial and educational staff. The museum provides a framework
of context and interpretation, and the user can navigate within that smaller
context. Archives tend to be research driven. They are accessible, often by
appointment, in non-public spaces. The archivist has identified an area of the
collection a researcher might be interested in, but s/he must go through it
physically, item by item, to find out more information.
Digital repositories, whether from libraries, museums or archives, offer users the
possibility of navigating through representations of objects and cataloging
records on their own, making their own links between works.42 For example, the
Online Archive of California provides users with a choice of navigating through
works using context-dependent Finding Aids or of looking for individual items
outside of any context (something that an Archive would never have considered if
this was the sole method of access to its collection).
In the virtual realm, the formerly sharp distinctions between libraries, museums,
and archives begin to blur. Functional distinctions remain. There is still a
difference between curatorial context for an object and a MARC catalog record;
there is a difference between collection level and item level cataloging, but the
methods of access and presentation become hybridized and in the digital
environment it is as likely to see fulsome context for certain library records as it is
42
Besser, Howard (1987). “Digital Images for Museums”, Museum Studies Journal 3 (1), Fall/Winter, pages
74-81; and Besser, Howard (1987). “The Changing Museum,” in Ching-chih Chen (ed), Information:
The Transformation of Society (Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society for
Information Science), Medford, NJ: Learned Information, Inc, pages 14-19.
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to provide unfettered access to museum records. These changes offer great
opportunities for linking resources between these different types of collections,
and may lead to exciting collaborations. One needs to be careful, however, to
not let the technology drive changes in missions for these various types of
organizations; professionals need to consciously evaluate and adopt mission
changes, rather than merely accept them because of mission-drift caused by
technology.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the VMC as a curated and concatenated
collection of disparate digital objects, particularly in relation to issues of
access, is a hybrid of some of the traditional functions of the museum,
library, and archive. It may be more accurate (although not as mellifluous)
to think of it as the VMCwsLAF—the Virtual Museum of Canada with some
Library and Archive Functions.
The Virtual and the Real
“. . .the virtual, strictly defined, has little relationship to that which is false, illusory
or imaginary. The virtual is by no means the opposite of the real. On the contrary,
it is a fecund and powerful mode of being that expands the process of creation,
opens up the future, injects a core of meaning beneath the platitude of immediate
physical presence.”
Pierre Lévy43
“Nevertheless, there has been a very real, or at least ‘performatively
productive’—as Lyotard might put it, shift in the foundations of knowledge—and it
is clear in which direction. Reality has left the physical world and moved into the
virtual one.”
Benjamin Woolley44
These two quotes indicate both the importance of the virtual realm and how it is
misunderstood. By some estimates, well more than 50% of what a museum does
in information processing. The majority of a museum’s efforts, in other words,
involve non-material or virtual resources. On the other hand, we would never,
anymore, call a telephone conversation unreal. The other person on the end of
the line is not physically present, but she is real. Similarly, the Virtual Museum of
Canada is a “real” museum; it’s just distributed (and soon to be aware,
embedded, and ubiquitous).
One of the most contentious areas where the virtual-physical distinction comes
up is with audience. Many institutions do not consider online visitors to be “real”
visitors unless they come through the doors of the museum physically. Clearly,
this is not possible with VMC, although a study is in progress to try and quantify
the relationship of online to on-site visits to the VMC and Canadian museums in
general. Nevertheless, especially in the context of a global audience, it is
important for VMC and its contributors to value virtual visitors as real visitors that
43
44
Pierre Lévy. Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age. Plenum Trade: New York and London, 1998,16.
Benjamin Woolley. Virtual Worlds. London: Penguin, 1993, 235.
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not only often outnumber on-site visitors but also bring value to institutions’
efforts and are worth creating value for, independent of whether they visit the
museum.
Born Digital
“Digital materials which are not intended to have an analogue equivalent, either
as the originating source or as a result of conversion to analogue form. This term
has been used in the handbook to differentiate them from 1) digital materials
which have been created as a result of converting analogue originals; and 2)
digital materials, which may have originated from a digital source but have been
printed to paper, e.g. some electronic records.”
Digital Preservation Coalition45
Born digital is a term of art that is used, as stated above, to differentiate any
digital information from digital objects, which begin life, so to speak, in digital
form. The primary reason to do this is to understand born digital objects as
“originals” not surrogates or metadata about originals, which is an important
distinction for the museum field. The museum—and libraries and other cultural
memory institutions—have a significantly different relationship to originals than to
surrogates or metadata. All are important, but preservation/conservation of
originals in an institution’s collection is a mission function.
While there are significant programs, primarily in the library and archives
communities, for the preservation of born-digital information objects—database
records, email, PowerPoint presentations, web pages, etc—arguably,
preservation of complex collection-based objects such as those found in art
museums present even more complex issues. While relatively few museums at
this point do actively collect this work this may be in part due to concerns about
preservation. There are some nascent programs such as the Variable Media
Initiative46, exploring the conceptual and pragmatic issues of preserving born
digital artworks, but it is primarily in a research phase.
An important role the VMC could play would be to serve as not only a
presenter of born-digital artworks, but to create a preservation project that
could act as an archival platform for any collection in Canada of virtual art
creation.
As more and more objects are “born hybrid”—the network is integral but not
exclusive to the work or they are conceptually digital but have specific physical
requirements—and as born digital objects become reusable in a modular, objectoriented information space and as digital surrogates of analog objects become
primary from a user perspective, the distinctiveness of “born digital” information
and objects will lessen, although the issues they raise will become ubiquitous.
Amy Friedlander, in a report to the Library of Congress had this to report.
45
46
http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/intro/definitions.html
Variable Media Initiative. See http://www.guggenheim.com/variablemedia/. Accessed March 17, 2004.
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“This distinction [born digital] was not consistently useful to interviewees or to the
writers. Historic film or news footage may be embedded in a newly created digital
educational project. Re-release of older entertainment products partly or wholly in
digital form, as either new editions of older works or re-used elements in an
otherwise new work, further blurs the distinction. The production process itself is
not hermetically sealed analog or digital. “Materials collected or generated for a
television show,” writes the team from the WGBH Educational Foundation, ‘may
consist of a great threaded mesh of digital and analog components, so tightly
bound together that, at any point in their life cycle, one may serve as surrogate
for another.’” 47
For this reason, the VMC should not focus too-narrowly on “born digital” objects
but recognize that something digital can be “real,” and that there are significant
issues with the presentation and preservation of digital objects and information,
even as they become hybridized.
Virtual Museum
The concept of the “virtual” in relation to museums has become more pervasive,
and the revision of ICOM’s expanded definition of ‘museum’ may attest to this:
viii. cultural centers and other entities that facilitate the preservation, continuation
and management of tangible or intangible heritage resources (living heritage and
digital creative activity);48
The definition of the "virtual museum" remains under practical construction, and
in the museum and information communities a variety of terms are used
synonymously for collections of digitized objects and/or exhibits, such as
electronic museum, digital museum, on-line museum, hypermedia museum, and
meta-museum, among others. Similarly, there have been variations on what
actually constitutes a virtual museum or the extent of virtuality that is necessary
for a museum to be termed virtual; for example, on-line counterparts of real
museums, versus those exclusively accessible via the Internet.
In a paper dedicated to an overview of the concept of the virtual museum,
Schweibenz (1998) follows on the Bearman (1992) definition of a “museum
without walls.” which is comprised of a logically related collection of digital
objects composed in a variety of media and which has the capacity to provide
connectedness and various points of access. His premise is that whatever the
extent of virtuality, the nature of the on-line museum allows for a richer
integration of object and information. Schweibenz’s notion of “connectedness”
was earlier considered by Hoptman (1992) who saw this as an essential feature
of the virtual museum because it seeks to describe the interrelated and
Amy Friedlander. “Background Summary of Results from Interviews and Essays.” http://
www.digitalpreservation.gov/repor/ interviews_summary.pdf. Accessed December 17, 2003.
48 Article 2 – Definitions from ICOM Statutes, amended by the 20th General Assembly of ICOM, Barcelona,
Spain, 6 July 2001) http://icom.museum/hist_def_eng.html
47
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interdisciplinary presentation of museum information using integrated media. In
other words, connectedness allows the "virtual museum" to transcend the
abilities of the traditional museum in presenting information.
“The concept of the Virtual Museum demonstrates how limitations imposed by the
traditional method of organizing and presenting information can be overcome in the
context of museum visits. In a nutshell, the Virtual Museum provides multiple levels,
perspectives, and dimensions of information about a particular topic: it provides not only
multimedia (print, visual images through photographs, illustrations or video, and audio),
but, more important, it provides information that has not been filtered out through these
traditional methods.” (Hoptman 1992, p. 146)
Such existing definitions present a number of binaries: the physical and virtual
versus the virtual only; the virtual of physical and the virtual of born digital; being
connected online versus connected in a specific physical space. Given the
aforementioned hybridity of the museum-library-archive, however, such
distinctions are not, in Bateson’s terms “a difference that makes a difference.”49
For the purposes of this paper, these binaries may be re-combined and are not
exclusive of each other.
The VMC is an exemplary combinatory model whereby physical objects as
well as physical spaces of museums are rendered virtual for audiences
through different kinds of interfaces. Additionally, the VMC hosts collections
of born digital objects (e.g. virtual exhibits), as well as content created by users
and others which are not assets of an existing museum and for which the web is
the only means of storing and making these digital resources available.
Virtual Exhibit
Virtual exhibitions,50 though often based on physical exhibitions51, are born digital
resources. Any superficial scan of the Web would demonstrate that the virtual
exhibition is a form of expression highly used, not just in the context of museum
sites, but also that of corporate, commercial and personal sites.52 Among visitors
to the VMC, 70% to 75% of visitors go to at least one virtual exhibit during a user
session.
Virtual exhibits demonstrate a great variability in content, structure, navigation,
design and complexity. They span from a simple selection of images arranged in
a given way to highly sophisticated multimedia architectures and narratives.
Often, definitions of the virtual exhibit start with what it is not. It is not collections
online, not directories or a search result set. The main difference between a
virtual exhibition and other forms of online presentation is a stronger dependency
49
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Virtual exhibitions are also known as virtual exhibits, online exhibitions and Web exhibitions. All refer to
the same type of production.
51 Among those that were based on physical exhibitions, the best known is Anno Domini: Jesus Through the
Centuries. The physical exhibition was created by the Provincial Museum of Alberta in collaboration with
other Canadian and international museums.
52 A Google search for virtual exhibits, and its synonyms, which provides over 5,5 million results.
50
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established between context, form and content, and between the whole and its
parts. Obviously, all of these combine with the specific attributes of the medium,
among them attributes such as: procedural, spatial, interactive, encyclopedic,
multimedia support and cybercultural.
The model Colorado Plateau project dedicated a part of its resources to
published research material and theoretical conclusions related to the creation of
virtual exhibits. The project was based on combining and integrating materials
from many collections in order to tell an even greater story and create a deeper
and richer experience, going beyond a database of disparate objects. The
developers considered that visitors are looking for guided tours and exhibits that
present information created by knowledgeable professionals that help them to
understand and appreciate artifacts in their artistic and historical context. The
design principle was based on studies showing that when users go to a Web site
of arts and culture they want to do more looking and less clicking. Many online
patrons have the necessary technology to view video and multimedia
presentations and are looking for exhibits that take advantage of these features
to present more vivid narratives and deeper contextual information.53
The VMC itself, launched in March 2001, is based on a history of
experimentation with and development of online heritage content, starting in
1995 with the Christmas Traditions in France and in Canada virtual exhibition,
developed by Canadian and French museums, the ministry of culture in France
and the Department of Canadian Heritage, including the regional office in
Montreal and CHIN. Since this time, CHIN’s understanding of issues surrounding
collection description and access has been expanded due to constant
experimentation with virtual exhibitions and the resulting evolution of the
concept54. Based on these experiences, there was evidence that, in particular,
collaborative efforts make for more meaningful results, due to the fact that they
bring material and expertise from several sources together, as well as being
more economical and efficient55. CHIN’s belief in the value of partnerships in
relation to the development of online exhibitions, as seen in the criteria of the
VMC Investment Program, is born of this experience. 56
Jean-Marc Blais, Acting Director General of CHIN, in describing VMC exhibits,
highlights specific attributes that would lead to categorization of collaborative
virtual exhibits created by museums to function on the Web:
53
See Matthew Nickerson, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_5/nickerson/ and John Vergo, ClareMarie Karat, John Karat, Claudio Pinhanez, Renee Arora, Thomas Cofino, Doug Riecken, and Mark
Podlaseck, 2001. "Less Clicking, More Watching: Results from the User-Centered Design of a MultiInstitutional Web Site for Art and Culture," Papers from Museums and the Web 2002, Seattle, Wash., at
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2001/papers/vergo/vergo.html and Victoria Kravchyna and S.K. Hastings,
2002. "Informational Value of Museum Web Sites," First Monday, volume 7, number 2 (February), at
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_2/kravchyna/
54 See Appendix 3, “History of Virtual Exhibits at CHIN.”
55 Lyn Elliot Sherwood, 1998. "Discovering Buffalo Robes: A Case for Cross-Domain Information Strategies,"
Computers and the Humanities, volume 32, pp. 57-64.
56 http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Members/Vmc_Investment_Program/index.html
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“For us, a virtual exhibition is therefore defined as a quality on-line product
developed under expert supervision, which is destined to increase the public's
knowledge of, appreciation for and desire to explore topics of interest in an
engaging manner.57”
One of the main challenges for the next generation of virtual museums is to
find a common platform for the great variety of virtual exhibits produced by
a wide range of creators, from museums, allied organizations as well as
individuals. The core platform will need to support a variety of functions:
authoring and structuring information and knowledge in an electronic
environment for expression, exhibition, presentation and representation, and
processes of reading and learning are fundamental to the evolution of the virtual
museum concept.
The next generation platform will also need to consider the following
“what if” scenario – what if the aim of a virtual exhibit was to gather
participants from different domains, inviting them to set up a dialogue, and
integrate the more relevant insights into a new perspective? The virtual
exhibit would be the place where the gathering takes place, revealing clues
on how knowledge and technology come together, cutting across
disciplinary boundaries.58
57
Jean-Marc Blais, To be published at http://icom.museum/
For a more in depth explanation and theoretical background see “Einstein Meets Magritte”
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Conf/EinmagAn.html
58
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Audience
In order to meet audience expectations and to improve usability and user
retention it is necessary to establish who is using virtual museums and for what
purposes. An information resource developed without taking this into account is
unlikely to succeed. As the issue was described at an IMLS symposium, “cultural
institutions frequently to do not know who is using their information nor are they
aware of who could be using their information, but currently are not.”59 A lack of
sound research into online users was also reinforced by John Falk and other
researchers at the “”Beyond Productivity: Culture and Heritage Resources in the
Digital Age” symposium.60
Sponsoring rigorous research about online audiences and their use of
online resources is a critical building block for successful implementation
of the next generation virtual museum.
Arguably it is the (currently) non-user audience that is the most significant, if the
next generation of the VMC is to truly succeed. The VMC’s audience also, of
course, includes CHIN and its members, but this section discusses the public
audience.
The common rhetoric regarding the virtual museum suggests that it is possible to
specifically address a number of discrete sub-audiences, who may be agedependent (children, senior citizens or less well-versed in particular disciplines
(art, history, etc.) or have particular content interests based on their
demographics.
It is the position of this paper that while some audience segmentation is
desirable by function—are you doing research or browsing—basing
content delivery on demographics is not a significant avenue to pursue.
Rather, the VMC should think of the Internet as a medium to deliver
customized learning opportunities—including customized interfaces—to a
potentially vast number of widely distributed individuals.
Background
Discussion and analysis of audience behavior is as old as the development of
instruments of expression. Aristotle's Rhetoric represented the first serious
attempt to systematically classify and analyze audience behavior. For Aristotle,
audience behavior was predictable such that particular rhetorical devices could
be used to elicit specific responses. Audience behavior has evolved into a
complex, multi-disciplinary field of study.
59
Spinazze op cit.
“Beyond Productivity: Culture and Heritage Resources in the Digital Age,” a symposium sponsored by the
Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canadian Culture Online Program, and the eCulture Directorate.
Calgary, February 26, 2004. See http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Digital_Content/Dccf_Workshop/index.html
60
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The virtual museum construct has had a shifting relationship with audiences
during its evolution from central repositories61 to meta-centers62 and to what is
known today as a virtual or networked museum, which itself has evolved from
representing an environment where museums could announce their Web
presence to constructs that collaboratively expose rich public information
resources. 63
Museum collaboration based upon the central repositories model focused mainly
on digitization and establishing collective repositories. The meta-centre model
saw a series of relationships established among multiple information resources.
These relationships shifted the direction of museum collaborative initiatives to
interoperability of standards and networked information.
At the current virtual museum stage, issues of access and usage are priorities.
Stakeholders place a priority on using the interactive capabilities and
communications protocols of the medium to offer sophisticated interactive
experiences that are tailored to users needs for access, retrieval and selection of
information objects.
Mass Audience vs. Personal Medium
The number of participants involved in the process of communication significantly
affects its nature. Mass communication for virtual museums focuses on reaching
large numbers of the public through directories and brochures, followed by
enabling public access to more complex structures such as aggregated
collections, galleries, exhibits and narratives.
From their inception, the mission of most virtual museums was to connect to a
wide range of publics with no geographic restrictions. For example, the VMC's
mission is to engage "audiences of all ages in Canada's diverse heritage through
a dynamic Internet service freely available to the public in French and English,”
and is “a collaboration between Canadian museums of all sizes and the
Canadian Heritage Information Network.”64 But even though the virtual museum
aims to have mass appeal it has become clear that it cannot function as a mass
medium. The power distribution law referred to above clearly sates that only a
very few sites will ever even have “mass audiences,” but more importantly, the
61
Karen Neimanis, Kati Geber, From "Come and Get It" to "Seek and You Shall Find": Transition from a
Central Resource to an Information Meta-Centre, Museums and the Web 1998,
http://www.archimuse.com/mw98/abstracts/neimanis.html
62 Sarah Kenderdine, Inside the meta-center: a wonder cabinet,
http://amol.org.au/about_amol/wonder_cabinet.asp
63 Kevin Sumption, Meta-centers: do they work and what might the future hold ñ A case study of Australian
Museums On-line, Museums and the Web, 2000,
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2000/papers/sumption/sumption.html: Beyond museum walls" -- A critical
analysis of emerging approaches to museum web-based education, Museum and the Web, 2001,
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2001/papers/sumption/sumption.html;
64 Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC) Investment Program
http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Pdf/Members/Vmc_Investment_Program/guidelines.pdf
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medium of the Internet is significantly a personal medium. To use and invert a
collections metaphor, via the Internet and interactive interfaces, the virtual
museum is potentially able to deliver content to the “item level”—the individual
user—not just at the collection level—a broadly defined demographic or mass
audience. Even though the virtual museum aims to have mass appeal it has
become clear that it cannot function as a mass medium. First, it consists of a
range of media and second, and most importantly, its audience cannot be
considered as a unified mass.
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Audience Profiling
Figure 7 Cultural Content Forum – Evaluation of digital cultural content: Analysis of Evaluation
material65
65
http://www.culturalcontentforum.org/Publications/Audience/Audience_Analysis.pdf;
http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Digital_Content/Understanding_Audiences/index.html
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Historically, museums have only addressed broad audiences. While occasionally
museums have addressed programs to a particular audience (primarily a
particular age group or ethnic group), these activities have been addressed to
very broad audiences and constitute a small portion of a museum activity. But
new technological developments will allow the museum to address finer-grain
groups with a level of discourse that is appropriate for that group. This includes
tailoring online exhibits and interactivity with: language which is appropriate to a
particular age group or ethnic minority, discourse that is appropriate to a variety
of different education levels or prior knowledge bases, and/or graphic use that is
appropriate to particular language styles or visual impairments. This would mean
that the same basic curatorial and exhibit information might be presented quite
differently to particular audiences such as: specific linguistic minorities, specific
ethnic groups, middle school students, people without an art history background,
etc.
Audience-based interfaces can be achieved through a combination of
techniques such as: mapping the specialized vocabulary of curators into
vernacular through the use of thesauri and other vocabulary tools; creating
layered architectures with middleware mapping between the object
description and the user interface; and/or developing mark-up standards
for describing objects in different ways for different groups.
User Profiling
“Instead of people thinking of their identities as fixed, they’re thinking of them as
fluid. It begins to be a cultural value.”
Mary Catherine Bateson 66
An individual user profile can be based on many factors, including demographic
information such as age, country, marital status, education, interests, as well as
information about users’ interests such as history or science or art or jazz and
even preferences such as number of results to display at one time on a page or
whether or not to include images or preferred language. Basically, this
information can be acquired explicitly from the user via questionnaires,
membership registration, etc. or attempt to be inferred from usage patterns. User
profiling is the process of gathering information specific to each visitor, either
explicitly or through inference. In either case, the core question is what does a
profile tell the virtual museum about a user that is actionable?
Demographic profiling is a common technique for predicting audience behavior.
For example, an assistive interface could direct teachers to the teacher section of
the VMC. Demographics are not the same as preferences, however, and can be
a tenuous basis for assuming what a user is looking for. What if the selfdescribed teacher is just interested in browsing? 67 For instance, a recent survey
Mary Catherine Bateson, “Listening to Change,” http://www.gbn.org
Unpublished research by John Falk presented at the “Beyond Productivity” symposium indicates that
demographics are, in fact, a poor predictor of learning for online audiences.
66
67
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question on the reasons for visiting the VMC demonstrated a discrepancy
between the user profiles—initially defined as children, parents, and teachers—
and the actual users of the VMC. The reasons cited for visiting the VMC
included: curiosity, it looked interesting, researching a topic, to compare with
other Canadian museum sites, to get museum locations, ideas for my own web
site, work reasons, cool graphics, because it was advertised. How to correlate
the profiles of child, parent, and teacher with these expressed usage goals
remains an open question.
Log analysis and data mining are also techniques for the creation of user profiles.
Matching interfaces and functionalities based on usage patterns potentially
provides a better match to users’ actual needs. This statistical information
reflects a relatively accurate image of the number of visitors, return visits, entry
points, exit points and the time spent in specific portions of the site. By
correlating the statistical data and interpreting return-visits and time spent on the
site as indicators of engagement,68 virtual museums can successfully measure
engagement and the evolution of the relationship between a product and its
audience over time. Traditional, in a physical museum setting, summative
evaluation involves the cross-referencing of visitor tracking with focus group
discussions, feedback or visitor questionnaires. To date, there is very little such
research into online usage, and hence it is not possibly to definitively answer
many of the fundamental questions related to virtual museums’ audiences.
The discrepancy between virtual museum visitors’ demographic profiles and their
actual use patterns leads one to hypothesize that the best way to meet the
audience’s needs is to allow for the tailoring of content based on what they do
and/or want rather than who they are. But developing customized services and
assistive tools for filtering and empowering users to become more participative in
the knowledge production process has many unknowns. It may mean more work
for users and become burdensome; dynamic adaptability may annoy users by
not responding adequately or accurately to what they want; users may feel that
their privacy is being invaded. What do users prefer: to customize their own
experience or to let assistive tools do the work? Should content, structure,
function, look and feel or context be changed based on either scenario? Which
of these elements actually increase user satisfaction significantly?
Rigorous evaluation should be modeled in a VMC exhibition and other
products so that a supportable and detailed understanding of how
audiences actually use products can be analyzed and the results integrated
into future VMC projects.
68
Lyn Elliott Sherwood, See Appendix 3: The Engagement Factor.
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Interpersonal Communication
The Internet is blurring boundaries for virtual museums and creates a
communication synchronicity continuum. Action and interaction, producers and
users, presence and absence, mass and interpersonal, audience and user
represent “both/and” logic (not either/or), which contributes to the convergence
and hybridization effects we are witnessing online. Virtual museums traverse
previously inflexible communication boundaries. They stretch the edges of the
synchronicity continuum. Interpersonal communication, once either face-to-face
or time delayed, can now be both at once.
Effectively blurring the boundaries between producers and users affects mass
and interpersonal communication modes and leads to the re-examination of
authority, voice, and point of view. It also generates a need to revaluate
production and usage concepts as well as the roles of producers and users and
their presence and absence during the communication process.
The geography and place-independence of the virtual museums and their
collaborative nature encourage producers to create for themselves placeindependent spaces to work together. Clay Shirky refers to this type of
communication as “intercasting.” Virtual museums considering the creation of
social environments for their audiences need to be aware that such “transmission
spaces” behave differently. According to Shirky,
"I am beginning to think that a better model is shipbuilding, where the goal is to
provide groups [a way] to gather and go somewhere together. It provides groups
a way to say ‘We are going to use this medium, this vessel, to accomplish this
goal.’ Ships are part space part tool. The ways they work are quite obvious: they
divide roles among the people on them … and it assumes, among other things
the group is going to come together, use the tool, achieve the destination and
then leave.”69
Computer-mediated communication is a socially produced space as a
communication continuum. It is a bridge crossing over, linking together, bringing
closer a myriad variety of people, understanding others, over spaces and times,
and tolerating differences, hence—communicating.70 Developing an online
collaborative network also should mean moving beyond the web as a means of
publishing organizational information. Instead it should focus on moving towards
using the Internet to develop outreach and a web-based relationship with
Clay Shirky, “Social Software and the Next Big Phase of the Internet,”
http://www.gbn.org/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=2800
70 Tomislav Sola, In A Museum is a Museum is a Museum...Or Is It?: Exploring Museology and the Web,
Lynne Teather, Ph.D. , Museums and the Web, 1998,
Http://www.archimuse.com/mw98/papers/teather/teather_paper.html
69
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individuals, communities or sectors. This enables a continuing dialogue with
users, a closer-relationship with audiences and user bases, and is importantly a
way of bringing together specific groups and knowledge chains across
boundaries (e.g. sectoral, geographical).
Years of working together with communities of producers and facilitating
intercasting has led virtual museums to the appreciation and understanding that
the governance structures with which they experimented with communities of
content producers, could be applied in creating new types of communities
composed of producers and users. These virtual museum audience requirements
can be clustered around two main tendencies:


query-based access to long-term and invariable, authoritative
“collective memories”71
a newly emerging need for ubiquity and communication characterized
by change, fluidity and transitivity and focused on events and
conversations.
We argue, with Régis Debray,72 that both approaches are necessary, but the fact
is that while authoritativeness remains an important goal, the virtual museum as
a platform for communication and exchange remains neglected in terms of actual
implementation.
Perhaps the most direct idea of the next generation virtual museum as such
platform is to imagine it as a place where conversations occur that are not
necessarily mediated, at least directly, by museum staff; like a café, for instance.
Some museums allow their conference rooms to be used as a site for book club
discussions. Museum staff may participate. They may even have organized the
general thematics of the club—women and art---but it is a conversation, not a
lecture; it is intended as a platform for discussion rather than a podium for telling.
A valuable role for the VMC is as a platform for conversations and other kinds of
intercourse between people, not only for the dissemination of sanctioned
information.
VMC should focus on developing a lively communications platform that
provides access, communication and social spaces to meet audience
needs to collect, relate, create and donate activities73 without forgoing its
commitment to collective memories; a platform that encourages individual
points of view but provides access to usable authoritative information as
the audience desires.
71
http://www.collectiveintelligence.info/documents/; http://137.122.100.152
Régis Debray: Communiquer moins, transmettre plus.
73 Ben Schneiderman, Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies, MIT
Press, 2002
72
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Cybrid Audiences
With the advent of mobile phones and handheld devices, particularly the hybrid
variety that incorporate web functionality, there is a further rise in diverse groups
accessing information from the Internet and wireless networks. Delivering the
right information in the right context is not an obvious issue. For instance, at the
Getty Museum:
“The results of the visitor studies are being used as the foundation for a three
pronged approach to delivering meaningful information to visitors as they need it.
For example, the interface for the internal kiosk is changing to provide visitors
with what they need to know to use the Getty facilities while they are there.
Everything from where is the nearest bathroom, to where is my favorite David
Hockney painting. The handheld guide will present the same data but in an
audio/visual guide format. On-line visitors will be led through the site by fewer
menu items that try to connect the on-line visit with the on-site visit. The menu
labels include Exhibitions, Finding Art, the Art Timeline, the Video Gallery, and
visitors will be able to create their own space with the My Getty feature.”74
The CIMI consortium, with funding from Intel, has been trialing location-aware
mobile devices across several museum institutions in the U.S. and Europe.75
Hewlett-Packard has undertaken collaborations with museums in this area as
well, notably, its work with the Exploratorium on enhancing user experience in
gallery exhibits with augmented information and activities offered on handhelds.76
Beyond customized information delivery, however, there is the potential for
museums to form a type of collaborative network with their audiences through
outreach programs and visitor services using these new technologies. As a
result, more museums may look to technology partnerships to create and tap into
newer forms of communication channels.
The range of tools and techniques that could support more user-centric
collaborative activity is wide-ranging and a growth area. Some other examples
which could be made available for newer Internet devices, or using a newer
generation of applications, and which could be championed by museums include:







Online discussions
Online seminars
Forums
Surveys
Webcasts of net events
Message boards
Training
74
Spinazze op cit.
(Trials end 2004). See: http://www.cimi.org/whitesite/
76 See http://www.exploratorium.edu/guidebook/
75
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Significantly these channels can lend themselves to the development of
communities within the museum sector and beyond in which groups of
stakeholders can come together due to shared interests in a topic or an activity.
The result could be the evolution of smart communities where leaders and
stakeholders form alliances and partnerships to develop innovative ways
to extract new economic and social value from electronic networks and the
Internet.77 The VMC is ideally positioned to be part of this wider community
and to strengthen existing communities and collaborations.
77
See www.smartcommunities.org. The notion of a smart community is already being implemented in
Canada in the effort to bring cultural heritage and information technology together
(http://smartcommunities.ic.gc.ca).
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Interface
If, as Lev Manovich has suggested, the database is the new symbolic form for
the 21st century, akin in importance to the discovery of perspective in the 16 th
century, it is only through the interface that we have access to the tabled
information contained in the database.78 And as Sack argues in his research
around the project Conversation Map, the right interface—the right approach to a
new interface—can literally map and help us understand new social spaces such
as that of the very large scale conversation—but not only that.
Pattern and Randomness
In her essay Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers, Katherine Hayles analyzes
the role of the producers and the users of messages. She remarks that there is a
shift of attention in communication from presence and absence to pattern and
randomness, which she explains in relation to features of the medium showing
how coding technologies change the conditions of communication. Jesse James
Garret comments on the same basic duality in the nature of the Web: a software
interface (pattern) and a hypertext information space (random—unpredictable
links). For Garret, these are the two poles of user experience that web
applications designers should consider in their work. Producer and user
communication in the virtual museum’s cyberspace can be seen as a “complex
dance” (Hayles) between pattern and randomness or predictability and
unpredictability.
The design of the virtual museum–viewed as content, structure, functionality,
interaction and visual design–aims to create a highly pattern-based and
architected user experience. For virtual museums, predictability has represented
an essential goal and a measure of success. Randomness is mostly narrowed to
search/selection (browse) functions within data pre-arranged into arrays or
tables.
Browsing
“ Just as patrons in our galleries, stacks, and exhibits browse to discover what
they did not know they were looking for, we demand that our systems provide
specific answers at the expense of serendipitous discovery. Perhaps we should
pay more attention to the distinctions between searching and browsing to better
enable on-line users to experience serendipitous discovery too.”79
Although approximately 50% of VMC visitors arrive through a search engine,
usability tests conducted during 2002 indicate that once at the site, 70% to 80%
78
79
Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
See Spinazze, op cit.
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of the page views are the result of browsing.80 Clearly browsing is an important
user behavior in the virtual museum space. In addition to providing search or
recall capabilities, the next generation of virtual museums should provide efficient
and enjoyable browsing or recognition approaches that enable access to large
spaces of information and offer solutions to information overload issues through
visualization, summarization, aggregation and integration.
Christine L. Borgman explains:
“Cognitive psychologists distinguish between two fundamental types of memory:
recognition and recall. Recognition occurs when you see something familiar,
while recall requires that you remember something and are able to articulate it.
Most information retrieval depends upon recall skills—the user has to describe
what he or she wishes to retrieve. Browsing depends more on recognition
skills—looking around until you find something of interest that you recognize as
useful.”81
Recall approaches are most effective with text-based systems because words
can be spelled and matched against a corpus of documents. Describing images
and sounds is vastly more difficult, both for the indexer and the retriever. Recall
approaches also depend on the availability of rich metadata or on sufficient
amounts of text to match.
Recognition approaches are likely to be much more effective in large digital
libraries of the future and in personal digital libraries. This is true for at least two
reasons: One is the proliferation of non-textual documents in digital form; the
second is the lack of metadata on which to base recall algorithms.
As early as 1995, the museum community had combined the perspectives of
access and recognition. Kody Janney and Jane Sledge published their study on
Points of View and paved the way to a number of research and experimentation
projects that related access to user profiles and usage-based personalization.82
VMC should focus on creating one or more “meta-browsing” interfaces to
the integrated resources of the entire VMC and evaluate whether interest in
highly trafficked sites or information resources can be used to “push”
visitors out to other resources via a contextual browsing interface.
80
"The Virtual Museum of Canada" Usability Evaluation (March 25, 2002); Recherche et analyse statistique
du comportement de visite sur le site portail du Musée virtuel du Canada, Orange Kiwi (Musée Média), Katy
Tari, muséologue, Andrée Blais, muséoloque, Benoit Dubuc, analyste, Patrick Turmel, développeur Web,
Dominique Arpin, développeur Web, 28 Mars 2003; VMC Monthly Statistics
81 Borgman, Christine L. (2003) “Personal digital libraries: Creating individual spaces for innovation.” Wave
of the Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 15-17, 2003.
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_borgman.html. Accessed February 17, 2003.
82 Kody Janney & Jane Sledge, User Access Needs for Project CHIO, Draft, June 28, 1995
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Recommendation Systems
One strategy to encourage audiences to look beyond what they are seeking is
recommendation engines. Common examples are on Amazon.com and Netflix.
On Amazon, the buyer is pointed to other books that other buyers who
purchased the same book you are looking at also purchased. On Netflix, viewers
rate their interest in movies, and then are directed to other movies that other
viewers with a similar profile of likes and dislikes in movies have also rated
highly. In both cases, anonymously aggregated use patterns are used to direct
the user from what she is looking at to other items. The potential interest in such
collaborative filtering systems is that they work from the ground up; the results
are not controlled, directly, by the provider, and it can often be a genuine means
of “cultural word of mouth,” to coin a phrase.
There are also so-called recommendation systems that are essentially rulebased decision trees. For instance, for every search on a book site, do a search
on a travel site. Doing a search for a book on the history of the Boston Tea Party
can lead you to a special weekend deal for the Radisson in Boston—which is
probably not what you are looking for. These are essentially marketing
arrangements that attempt to direct the user in certain pre-defined directions
based on the providers’ interests, not necessarily the user’s.
The difficulty for cultural recommendation systems is that while paying for a
product is arguably a strong indication of interest in it, “just” viewing a results
page is not, and the link to other results also viewed is more tenuous. Or, with a
system like Netflix, it is better the more that people use it. While
recommendations ratings exist on various museum websites,83 it is not clear that
any of them are used enough to reach the point of truly collaboratively filtered
usefulness.
There is a fine line between marketing promotion and recommendation. The best
approach is based on a clear understanding of the virtual museum definition,
mandate, content, visitors and their needs. Developing recommender systems for
both human users as well as non-human agents such as search engines, may
contribute significantly to the virtual museum’s success. The challenge is to
understand the specific needs and preferences of each and develop the
recommender systems accordingly.
Collaborative filtering is a potentially valuable tool for audiences, which a
meta-site such as the VMC should investigate implementing.
Featuring
In addition to recommendation filters, virtual museums have extensive
experience with a different type of recommendation—featuring. Featuring is a
83
See for example, http://collections.walkerart.org.
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coordinated presentation of content and resources in an effective and dynamic
fashion, reaching various audiences, in a manner that is engaging, educational
and informative. As featuring proved to have a significant impact on the number
of accesses to content, CHIN initiated a research project gathering information
on how featuring is conducted on the Internet. The three-phase research project,
conducted by Barbara Lang Rottenberg, includes a literature review, a
methodology for featuring analysis, and analyses of various sites. The research
demonstrates the importance of featuring activity.
“By capturing the attention of visitors, features serve a multitude of purposes. In
addition to their primary role of adding a topicality to a web site, features can
draw attention to new and important information and can encourage interaction in
various forms, sharing opinions, asking questions and even shopping. The
research has also demonstrated the varied approaches to featuring. On some
sites, features play a minor role. … On others, however, features act almost as
the building blocks of the site content.”84
Features can be curated/edited or automated. Both of these techniques are well
understood for virtual museums and many excellent implementations already
exist on the VMC. Nevertheless, they can be expensive to maintain, particularly
when curatorially or editorially based. An extension of featuring, however, is to let
the audience or, alternatively, so-called “super-users” select sites of potential
interest to the rest of the audience.
In coordination with other “social platform” efforts, the VMC should
incorporate a mechanism for its audience to be directly involved in at least
some featuring on the site.
Personalization
Current research and experimentation with personalization have opened the field
of human computer interaction to a number of issues, including the anticipation of
needs, the provision of efficient and satisfying interaction (with content, structure,
layout, context and modality), the need to determine methods of assessing
impact, and developing relationships with all parties involved.85 Virtual museums
and digital libraries have been hesitant to embark on personalization partially
because of these questions and partially because they view the entire site as an
assistive tool for the selection of content and the provision of answers to users
questions and needs by providing access to organized bodies of information and
providing some level of selection, filtering, and validation of the exhibited
materials.
84
Barbara Lang Rottenberg, Virtual Museum of Canada Features Analysis, December 2003.
These issues were also evident during a recent brainstorming session conducted at CHIN on
personalization. The session revealed some fundamental questions related to current personalization
practices especially concerning anticipation of user behavior, user choices and privacy issues. See
Appendix 3.
85
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Users’ engagement and participation, content use and re-use in creative
environments and responsiveness to change are key elements for the success
and longevity of future virtual museums, however, and while the virtual museum
represents the collective memory, the personal museum is a place or space
where use and re-use, assemblage and manipulation of information resources,
are open to any visitor or group of visitors, based on personal preferences and
choices, with flexible, adaptive and adapting tools.
The next generation of virtual museum will have to develop efficient synchronous
and asynchronous communication mechanisms between personal museums and
virtual museums, and between museum professionals and personal museum
creators.86 According to Christine Borgman, personal museums should:



… contain a heterogeneous mix of content from a variety of sources.
Some of it will be created by the … owner / user, such as authored
documents, images, drawings, datasets, web links, bookmark files,
spreadsheets, PowerPoint files for talks and lectures, etc. Other
content such as journal articles, texts, or messages may be captured
from external sources.
… allow people to capture available metadata and to add their own
metadata that describes their uses for it, no matter how idiosyncratic
their practices may be. This will allow them to manage their own
resources better and to locate content for re-use.
… enable individuals to upload their metadata to the common DL
[digital libraries] from which an object came, thus creating communitybased metadata descriptions.”87
These solutions facilitate access to information and services and make facilities
and applications more relevant and useful for individual users. They also have
the potential to improve the overall learning experience of the visitor before,
during and after a physical site visit.88
Clifford, Lynch, Reflections Towards the Development of a “Post-DL” Research Agenda.
Borgman op cit.
88 For details see Appendix 3: Personalization which provides a detailed description of the techniques
available as well as an overview of the main advantages and inconveniences related to each approach. In
the Annex, a number of web sites are considered as case studies, both produced by cultural institutions,
museums in particular, and in other fields such as e-commerce or Internet-based information services, which
use these techniques in ways that could be beneficial also for the cultural sector. Other possible applications
such as audio guides or interactive devices are also taken into consideration, especially with respect to how
this could help in the personalization of museums’ web sites).
86
87
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Figure 8 Conceptual diagram for proposed VMC "Personal Museum"89
From its inception, the VMC has created a specialized space called “My Personal
Museum” where visitors are able to collect and re-use content. The space for
collective memory, the virtual museum itself, is for the presentation of
authoritative content developed by museums in response to the needs of their
audiences and, preferably, in collaboration with them, for contemplation and
information absorption. Conversely, the personal museum is an active space for
interpretation and expression.
The rethinking of the virtual museum as a construct of two interrelated
components, the museum and the personal space, underline the need for
interoperability research and the identification of specific user needs in each of
the spaces. While virtual museums will probably concentrate on enabling access
to authoritative content and developing efficient and satisfying recommender
systems, the personal museum will provide a variety of services and flexible tools
89
Design concept created by ematerial studios, under the coordination of Luigi Ferrara, based on research
conducted by CHIN on personal museums.
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to help individuals to meet their needs and manipulate information resources for
their own purposes.
The creators of the next generation of virtual museums will have to rethink
personalization as a component of creative practices. Creation of new
associations and integrated knowledge are highly essential to addressing some
of the most important and complex issues that we face as a society. As Borgman
argues, “Real innovations occur when people can assemble information
from a variety of sources, in a variety of types, often from a range of
disciplines, to create their own new ideas, frameworks, models, questions,
and so on.”90 In addition, the personal museum—like the virtual museum—
needs to be a platform that can support interpersonal communication as
well as knowledge management.
Database Narratives: From Tables to Stories
Browsing, recommendation systems, and personalization are each interface
strategies to take visitors beyond what they are looking for—but they generally
still end up at the item level of an individual object. Personal museums are a way
to allow the audience to construct their own narratives—but they are also
interested in authoritative experiences. Virtual exhibitions authoritatively
contextualize the individual object—but they are “expensive” in terms of
resources and only possible for a fraction of the VMC collections. There needs to
be a way for databases to tell stories—to provide authoritative context about
specific objects that the visitor has selected.
Database tables—William Gibson’s “data matrix”—and narrative have
traditionally been different forms of communication. As Lev Manovich explains in
The Language of the New Media:
“After the novel, and subsequently cinema privileged narrative as the key form of
cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate
- database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; they don't have
beginning or end; in fact, they don't have any development, thematically, formally
or otherwise which would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they
are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as
any other.91
The challenge for the next generation of virtual museums is to create a new form
of storytelling or as, Hayles puts it: “Data are thus humanized, and subjectivity
computerized, allowing them to join in a symbiotic union whose result is
narrative.”92
90
Borgman op cit.
Manovich, op cit.
92 Katherine Hayles, “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers,”
http://englishwww.humnet.ucla.edu/faculty/hayles/Flick.html
91
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The VMC has experimented with the interplay between virtual exhibits and digital
libraries in its Community Memories section. Users can randomly retrieve
exhibits or memory objects. Any invoked memory object, accessed through the
library is contextualized, when retrieved. It always appears within the context of
its exhibit and its stories. But this still points to pre-existing narratives and
doesn’t’
Figure 9 Screenshots from Montreal.
An interesting model of transforming databases into narrative spaces and
enabling the interface to incorporate synchronicity and interpersonal aspects is
Montreal, where the user navigates through the city, spatially and temporally,
creating a narrative based only on their interests.93 In contrast to a traditional
virtual exhibit, in this case, we do not have a “master narrative”; it is constructed
through the user’s voyage based on her engagement and personal
interpretations. The narrative is created dynamically, almost transparently as a
product of exploring this highly immersive and experiential world. 94
93
See Aspen Moviemap, http://www.naimark.net/projects/aspen.html. Accessed March 17, 2004.
Ironically, this project is unplayable today. Its record resides only in some digital archives and the human
memories – pointing yet again, to the importance of digital archiving issues.
94
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Content
There are many issues to consider regarding the content of and for the Virtual
Museum of Canada. This paper assumes that the goal of the VMC is not
presentation per se of content but the engagement and education of a diverse
range of audiences about the resources of the VMC and, in particular, the ideas
they animate.
Rich Content
Rich content is related to both the notion of rich media, addressed above, and a
rich context that helps tell stories about individual objects, as discussed in the
section on database stories.
Museums have spent the last 30 years building information management
systems that can adequately track at least core information about objects in the
collection. Making this information available to the public via the Internet has
been a huge undertaking over the past 5-10 years. Too often, however, this
information is little more than title and creator, some dates, dimensions, and
medium. It is useful but not particularly compelling information in itself.
There are fundamentally two ways to make this core content more compelling.
One is to specifically create additional content about the content using rich
media; the other is to make links to create an additional context. These are
complementary not exclusionary practices.
If we take the idea of an exhibition as a prime example of how museums best
engage audiences, months and years of planning is put into creating an
experience that involves viewing the objects, reading texts about them,
participating in educational activities, browsing historical timelines, attending
lectures and tours and otherwise attempting to create a compelling engagement
with the objects and ideas in the exhibition. One of the problems for the virtual
museum is that the systems that produce the catalog, manage the collection, or
schedule a lecture are not the same, don’t generally talk to each other, and may
not even capture the information in a reusable format (particularly with live
events, such as a lecture).
Realistically, however, even with a sophisticated system for the capture and
integration of all information that a museum has about an object in its collection,
this will be true for only a small proportion of the collection. If one way to think
about rich content is to provide exhibition-level context for every object, it will
never happen. Even granting that not all objects need to be seen and that part of
the museum’s function is to identify more important and/or representative
objects, it is a Sisyphean task.
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Rich Context
The other basic method for creating engaging experiences, then, is for a rich
system of linking to a larger context, not custom building one for every object.
The virtue of the VMC, of course, is that it potentially provides a much greater
context than the individual museum. The more this ability can be automated
across multiple collections, the better.
There is often the perception that linking beyond one’s site is detrimental
because it encourages users to leave. In example after example, however, it is
the site that has the most links that users gravitate to. This is the power law
distribution described above. Visitors may leave during a session, but they are far
more likely to come back, if they had a rewarding experience.
It is one thing to link from the Thompson painting in your collection to the
exhibition catalog essay from another museum to a timeline from another site.
These linkages are along clear axes—creator, medium, geography, time period,
subject matter, etc. This is difficult enough across heterogeneous information
sources, no doubt, but there are also other ways to think about linking that are
not based on human-created metadata.
We highly recommend that VMC pursue a set of external content
relationships, if it wants to create the most engaging experience for the
most objects for the most people. In order to do this well, the idea of
modularity of learning objects is important as well as experimental
interfaces that create linkages that are not pre-defined.95
Richly Open
The other way to approach the “manpower” problem is to add more human
processing. As Andrea Cliffolilli points out in his insightful analysis of Wikipedia,
the “open encyclopedia,”
“Wiki technology in a way literally cancels transaction costs for editing and
changing information. Hence, this reduction in transaction costs acts as a
catalyst for the development of the community. In turn, these reduced transaction
costs means that there is full exploitation of massive collaboration economies.
Hence, in the case of horizontal information assemblages, we might argue that
any incentive that allows more authors to freely join in a given task, the larger the
assemblage of information that is eventually produced (or in the case of
Wikipedia, a larger number of articles is possible).96
See Appendix 3: VMC Rethinking Group Internal Brainstorming Session – Content, October 8, 2003.
Cliffolilli, Andrea. “Phantom Authority, self-selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual
communities: The case of Wikipedia.” First Monday. Volume 8, number 12 (December 2003).
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ciffolilli/ . Accessed December 5, 2003.
95
96
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Again, we are not suggesting that Wiki is the strategy to use, but in the virtual
realm, creating structures that allow users to directly add and modify content has
proved hugely successful in a variety of models from Amazon.com to Wikipedia
to any number of bulletin boards to consumer reports.
VMC should investigate an open system that enables the audience to add
certain types of information to the core museum content.
Poor Quality?
“Using the web as the basis for a managed information environment immediately
introduces questions about resource quality . . .. While quality assessment is
certainly possible with human mediation, such mediation is economically
infeasible at the scale of the information space we wish to build.”97
In his position paper for the Post-Digital Library conference, Carl Lagoze voices
the concern that we all share about open content. How do you make sure it is
any good? Again, there is no set answer to this, although Cliffolilli identifies a
number of factors such as reputation values and the inverse of the economic
advantage of Wiki. Precisely because it is so easy to edit—reducing those
costs—it also makes it relatively “expensive” for a “graffiti” contributor seeking to
disrupt the process. He must spend time “defacing” something that can be reset
to its prior state with the click of a button.
In another thoughtful piece “Notes Toward a Moderation Economy,” Roger
Williams suggests that experimenting with Slashdot’s moderation system could
be worthwhile. As he writes:
“The goal of public moderation is to minimize the need for intervention by people
with special privileges. The mechanism is a currency system that increases your
capital if you are behaving correctly, decreases it if you're not, and provides
some privilege which you can spend your capital on that makes it worthwhile to
acquire equity.” 98
This is the kind of research that only VMC would have the density of content and
potential visitor participation to work with; it wouldn’t make sense for an individual
museum.
Born Digital Content
One of the most exciting potential components for virtual museum content is
online art. CHIN is in the process of a multi-pronged research initiative on the
intersection between the VMC and online art, and it is likely to recommend ways
that the VMC can serve as a platform to present and preserve online art.
97 Carl Lagoze. “NSF Digital Library Position Paper.” Wave of the Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 15-17, 2003.
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_lagoze.html. Accessed October 25, 2003.
98 Roger Williams, “Notes Toward a Moderation Economy,” Kuro5him, Oct 28th, 2003 at 10:42:43 PM EST
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/28/152730/78. Accessed Dec. 5, 20003.
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Infrastructure and Architectures
“We need clear definitions, goals, and objectives for interoperability,
sustainability, intellectual property, and partnerships. In addition, we need to
understand the role of metadata within these contexts and make better use of
it.”99
VMC architectures need to be able to respond to future technological changes
and developments. For this, they need to be layered, modular, and scalable.
They need to be able to interoperate with other digital repositories by adhering to
standards for structural and administrative metadata, and by working with
projects such as the Open Archives Initiative and other metadata harvesting
projects.100
The VMC architectures must be both scalable and flexible. The VMC will
undoubtedly grow over time, not just in numbers of objects and exhibits, but also
in terms of applications and functions. The architectures need to be able to grow
with the increased body of content, and be flexible enough to support the new
types of applications that will be added over the years. (For example, if the VMC
had been designed half a dozen years ago, it should have been flexible enough
to support the addition of applications like: discussion areas and forums,
personalized settings [like “French”, only museums in Manitoba, only works from
the 20th century, …], access from mobile devices, personal “my museum” virtual
collections, etc.)
Architectures need to be open, with modules connected through widely accepted
standards and protocols, so that different pieces of software from different
vendors can be swapped in and out over time. We expect that a distributed
architecture will be preferable to a centralized, hierarchical one, and that the
VMC will need to interact with the distributed collections of most of the
participating museums. That kind of distribution cannot be achieved without
strong adherence to protocols and standards, and an open and modular
architecture.
Future architectures will need to more seriously address part-whole relationships,
and allow annotations and other metadata to be attached to just one segment of
a painting, or to only the lid of a teapot. Likewise, these architectures will need to
permit creators of secondary works (such as museum staff creating new online
exhibits, teachers preparing courseware, or end-users writing online essays) to
display particular segments of an image or particular passages within a marked
up text – without having to recreate new scans or details of a work.
The infrastructure needed to support these architectures needs to include not just
hardware and software, but human resources to both support the system, and to
99
Spinazzi, op cit.
http://www.openarchives.org/. Accessed March 17, 2004.
100
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engage in ongoing new developments. It would be a big mistake to view the
VMC as reaching a point where it is “finished” and “fixed”; as long as technology
continues to grow and change user expectations in other arenas, the VMC will
need to continue to adapt so that its presentation to users does not look archaic
to the public (like black & white television or arrow-key user interfaces look to
users today).
Modularity
“On the theme of reusability or recombination, the current apprehension on the
part of cultural heritage institutions about these activities speaks to how we see
ourselves. Are our institutions owners of materials or are we stewards and
facilitators of access to materials that represent our core community values,
artistic and scientific endeavors? The path forward is directly affected by our
answers to these questions.”
Clifford Lynch101
A modular approach to the VMC is critical. Computing system designers have
long recognized the necessity of modular overall architectures to respond to
future software and hardware developments. The VMC must also be modular at
the level of works and their metadata in order to respond to new uses that will be
made of these works, from educators to personal museums to database
narratives.
Historically, museum computer systems have treated objects as if they are
bounded, fixed, and viewed primarily in a particular way (as defined by the
curatorial staff).102 Occasionally others (such as museum education department
staff) would be permitted to insert an object into a slightly different context, but
the object would still be defined and described by the same set of curatorial
metadata.
Many of the goals cited above require the next generation virtual museum to
both free objects from their fixed boundaries, and to permit those outside the
museum to incorporate works into different contexts. For context, most new
artistic movements that arose in the 20th century were based upon combining
existing works in new ways, in order to create new works. From collage art in the
early part of the century, through Dada and Surrealism, to Pop Art,
postmodernism, and rap music to online “mixers, shredders, and colliders,” new
works are created by recombining previously existing works.
The VMC should have a modular structure that permits audience members to
create new works that incorporate works that are already in the VMC, in the
same way that an artist like Barbara Kruger can incorporate an archival
photograph into one of her new works. Capabilities like this would not only act to
101
In Spinazze, op cit.
Besser, Howard (1997). The Transformation of the Museum and the way it’s Perceived, in Katherine
Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 153-169.
102
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further engage many audience sub-groups, but would through learning by
creating also help address some of the information and media literacy objectives
that are the goals of both formal education and informal learning.
In a similar way, the VMC’s modular structure also needs to support audience
members creating new contexts from VMC works. Teachers should be able to
create online courseware, authors should be able to illustrate online articles with
VMC images, and individuals should be able to create online exhibits.
Pointing vs. Copying
The activities mentioned above can be (and are) done today, but in very primitive
ways. Today, they can only be reliably done by copying works from the VMC into
the new works. But one of the key lessons of the Worldwide Web is that related
information should be linked in ways that allow a user to follow trails between
related ideas and works. We have much to gain if we switch from a paradigm
based upon copying old works into new works to a new paradigm based on
pointing between works. Under the pointing paradigm, an audience member
looking at a new work (or a new contextualization) can quickly be led to the
original work (and original contextualization) as provided within the original VMC
record.
The pointing or linking approach has the added virtue that from an evaluation
perspective, web logs can help identify and count the number of end-users
viewing VMC images (even when these images are part of online courseware at
a school or university), as well as identify any online exhibits, articles, or
courseware that incorporate VMC images. This would be a striking contrast to
today’s world, where a museum has no clue about downstream use once an
image is copied into another work or contextualization.
Addressing Stability
A major technical requirement in moving from a copying paradigm to a pointing
one is having a stable addressing system. Works and contextualizations outside
the VMC (as well as ones inside it) need to know that links to VMC works will not
change. A host of other technical developments (such as being able to point to a
particular section or cropping of a VMC work) could greatly increase the
usefulness of a pointing system, but even without these developments, such a
system should prove quite useful.
Being able to recombine content in a generically modular way holds great
promise at addressing many of the issues raised elsewhere within this document.
Such a pointing-based system could greatly extend the usefulness of
personalization, and allow an individual to share his or her “my museum” with
others, which helps enable the recommendation that the personal museum
space also be a platform for interpersonal communication. Such a system might
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also increase the involvement of teachers, professors, and guest curators, who
could share their own contextualizations of VMC works with a much wider
audience.
Modularity is not without its issues. Curators or scholars may feel unfairly
challenged when contextualizations done outside the museum contradict their
own interpretations or views. And repurposed works can raise controversial
views that the VMC might want to avoid.
Additional thinking and research needs to go into a pointing system. First,
we need to better understand the level of granularity that should be used—how
big is the module that should be pointed to? Second, we need to develop a
vocabulary to discuss the features of a pointing-based paradigm. For instance,
should we call online exhibits, electronic articles, and online courseware –
“secondary” works? These and other issues will provide fertile ground for
research into the next generation of VMC.
Interoperability + Standards
“Another theme that emerged from the workshop discussions included the
unquestioning discussion of metadata. There clearly are problems with
metadata. First, there are no overarching standards. Second, we continue to
work with deeply held assumptions about metadata that simply are not working.
If we look at the future and what is required simply in terms of metadata creation,
we cannot sustain it, current approaches are not viable. Third, we are having
real problems consolidating metadata. Research projects using the Open
Archives Initiative are consistently demonstrating that harvesting metadata is not
the issue, but that building meaningful metadata repositories is. Future directions
should carefully consider metadata and how and where it relates to content
based retrieval.”
Clifford Lynch103
In a digital repository, standards are absolutely critical for both interoperability
and longevity.104 Adherence to standards both helps the VMC interact with
external collections and resources, and helps ensure that internal processes and
resources will be maintainable for long periods of time.105 Because of the VMC’s
need to be distributed, flexible, open, and interoperable, it is essential that the
VMC adhere to a wide variety of standards and protocols.
As CHIN has been a leader in supporting standards in the past, from CIMI, to the
Getty vocabulary control and authority standards, to Internet standards &
103
In Spinazze, op cit.
Besser, Howard (2002). “The Next Stage: Moving from Isolated Digital Collections to Interoperable
Digital Libraries”, First Monday 7:6, June (http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_6/besser/)
105 For example, encoding in standardized file formats like TIFF acts as a hedge against proprietary file
formats that may no longer be accessible a decade from now, and developing internal application modules
that communicate with each other over standard protocols ensures that in future years, VMC can replace
these modules with those from another vendor.
104
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protocols like TCP/IP, it is not necessary here to describe all the necessary
standards in detail. Instead, we will both highlight important families of
standards, and also point out emerging standards that CHIN needs to be
involved in either tracking or spearheading.
CHIN has been a long-term user of descriptive metadata standards for consistent
description, and discovery metadata for retrieval. Important new uses of
discovery metadata that the VMC needs to be involved in include metadata
harvesting and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) for interoperability
between varying collections.
Other classes of metadata standards that the VMC needs to examine
include Administrative Metadata for viewing and maintaining digital works,
and Structural Metadata for navigation. Examples of this include the
Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), and the Technical
Metadata for Still Images Standard (NISO Z39.87).
The VMC also needs to be aware of the various efforts around metadata
standards for digital preservation and architectures for preservation repositories.
Examples of these include the variety of digital preservation standards projects
(such as PREservation Implementation Strategies -- PREMIS) being jointly
sponsored by the Research Libraries Group and OCLC), and the model
preservation architectures being developed by the Library of Congress as part of
the National Digital Information Infrastructure Program (NDIIP). Other
preservation-relevant standards include the various efforts to create persistent
Internet addressing systems: OCLC’s Persistent URLs (PURLs), the National
Corporation for Research Initiative’s Handle system, and the Internet Engineering
Task Force’s work on Universal Resource Names (URNs) – all designed to
correct the limitations in URLs.
Another area that VMC needs to closely examine is the metadata efforts around
learning systems and digital objects. Projects to standardize metadata around
learning modules are particularly relevant for both for designers of secondary
works like online museum educational modules, and for managers of primary
works like museum online catalogs that may provide the original digital works
that educators use to build some of their learning modules. Any plan for VMC to
provide access to secondary learning modules built by others will need to
incorporate standards for these learning objects, such as IMS.
Finally, VMC may need to get involved in the creation of some of the new
standards that will be necessary to tie secondary modules to primary works. This
includes standards for addressing a particular part of a digital work (such as a
detail of a painting or a paragraph of a digitized book, or a quote within a diary),
and having only that particular subset appear in a secondary work that points to
the stored “primary” work.
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Only by adopting (and in come cases helping give birth to) widely accepted
standards and protocols, will the VMC have the interoperability and
sustainability that it will need in the coming years.
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Sustainability
“Digital libraries are very expensive to build and maintain. Making digital libraries
more cost effective requires that they serve multiple users for multiple uses.”
Borgman106
“Many of the promised economic benefits of the Internet seem to be
materializing. Noting this, enterprises are preparing for e-business: while overall
investment in IT has decreased by 6.2 percent since 2001, e-business budgets
are estimated to have risen by as much as 11 percent in 2002. In 2003 annual
growth in e-business investment fell to 4 percent, but this rate was twice as fast
as the growth in overall IT investment.”
United Nations107
Dynamic virtual museums are expensive to maintain, with costs over the long run
substantially unknown. In an era of increased economic pressure, museums and
their virtual counterparts are looking for economic returns wherever they can:
sponsorship, advertising, ecommerce, subscription, pay-per-view, print on
demand, membership, applications service provider are just a few of the option
being considered. It is beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate and
recommend specific courses of action in regard to revenue production, but as
with other issues in the virtual museum realm, it is likely to be a question of
balance. When does pay-per-view for special resources undermine the ideal of
universal access? At what point does sponsorship overwhelm the visual
message of the core content? What are the arguments for providing which
services at a loss, on the basis of cost-recovery and in order to make a profit?
These and many others are legitimate questions being studied.
Besides ensuring a balance with core values, the other likely recommendation to
come out of this research is likely to be the idea of shared infrastructure. Not
every museum can afford an ecommerce system, but it may be possible to share
one.
Integration
“New organizations and organizational models are needed that are sensitive to
the dynamics of particular scientific communities, driven by academic mission,
and able to sustain themselves over time as an integral parts of the broader
cyberinfrastructure.”
Daniel J. Waters108
One of the keys to sustainability is the integration of the virtual museum function
into the everyday functioning of the physical museum. As a relatively simple
example, all museums sponsor important lectures throughout the year by
106
Borgman op cit.
“E-Commerce and Development Report 2003,” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development,
http://r0.unctad.org/ecommerce/ecommerce_en/edr03_en.htm Accessed March 17, 2004.
108 “Beyond Digital Libraries: The Organizational Design of a New Cyberinfrastructure.”
107
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internationally renowned scholars as well as members of the local community.
Even though these activities are deemed worthwhile for a one-time audience of
anywhere from a dozen people to a few hundred, very seldom are these events
recorded adequately and even less often are they made available as a digital
resource for viewing. Yet, the cost of the necessary equipment to do this is
relatively small and digitization, either as a live stream or an archived stream can
quickly become simply a few hours of staff time. What are the barriers that are
preventing this from happening more consistently?
In general, from a systems or business processes perspective, similar
information is being generated by museum staff for wall didactics, publications,
and the website. Yet, very few institutions can afford the kind of workflow
software that would more easily enable museums to leverage efforts in one area
into the other—or at a minimum, capture for the digital archives, the totality of
contextual resources being created around an exhibition.
The VMC can play an important role in developing institutional capacity for
the integration of the “information environment” into something that is
easily reusable in multiple contexts via the next generation virtual museum.
Capacity Building
“{VMC} Board members would like to see the Investment Program, or CHIN, play
an editorial role in the production of exhibits. The role would not be as elaborate
as for the Public Programs, but would assist museums through training for
proposal managers (before, during and after the development of an exhibit:
development of content, technology, evaluation of multi-media firms, presentation
of their product, development of a communication plan). Results would produce
good quality images and content, which could be picked up for different uses to
promote museums and the content they produce.”109
Partnerships
In the age of the Internet, collaboration is shifting organizational focus and there
is a subsequent need to consider online network strategies. Consequently,
museums may need to re-define their potential partners, whether they are taken
from the public or private sectors, for example, in terms of:





Content partners
Technology partners
Partners in developing online services
Joint funding bid partners
Commercial partners
See Appendix 3: “VMC Rethinking Brainstorming Session with the Investment Program Editorial Board,”
November 24, 2003.
109
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There are also benefits for museums and cultural institutions that have a
leadership role in a particular area of expertise. Several existing initiatives are
exemplars in this area and have been instrumental in joining-up resources and
creating integrated access, but also using their leadership role within the sector
to provide opportunities for wider engagement.
Such online initiatives have generally manifested themselves as portals and
gateways offering central access to the nation’s cultural resources; and/or
offering an authoritative selection of joined-up services to collective audiences
and users. Some notable examples include:



One example of a content-based network is the National Maritime
Museum ‘PORT’ initiative, which is one of the foremost portals on
maritime information on the Internet.110
SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources and Art Network) founded by a
partnership of the National Museums of Scotland, the Scottish
Museums Council, and the Royal Commission on the Ancient &
Historical Monuments of Scotland is a centrally coordinated network of
digitized resources collated from a number of participating cultural
institutions all directly accessible through a central portal.111
Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) focuses on the
museum and heritage sectors in Canada. However, it is more than a
gateway to culture and heritage online, offering resources for heritage
professionals, discussion groups, job listings, and online training on
technology issues.112
The Public Sphere and Economic Sustainability
Never loose sight of the big picture. The overall purpose of the institution,
especially in the development and distribution of digitized cultural content must
be omnipresent to ensure that the initiative maintains the institutions’ overall
quality. If an initiative includes the generation of revenue, it should also maintain
a balance to ensure that a museum’s educational and public policy objectives
continue to be met.113
Museums, like many participants in contemporary culture, both own and use
intellectual property. Its interests are on both sides of the issue of more and less
restrictive IP regimes. Historically, the museum’s position could be said to be
protecting IP. In the same way that the museum is mandated to protect the
physical objects in its collections, it wanted to “protect” the cropping or
inappropriate use of images of its objects. Over the past 20 years, however, as
museums have come under strenuous financial pressures, there has been a shift
110
http://www.port.nmm.ac.uk/
htpp://www.scran.ac.uk
112 http://www.chin.gc.ca
113 Rina Pantalony, op cit.
111
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toward maximizing the legal exploitation of IP rights the museum controls.
Somewhat paradoxically, this has meant both the loosening and tightening of
controls. It is now easier to buy towels and shower curtains with your favorite
artwork on them, but if you are a scholar or a publisher or another museum, use
of the image in a catalog or simply for research may be costly.
In the last 5 years, with the rise of “network society,” as outlined above, the value
for audiences of aggregated and linked resources is exponentially greater. It is
our position that where and when it is necessary to maintain security over
intellectual property, whether for appropriate use or for economic transactions, it
is important for network infrastructure to support this to the extent feasible,
precisely because the usefulness to individual audience members of aggregated
and linked information is so great.114

At the same time, it is our philosophy that, as Henry Jenkins writes [Henry
Jenkins quote] that supporting a robust public domain is a core value and critical
mission of the cultural heritage sector. We advocate making as many IP
resources as possible available for a wide range of public uses without
restriction, from educational use to individual use to re-use by community
members, including institutional community members. This may impact
economics to some extent, but we feel there are several significant mitigating
factors:



the necessary infrastructure to support secure IP management is not
affordable to individual institutions. By creating a common
infrastructure, shared costs can be reduced, arguably more than
potential revenue from exclusivity.
Potentially the economic pie becomes greater. A bookstore selling
books on Amazon.com pays x% of the sale to Amazon, which it would
normally keep. However, it can expect far greater traffic to its offerings
through Amazon.com than it would as an independent only site.
It is possible to create legally enforceable licenses such as [get
example from Creative Commons} that are unrestrictive for public
domain uses, relatively unrestrictive for other uses by other members
of the community (such as CHIN/VMC partners), and relatively
restrictive for commercial uses by non-community members.
There is no doubt that sustainability is a core value for real stewardship, but we
believe that supporting a robust public domain is equally critical for society-atlarge and a critical area for leadership by cultural heritage institutions.
Recently British Library instituted secure electronic delivery to users’ desktops. See
http://www.iwr.co.uk/iwreview/1150996. Accessed December 4, 2003.
114
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Business Models
There is no clear—or at least easy—way for museums to solve their ongoing
financial burdens, shoulder the additional costs of digitization and expanded
virtual services, and remain true to their mission and core values. Nevertheless, it
is critical to explore possibilities from strategic alliances to print-on-demand
business to persuasive arguments about cultural heritage institutions as
economically productive drivers of “creative community.” As the VMC board put it
during its brainstorming session:
“Content could be developed in an engaging, interesting way to generate crossmedia products and for CHIN and museums, individually and collectively, to be a
part of the entertainment business as equal partners with big players. This could
in turn generate revenues for museums to be sustainable (every-day operations
of a museum, collections development, special projects, etc.).”115
Brand
Regardless of any particular business models the VMC may develop, a critical
underlying issues for any possible success is a successful brand, which cannot
be ignored, simply because museums are in the public sector. Again, as the
VMC Board describes it,
“Marketing has played a very important role in creating a brand (VMC), and
strategic alliances (Sympatico, Canada Post) to promote our membership. Some
museums may not know how to react to these changes yet.”116
The issue for business models, strategic alliances, branding, and
marketing is as much cultural as an implementation issue. Parallel to the
way that the VMC is in a position to test “entertaining” applications while
remaining authoritative and pedagogically sound, the VMC also has the
trust of its community to allow it to experiment with potential business
models.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property and copyright are complex subjects for museums and
related institutions and the laws may differ depending on the governing country of
a museum organization. Intellectual property rights in general ensure that
museums and individuals can profit from their creative or intellectual endeavors;
more specifically, they prevent others profiting at the creator’s expense.
VMC brainstorming session, February 5, 2004. “CHIN is interested in building capacity in museums to be
able to share content through cross-media – as equal partners with big players. For this purpose, the
development of a business model is important for CHIN/VMC and museums.”
116 VMC brainstorming session, February 5, 2004.
115
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Of particular significance to museums is the advent of technological change,
such as digital capture methods, which have now facilitated the ability to make
copies. However, all material placed on a website is protected by copyright. This
includes the images/special features that make up the design of the site.
And as such this material must be treated as any other piece of
copyrighted work and a process should be in place to gain permission,
copyright clearance, etc. Consequently, it is critical that a museum set up a
program of intellectual property rights management.
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Appendix 1: Pour une Mémoire numérique universelle
RAPPORT AU MUSÉE VIRTUEL DU CANADA
Par Pierre Lévy, CRC en Intelligence Collective, Université d’Ottawa
Avant propos
Le principal objet de ce rapport est d’exposer les premiers plans d’un langage de
structuration sémantique de l’information apte à organiser la mémoire numérique
résultant de la convergence en ligne des musées et des bibliothèques. Ce
langage, nommé Digitong, propose une architecture de l’information fondée sur
une idéographie. Or le support graphique est indispensable à l’exposé d’une
architecture comme à celui d’une idéographie. C’est pourquoi la partie principale
de ce document, qui donne une vue d’ensemble du langage, est de nature
graphique. Dans cette brève introduction au document principal, j’expose les
motifs qui m’ont fait concevoir Digitong et je me contente d’évoquer quelquesunes de ses caractéristiques saillantes.
La culture à venir
Nous sommes en train de construire une nouvelle civilisation, une société
planétaire de la connaissance en réseau. Le développement des
communications, des transports et des échanges commerciaux nous engage
irréversiblement sur la voie de l’intégration mondiale. Naguère paysanne, la
majorité de l’humanité vit désormais dans les mailles d’un filet de mégapoles. Le
développement rapide des télécommunications et l’extension du réseau
numérique universel nous obligent à repenser radicalement les données de la
culture et à pratiquer la vie en société autrement que nos ancêtres.
L’ouverture du cyberespace est en voie d’accélération : lente construction des
réseaux téléphoniques, naissance de l’électronique, invention de l’ordinateur,
puis de l’ordinateur personnel, interconnexion des ordinateurs, numérisation
générale de la communication, développement des connexions sans-fil... Le Web
n’existait pas en 1992. Dix ans plus tard, des centaines de millions de personnes
naviguent sur Internet. Si nous regardons vers l’avenir, nous voyons, à coup sûr,
une augmentation des capacités du réseau, tant en termes de stockage, que de
puissance de traitement ou de bande passante. Les accès au cyberespace vont
se multiplier, devenir de moins en moins coûteux et se faire sans fil de manière
ubiquitaire. De plus en plus de personnes vont se connecter, notamment dans
des pays très peuplés et dotés d’une riche culture, comme l’Inde, la Chine, le
Brésil ou le Mexique, ainsi que dans de nombreux pays de tradition musulmane,
dont le patrimoine culturel est ancien et raffiné. Les cultures vont se rencontrer
dans le réseau numérique.
La naissance du cyberespace comme instrument de communication interactif
transfrontière amorce une nouvelle échelle et une nouvelle forme d’espace
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public. Nos messages convergent et s’échangent sur la nappe ondulante d’un
hypertexte en expansion. Une méta-ville se lève à l’horizon de la culture
planétaire.
L’économie dépend chaque jour davantage du développement des savoirs. Nous
sommes confrontés au défi de la gestion de plus en plus complexe des flux
d’informations numériques qui alimentent et expriment nos communautés
entremêlées. Le prolongement des mouvements en cours semble pointer vers
l’apparition de nouvelles formes politiques, économiques et culturelles pour les
générations qui vont nous succéder. Au milieu de l’incertitude, quelques grands
principes semblent se dégager, comme celui qui veut que les idées, les
connaissances et le patrimoine culturel constituent désormais la richesse des
nations.
Ce phénomène d’interconnexion massive remet en question, souvent
violemment, les anciennes manières de transmettre la culture. La vague actuelle
de transformation de la vie symbolique engendre des craintes, fort
compréhensibles, de dissolution ou de perte d’identité. Parallèlement, une
multitude de subjectivités personnelles et collectives s’affichent de plus en plus
et de mieux en mieux sur Internet, tandis qu’un nombre croissant de
« communautés virtuelles » explorent de nouvelles manières d’être ensemble
avec des paroles, des images et de la musique numérisés.
La responsabilité des institutions de la mémoire
Les gens de culture - et tout particulièrement ceux qui ont pour mission de
transmettre la mémoire - ont une responsabilité capitale. On ne reçoit pas un
héritage de sens comme un dépôt de choses mortes, d’instructions à appliquer
ou de dogmes à réciter. Dans la pratique quotidienne de la réception et de la
transmission culturelle, la conservation, l’appréciation et le développement
supposent une recherche personnelle, une plongée pleine de risques dans les
profondeurs de l’héritage. Parce que les chaînes de transmissions sont vivantes,
il nous est fait obligation d’agrandir et de faire évoluer, sous l’effet de nouvelles
questions, le monde de significations qui nous a été transmis.
Les problèmes cruciaux traités par les traditions culturelles doivent être repensés
par chaque génération, placée devant la responsabilité de re-générer de manière
créative le monde symbolique qu’elle transmettra aux générations suivantes.
Plus précisément, une génération se trouve confrontée à une question
essentielle, une méta-question, si l’on peut dire : « Quel problème essentiel nous
est posé? ». Autrement dit : en quel point devons-nous repenser nos traditions
de la manière la plus novatrice et la plus radicale? Ou encore : de quoi sommesnous le plus responsables ?
Aujourd’hui, les écosystèmes symboliques que sont les cultures sont emportés
dans un mouvement de convergence et d’interdépendance croissante. Le
nouveau médium de communication interactive planétaire questionne les règles
antérieures de la vie symbolique. Le mouvement de mondialisation et
d’informatisation nous demande, nolens volens, de trouver un sens à une
éventuelle unité culturelle de l’humanité. Il nous invite à une manière inconnue
de faire société à l’échelle d’une planète interconnectée. Regardons les choses
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en face : l’avenir de la vie symbolique passe par une mémoire universelle qui
devient notre ressource culturelle commune.
Je ne parle pas du cyberespace comme d’un instrument pour transmettre nos
traditions telles quelles. Je parle d’une sphère mondiale unifiée de la culture
humaine qui surgit comme problème. Parviendrons-nous à négocier
quelqu’équilibre dynamique à un nouveau degré de complexité, à une plus
grande hauteur, comme l’ont déjà fait nos prédécesseurs à plusieurs reprises
lors de grandes mutations culturelles? Aurons-nous le courage de viser la
fécondité maximale de notre patrimoine commun? Serons-nous capables de
projeter une mémoire numérique universelle qui soit digne de la grande
civilisation pluraliste unie par sa mémoire que nous pourrions contribuer à créer?
Repenser l’archive
Afin de relever ce défi, les institutions de la mémoire doivent prendre la juste
mesure de leurs nouvelles possibilités. C’est toute une nouvelle pensée de
l’archive qu’il nous faut convoquer pour intégrer la levée de très anciennes
contraintes techniques. Une fois l’information numérisée et indexée, il est devenu
possible de la multiplier et de la distribuer indéfiniment pour un coût faible à
toutes les extrémités du réseau. Dès lors que nous comprenons la nature de
l’information numérique, il devient clair qu’elle n’implique ni l’unicité de
localisation, ni la fixité de l’apparence. Elle peut être partout et se manifester de
manière interactive selon une infinité de manières. Elle échappe quasiment à
toutes les limites imposées par l’espace physique.
Cela signifie que nous pouvons rendre disponible de manière cohérente dans le
cyberespace la quasi-totalité des données numériques conservées et exposées
par tous les noeuds du réseau mondial des musées et des bibliothèques. Mais
cette première ouverture ne constitue que la partie physique et institutionnelle de
la redondance permise par le cyberespace. La redondance sémantique est plus
radicale. En effet, parallèlement à la levée des contraintes techniques, le
desserrement de codes symboliques rigides et les progrès d’un regard
anthropologique instruit de la diversité culturelle ont estompé les distinctions qui
organisaient naguère les structures de l’archive. Il n’existe plus de séparation
absolue entre « ordinaire » et « digne de mémoire », entre artiste et public, entre
visiteur et commissaire d’exposition, entre critique et public. Qu’une communauté
virtuelle se saisisse d’un thème, d’une idée, d’un patrimoine quelconque… et des
paquets d’information accèdent à la dignité de mémorable. Tous les
témoignages humains sont interconnectés au sein d’une conversation mondiale
proliférante. Les documents sont reliés par un grand hypertexte dynamique qui
reflète nos mouvements d’écriture, nos liens et nos navigations.
Résumons quelques-unes des plus radicales contestations de l’archive
traditionnelle qui aient été émises au XXe siècle.
- Premièrement : toute activité humaine peut être objet d’histoire et
d’archéologie.
- Deuxièmement: une forme d’expression culturelle est légitime dès qu’elle
trouve une communauté pour en porter la mémoire.
- Troisièmement : le nouvel espace de projection de l’artiste est le musée.
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La future mémoire numérique universelle intègre sans peine ces remises en
question. Puisque sa reproduction ne coûte presque rien, nous pouvons
multiplier l’information numérique par toutes les manières de s’en servir et d’y
accéder. Il devient désormais envisageable de proposer sur la mémoire
universelle autant de points de vues qu’il existe de communautés humaines.
C’est pourquoi je propose de concevoir la future architecture de l’information sur
la base d’une nouvelle « perspective sémantique ». Perspective, en effet,
puisque la mémoire numérique ici projetée tend au-dessus du cyberespace un
miroir sémantique, un monde virtuel explorable dont la fonction sera de renvoyer
aux visiteurs l’image indéfiniment multipliée de leur création collective.
Les musées et bibliothèques peuvent se saisir des techniques disponibles pour
édifier une architecture de l’information qui soit digne de la mémoire numérique
universelle. Nous devons viser une architecture d’images animées, souple,
transparente, distribuée et ouverte au travail collaboratif. Selon ce programme de
travail, l’espace d’exposition de la mémoire numérique universelle devra
organiser une mise en image animée tridimensionnelle du mémorable humain
dans laquelle toutes les communautés virtuelles de visiteurs, d’auteurs et
d’utilisateurs pourront se retrouver et collaborer. Nous pouvons à cette fin utiliser
les nouvelles possibilités de projection automatique de mondes virtuels
tridimensionnels partageables grâce aux progrès de la bande passante et des
logiciels de synthèse d’image. Ces opportunités techniques sont déjà exploitées
par une partie de la communauté scientifique et par les jeux en ligne qui se
déroulent dans des mondes virtuels multiparticipants.
Une nouvelle perspective
Le sens de cette mutation du regard sur le sens peut, je crois, s’éclairer d’une
comparaison avec la mutation du regard sur le sensible qui s’est effectuée en
Europe autour du XVIe siècle. Comme la perspective inventée à la Renaissance,
la perspective sémantique implique une révolution dans la manière de voir. On
peut définir la perspective comme le construit culturel selon lequel l’espace se
compose de points de vue différents et symétriques. Suivant cette définition
structurale, l’invention de la perspective ne s’est pas faite qu’en peinture. Elle a
progressé dans les rapports d’égalité entre citoyens, dans les formes abstraites
de la géométrie, comme dans les relations physiques entre masses décrites par
la science moderne. Grâce à la mise en cause de nos ethnocentrismes par
l’anthropologie et les sciences humaines, nous approchons d’une telle
perspective dans les disciplines du sens. Mais il manque aux études du
phénomène humain une visualisation de ses objets dans un espace
tridimensionnel infini qui en donnerait une perspective complète. C’est pourquoi
je propose pour structurer la mémoire numérique universelle un espace virtuel
tridimensionnel potentiellement infini dans lequel chaque sujet-objet se comporte
comme un point de vue agissant sur la structure même de l’espace d’exposition.
Le point de vue de chaque communauté unie autour d’un patrimoine
documentaire prendra place parmi la multitude auto-organisée des points de vue
possibles. En faisant de l’espace sémantique un espace perspectif, les
institutions de la mémoire produiraient donc pour chaque visiteur une
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représentation virtuelle du point de vue des autres qui ne pourrait se dissocier de
la découverte de son propre point de vue.
Afin de réaliser ce programme, nous pouvons nous appuyer sur le
développement en cours du Web Sémantique. Sur un plan strictement
technique, nous savons que le Web sémantique qui se prépare aujourd’hui
augmentera l’utilité des informations numériques en fournissant des balises aux
agents logiciels qui vont parcourir le réseau, ce qui leur permettra de tenir
compte du sens des documents et des transactions dans l’accomplissement de
leurs tâches. Grâce au Web Sémantique, les données de la mémoire numérique
universelle pourront donc être adressées et auto-organisées par leur sens et leur
usage pratique (si ces deux notions ont des extensions différentes, ce dont –
avec Pierce et Wittgenstein - je doute). Le Web sémantique, tel qu’il est conçu
aujourd’hui, est organisé par une multitude d’ontologies. Cela est parfaitement
normal, puisqu’il doit toujours exister un grand nombre de manières différentes
d’interpréter le monde pour faire vivre une intelligence collective riche et féconde.
Pourtant, si nous voulons que la mémoire numérique universelle adopte un
système d’adressage par le sens, nous devons pouvoir traduire ces multiples
ontologies dans une architecture sémantique de la mémoire qui soit cohérente.
L’adoption d’un langage commun apte à signaler toutes les perspectives
possibles sur le sens conditionne la fondation d’une mémoire numérique
universelle. Ce n’est qu’à cette condition qu’une mémoire numérique commune
pourra coordonner et rendre intelligibles les relations entre zones sémantiques
structurées par des ontologies locales distinctes. Le langage d’architecture de
l’information que je propose ici répond à cette contrainte de mise en scène des
rapports parce que, comme on le verra, sa structure reflète un système de
relations symétriques entre points de vue ontologiques différents. Comme il
répond aux principes d’une géométrie des points de vue réciproques, ce langage
des idées est capable
de satisfaire aux conditions de symétrie anthropologique que requiert la mémoire
numérique universelle. Mais d’abord, qu’est-ce qu’une idée?
Le langage des idées
L’espèce humaine a ouvert un nouvel espace, un espace abstrait, à l’évolution
du vivant. Le langage articulé a ouvert à l’humanité la possibilité de poser des
questions, de raconter des histoires et de dialoguer. Il a permis le surgissement
d’entités inconnues des sociétés animales : les nombres, les dieux, les lois, les
œuvres d’art, les calendriers, l’aventure technique et l’univers entier de la culture.
Je désigne ici sous le nom d’idées ces formes complexes qui n’apparaissent, ne
se reproduisent et n’évoluent que dans le monde de la culture, dans l’espace de
signification ouvert par le langage. Le surgissement de l’espace sémantique où
vivent les idées a permis aux communautés humaines un saut d’intelligence
collective par rapport aux ruches, aux troupeaux et aux meutes parce qu’il crée
un lien de coopération compétitive plus fort, plus souple, plus évolutif que celui
qui unit les insectes des fourmilières ou les singes des hardes de babouins. La
vie des idées distingue l’humanité. Oui, nous sommes des sociétés d’organismes
animaux, fruits de l’évolution biologique. Mais l’humanité est également le seul
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environnement d’où la vie symbolique tire son existence. Le langage marque le
seuil à partir duquel se constituent cette deuxième nature formée d’écosystèmes
d’idées - des sortes d’hypertextes spirituels - vivant en symbiose avec les
communautés de primates parlants que nous formons. Ces écosystèmes d’idées
se complexifient, dépérissent, se diversifient et se mélangent, entraînant les
sociétés qui les nourrissent sur un chemin partiellement indéterminé d’évolution
culturelle. Teilhard de Chardin a baptisé « Noosphère » l’écosystème mondial de
toutes les idées que la mondialisation et le développement des moyens de
communication qui culmine dans le cyberespace commence à nous faire toucher
du doigt.
Or je suggérais plus haut que nous pouvons aujourd’hui envisager la possibilité
technique de visualiser ces écosystèmes d’idées dans un miroir sémantique :
une simulation tridimensionnelle animée – complexe, certes, mais organisée et
cohérente. Fruit de la convergence des musées et des bibliothèques en ligne, la
mémoire numérique universelle peut multiplier l’expression culturelle pour tous
les publics et dans toutes les directions de l’espace du sens en mettant en scène
le monde des idées de manière cinématographique et interactive.
Quel genre d’idées trouvera-t-on dans le monde virtuel qui figure la multiplicité
entrelacée des mémoires ? Ce ne seront pas exactement les idées de Platon. Le
fondateur de la philosophie occidentale les décrivait fixes, éternelles et invisibles
aux sens. Les idées de notre mémoire numérique, en revanche, sont des sujetsobjets virtuels tridimensionnels explorables par la vue, le toucher et l’ouïe, qui
évoluent au sein d’un écosystème où elles vivent en interdépendance.
Digitong
Avant de nous lancer dans l’exploration de ce monde virtuel, quelques mots
d’abord sur le choix du nom de notre système de cinématographie de
l’information. Digitong dénote une langue digitale, un langage visuel d’indexation
sémantique de l’information qui ne peut être « parlé » que par l’intermédiaire du
réseau des ordinateurs. La médiation technique des ordinateurs en réseau
permet aux communautés entrelacées qui « parlent Digitong » de projeter un
monde virtuel tridimensionnel figurant leurs rapports de sens.
Idées
Digitong compute le mouvement des idées en trois dimensions dans un espace
virtuel infini et cohérent où les proximités spatiales reflètent des proximités
sémantiques. L’idée est ici définie formellement comme l’union indissoluble de
trois dimensions interdépendantes du même sujet-objet :
- 1) une communauté virtuelle (l’intelligence de l’idée),
- 2) un traitement de données numériques (le processus cognitif de l’idée)
- 3) une constellation d’images symboliques dans la mémoire numérique (la
conscience, ou autoreprésentation de l’idée).
Mèmes
Digitong permet de projeter un monde virtuel dans lequel les idées absorbent,
transforment et émettent des capsules d’informations multimédia, éventuellement
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préparées par les services en ligne des musées et bibliothèques. Ces paquets
d’information sont appelés des « mèmes ». Le terme a été forgé par Richard
Dawkins sur le modèle du « gène », afin de désigner l’entité autoreproductrice
qui circule entre les esprits humains. Je crois que Dawkins était sur la bonne voie
en conceptualisant la sphère culturelle comme une écologie, et c’est pourquoi je
reprends son terme. Mais il n’a décrit avec le mème qu’une moitié de l’écologie
cognitive humaine. Pour rendre compte de la profondeur et de la complexité de
la nature sémantique de l’information, on ne peut se contenter d’un équivalent
des gènes, il faut aussi se doter d’un équivalent (virtuel) des organismes. Dans la
mémoire numérique universelle structurée par Digitong, les idées sont
précisément ces organismes virtuels qui absorbent, traitent et diffusent les
mèmes. Les idées donnent une consistance symbolique aux communautés
humaines unies par le langage, une consistance que la seule prise en compte
des mèmes ne peut fournir.
Syntaxe et sémantique
La syntaxe de Digitong remplit essentiellement une fonction cinématographique.
Elle permet la représentation animée en 3 D d’une mémoire numérique dans
laquelle des idées échangent et transforment des mèmes. Cette syntaxe est
intimement liée à la sémantique, qui offre un système de coordonnées
graphiques permettant la projection d’un espace virtuel potentiellement infini mais précisément adressable - dans lequel transitent les idées et les mèmes.
Les distances géométriques dans l’espace engendré par cette langue
représentent des distances sémantiques. Cette correspondance entre espaces
sémantiques et géométriques repose sur les deux piliers de l’architecture
informationnelle de Digitong: une idéographie et une algorithmique.
Idéographie
Le rôle des idéogrammes de Digitong n’est pas de traduire exactement le
contenu des documents et des transactions numériques mais seulement de les
indexer ou de les adresser dans l’espace sémantique. On peut les imaginer
comme des sortes de « codes postaux » de la mémoire universelle.
Les idéogrammes de Digitong sont indépendants des langues. Ils sont construits
selon une méthode de division symétrique des types d’actes qui structurent
l’espace sémantique humain. C’est la symétrie anthropologique qui inspire cette
idéographie qui en fait un instrument adéquat de structuration de la mémoire
universelle. J’appelle cette symétrie la perspective virtuelle parce qu’elle traite précisément - les directions de sens de manière symétrique.
Les idéogrammes de Digitong ne représentent pas des concepts rigides qui se
comporteraient comme des « classes » ou des ensembles emboîtés
hiérarchiquement, séparant des « dedans » de « dehors ». Leur éventail
présente la palette des qualités d’actes qui sont en état d’enveloppement
réciproque et fractal dans les idées. Chaque idéogramme est accompagné d’un
nombre indiquant le « volume sémantique » affecté à la qualité d’acte qu’il
représente. Comme les idéogrammes signalent des sortes de couleurs ou de
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fréquences sémantiques, leurs proportions et leurs combinaisons peuvent être
multipliés indéfiniment.
Tous les mèmes qui sont conservés en mémoire, transformés et échangés par
les idées sont étiquetés par des codes sémantiques. Ces codes se composent
invariablement d’une suite ordonnée d’idéogrammes affectés de volumes. Les
idées peuvent identifier et traiter les mèmes grâce aux codes qui décrivent leur
teneur sémantique. Les idées, à leur tour, sont repérées par des codes
sémantiques qui expriment leur activité et leur mémoire.
Les idéogrammes représentent des opérateurs actifs du monde virtuel de la
mémoire :
- émetteurs qui permettent aux mèmes de se signaler aux idées auxquelles ils
s’adressent ;
- antennes qui permettent aux idées de capter et d’émettre des mèmes ;
- commutateurs sémantiques qui transforment l’information reçue par les idées
en information transmise ;
- instruments de navigation dans l’espace sémantique pour les visiteurs.
Algorithmique
Puisque les idées sont vivantes, leurs positions changent au gré de leurs
navigations sémantiques et ces changements restructurent l’espace autour
d’elles. L’espace virtuel en trois dimensions qui exprime les distances
sémantiques est périodiquement recalculé à partir des codes des idées. Les
algorithmes de Digitong construisent l’espace-mémoire universel selon une sorte
de négociation collective permanente entre les idées sur leurs distances
respectives. Le principe de ces algorithmes, relativement simple, est exposé
dans le document principal.
En plus de calculer une position universelle pour toutes les idées, les algorithmes
de Digitong projettent l’espace relatif de chaque idée, son « champ de vision »
ou univers propre. Il s’agit de l’environnement écologique constitué des idées
complémentaires avec qui l’idée de référence échange des mèmes.
Enfin, ces algorithmes disposent les mèmes (en fonction de leur teneur
sémantique) à l’intérieur des idées.
Calcul sémantique analogique
Les idées projetées en 3 D par Digitong se comportent comme des processeurs
analogiques des informations encapsulées par les mèmes. Elles sont munies, on
l’a dit, de commutateurs sémantiques qui effectuent la transformation des
mèmes reçus en mèmes émis. Le tableau des volumes sémantiques de ses
commutateurs à un moment donné reflète la position instantanée d’une idée
dans l’espace de toutes les commutations sémantiques possibles. On notera
que, comme cet espace à une infinité de dimensions est irreprésentable, tout
l’intérêt des algorithmes de Digitong est d’en fournir une projection navigable en
trois dimensions.
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Moments, arches
La perspective cinématographique de Digitong décompose le mouvement des
idées en « images fixes » qui sont appelés des moments. Un moment du
traitement sémantique analogique accompli par les idées peut être analysé en
(1) réception d’information, (2) transformation de l’information reçue et (3)
émission d’information. Chaque moment projette une image distincte dans
l’espace à trois dimensions. Les mèmes sont rangés dans les deux arches
d’informations que portent les idées à chaque moment de leur trajet. Une arche
expose les mèmes reçus et une autre les mèmes émis. Peut-on concevoir, en
temps de déluge informationnel, une architecture de l’archive sans arche?
Sèmes
La transformation sémantique effectué par le moment d’une idée s’appelle un
sème. Le sème représente l’acte d’un moment sous la forme du « programme »
analogique suivi par l’idée lorsqu’elle transforme les mèmes reçus en mèmes
émis. A chaque moment, le sème indique la réfraction particulière d’un flux
d’information opérée par une idée. Le sème lui-même n’est que la trace
instantanée d’une sémiose : la navigation sémantique d’une idée dans un
écosystème d’idées. Moment après moment, la succession de ses actes
signifiants contribue à orienter la navigation sémantique d’une idée.
Digitong fait coïncider le sens et l’acte. Ce langage traite le sens comme une
perspective de navigation dans un espace sémantique infini dont aucune
direction n’est privilégiée. Les penseurs lucides de nombreuses traditions ont
souligné la nature différentielle et relative du sens, sur lequel il est beaucoup plus
difficile de s’accorder que sur les observables ou les calculs logicomathématiques. Conformément à cette ligne de pensée différentialiste, Digitong
identifie l’unité de sémiose à une différence instantanée entre les visages de
deux configurations idéographiques.
Information
La succession des moments d’une idée projette la navigation d’une communauté
dans l’espace sémantique. La cinématographie de Digitong permet de visiter les
trajets sémantiques des idées qui produisent, échangent et consomment
l’information. Elle permet également de repérer et de mettre en contexte
l’information elle-même. En effet, les capsules multimédias que sont les mèmes
se distribuent de manière redondante au sein des arches d’informations portées
par les idées et les mèmes se disposent dans les arches de manière
contextuelle, en fonction de leurs connexions sémantiques.
L’information représente tout ce qui peut avoir sens ou valeur pour des êtres
humains : ressources matérielles et techniques, rôles sociaux, institutions,
idéaux, formes d’organisation, compétences, connaissances, messages, images,
musiques et symboles de toutes sortes. Les communautés virtuelles échangent
et transforment l’information dans le réseau de la mémoire numérique
universelle. Le mouvement de l’information relie et sépare : sa distribution
fluctuante structure l’espace sémantique. Les idées présentent ensemble une
multitude de moments d’intelligence singuliers et interdépendants, autant de
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visages que le miroir de l’intelligence collective reflète fractalement dans toutes
les directions du sens.
***************
Dans le document auquel ce texte introduit, je traite de la possibilité logique, de
la calculabilité informatique, de la faisabilité technique et de la pertinence
anthropologique d’une mémoire numérique universelle structurée par Digitong.
La première partie est consacrée aux principes de la perspective virtuelle et aux
neuf premiers idéogrammes qui définissent les points cardinaux de l’espace
sémantique.
La seconde partie expose la cinématographie des idées, leur décomposition en
moments, la décomposition de ces moments en arches contenant des mèmes,
etc. On y trouvera également le principe des algorithmes qui permettent de
recalculer périodiquement l’espace sémantique en fonction de l’évolution et des
positions réciproques des idées.
La troisième partie explique les fondements de la navigation des idées et des
visiteurs dans l’espace sémantique.
Les six parties suivantes exposent systématiquement l’idéographie. On verra que
la structure symétrique et le mode de construction principalement combinatoire
des 549 idéogrammes de Digitong sont au cœur de sa puissance expressive.
L’édition du document présentant Digitong a bénéficié de l’aide précieuse de
Darcia Labrosse, qui a joué le role d’éditrice graphique, de correctrice et de
conseillère litteraire pour la langue anglaise.
La bibliographie qui suit n’a pas pour ambition de recenser la totalité des
traditions philosophiques et culturelles qui ont joué un rôle dans l’élaboration de
Digitong. Elle se contente de signaler les domaines de recherche pertinents et
les sources d’inspiration contemporaines les plus marquantes.
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Appendix 3: CHIN Research on VMC
Martine Bélanger, Martin Brooks, Pierre Chalifour, Kati Geber, Bobby Ho and
John Spence. Virtual Classroom - Virtual Museum of Canada. Journey of Captain
Bernier Project. Draft.
Description of a learning based collaborative project between CHIN, the NRC,
Musée Maritime du Québec and several schools.
Decima Research. The Virtual Museum of Canada Usability Evaluation for the
Canadian Heritage Information Network. Summary Report. April 2002.
Report on research conducted by Decima to determine how CHIN's target
audience uses the VMC, and whether the structural, visual and content aspects
of the VMC are successful.
Renelle Chalifoux and Sylvia McLaughlin. Virtual Museum of Canada Online
Marketing Survey of November 2002. February 2003.
A summary and interpretation of data collected during the VMC online survey
during its implementation period of November 8th - November 29th, 2002.
Suhas Deshpande. VMC Report Card. January 2004.
An evaluative, statistical analysis of the VMC using web log data collected during
its first three years of existence.
Silvia Filippini. Personalization through IT in museums: examples and
recommendations for the Virtual Museum of Canada.
An analysis and detailed description of the techniques available to create virtual
environments that are increasingly adapted towards the different needs, interests
and expectations of heterogeneous users.
Kim Gauvin. CHIN Virtual Exhibition History. December 2003.
An historical overview of CHIN's evolving role as a partner and creator of Virtual
Exhibits. This document includes a very useful typology for online content.
Kim Gauvin, Kati Geber and Corey Timpson. Use of the Engagement Factor in
the Analysis of Visitor Engagement in the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC).
October 14, 2003.
A description and analysis of the engagement factor, which is a metric developed
at CHIN to measure the quality of a user's visit to the VMC.
Pierre Levy. Pour une Mémoire numérique universelle. 2004.
A discussion of digitong, which the author describes as "a universal information
architecture language designed to support the converging knowledge
management gathered by on-line museums, on-line libraries, e-governments,
and all kind of other on-line organizations who need to present optimal memory
displays to their public".
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Rick Nadeau. Awareness of the VMC: A Decima Research Report for the
Canadian Heritage Information Network. 2003.
Report in the form of a powerpoint presentation on the recognition of the VMC by
Canadians.
Barbara Lang Rottenberg. Virtual Museum of Canada Feature Analysis.
December 2003.
An analysis of how web sites other than the VMC use the featuring function.
VMC Feedback Messages: An Analysis
Guidelines on analyzing feedback messages while taking into account privacy
issues.
VMC Rethinking Brainstorming Session with the Investment Program Editorial
Board. November 24, 2003.
The VMC Investment Program Editorial Board was invited to meet with the VMC
Rethinking Team (list of participants in Appendix A) on November 24 th, 2003, in
Ottawa, to brainstorm on five questions (Appendix B) that were emailed to
participants a few days before.
VMC Rethinking Group Internal Brainstorming Session - Users. January 21,
2004.
The objective of this brainstorming session was to solicit views on the topic of
users as it applies to the next generation of the Virtual Museum of Canada. The
term “user” was generally defined as anyone who uses/interacts with a computer,
and more specifically, for our purposes, a Web user visiting the VMC.
VMC Rethinking Group Internal Brainstorming Session - Personalization.
November 28, 2003.
The objective of this brainstorming session was to solicit views on the topic of
personalization from CHIN Staff (see list of participants in Appendix B) as it
applies to the next generation of the Virtual Museum of Canada.
“Personalization” was defined in broad terms for audience, so as not to limit the
discussion.
VMC Rethinking Group Internal Brainstorming Session - Innovation. October 23,
2003.
The objective of this brainstorming session was to solicit views on the topic of
innovation from CHIN Staff (see list of participants in Appendix C) as it applies to
the next generation of the Virtual Museum of Canada. The term innovation was
not explicitly defined for the audience, so as not to limit the discussion, nor
indeed the concept of innovation itself.
VMC Rethinking Group Internal Brainstorming Session - Content. October 8,
2003.
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The objective of this brainstorming session was to solicit views from CHIN staff
on the topic of VMC content with an eye towards the next generation. Given the
broad scope of “content” as a brainstorming topic, a one-page document (see
Appendix A) was sent to CHIN staff to focus the topic, while not limiting the
discussion.
VMC Rethinking Group Internal Brainstorming Session - Business Models.
February, 2004.
The objective of this brainstorming session was to solicit views from CHIN staff
on business models. Issues such as the compatibility of business practices and
museum practices were explored. Other issues that were discussed were the
experience economy and sustainability.
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Appendix 4: CHIN Virtual Exhibition History
The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), a network of and for
Canadian museums, produced its first collaborative online exhibition in 1995.
CHIN had already been working with the museum community for 23 years
developing databases of heritage content (the national inventories, now called
Artefacts Canada, being the basis for CHIN’s existence). However, until the
production of this first virtual exhibition, entitled Christmas Traditions in France
and in Canada, CHIN had not ventured into the realm of interpreted heritage
content nor that of content for the general public. All previous CHIN produced
resources had been developed in conjunction with heritage professionals, for
heritage professionals. The decision to work with the Ministry of culture in
France, along with several Canadian and French museums was the point of
departure from CHIN’s traditional modus vivendi.117 This first online exhibition, in
fact, foreshadows the creation of the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC), which is
the public face of the network’s products and services.
From CHIN’s perspective, the end product was almost secondary to the loftier
goals of strengthening the network, developing relations among museums both
within and outside of Canada, and building capacity with respect to digital content
within the participating Canadian museums.118 Given this, in addition to the
complexity of working collaboratively with several museums in two countries, it is
no wonder that the Christmas virtual exhibition follows the format of a physical
exhibition and did not aim to push the boundaries of the medium.
At its inception, it was seen as a project, with a clearly defined beginning, middle
and end. Christmas Traditions in France and in Canada was conceived to be a
“one-off”, despite the fact that it is now seen as the first in a long and successful
(on a variety of levels) series of CHIN produced, collaborative on-line exhibitions.
In keeping with its conceptualization as a project with a clearly defined end date,
once launched, this online exhibition, like all collaborative CHIN productions
since, was never revisited or revised by its creators. Like much online museum
content at that time, the Christmas production was seen as a published book, the
flexibility of the online medium was completely overlooked, and, until this year,
continued to be in CHIN productions.119
117
Christmas Tradition in France and in Canada (1995) involved the participation of The Provincial Museum
of Alberta (Edmonton), the Musée de la civilisation (Québec), and the Musée national des arts et traditions
populaires (Paris).
118 Lorraine Normore in her article “Studying Special collections and the Web: an analysis of practice”
identifies several potential benefits related to the production of virtual exhibition, including showing “both
parent institutions and potential donors the important content the collection has to offer as well as raising its
visibility, within the organization and to the world at large.” CHIN certainly saw the potential for raising the
profile of participating museums, and of their collections, and these may have been motivators for the
participating museums.
119 In all fairness, because CHIN collaborative virtual exhibitions involve multiple partners, the sites are
developed by consensus. For this reason, making changes to the finished products would be a complicated,
labour intensive task, and is the main reason that these productions have remained unchanged post-launch.
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This simple, linear online exhibition composed of static HTML pages containing
text and images became the inspiration, and, in the early years, the model for
future CHIN produced exhibitions. CHIN’s goals remained the same for
subsequent exhibitions, which is not surprising, given that all previously
developed CHIN products had focused on the benefits derived by participating
museums and, less-so on other stakeholders (including the end-user).
Despite this (or possibly because of it), the Christmas Traditions in France and in
Canada virtual exhibition proved to be enormously popular120 and engaging, as
evidence by quantitative data (in the form of Web statistics) and by qualitative
data (as evidenced by e-mailed feedback). Its popularity continues to grow, eight
years later, with almost 90,000 visits in December 1998, and an increase of
almost 45% in December 2002 with visits reaching over 129,000.
It was assumed that following the model of informative text with supporting
images packaged in a simple, though appealing, graphic design would recreate
the interest and enthusiasm that the Christmas production generated among
visitors. This formula was not a guarantee for success, however, as the resulting
productions included several victories, such as Butterflies North and South,
launched in 1999 (357,861 visits), and Panoramas: The North American
Landscape in Art, launched in 2001 (371,131 visits), and a few that were less so,
Meiji: Tradition in Transition, launched in 1999 (37,733 visits), and Athena’s
Heirs: Exploring Four Centuries of Canadian Science and Medicine and
Science, launched in 2001(21,417 visits).121
There are obviously a multitude of reasons for the success or failure of these
virtual exhibitions, including subject interest, technology used, and marketing, but
it is worth noting that it was not until after the creation of the Virtual Museum of
Canada (VMC) in 2001 that the focus of the CHIN produced virtual exhibitions
began to shift to more clearly on the user experience. This was in part due to the
addition of a marketing team to CHIN staff and a general trend in Web design,
and within the museum community, towards user-centred design.
With the creation of the VMC came the development of the VMC Investment
program. The proposal form for this program clearly demonstrates the melding
of CHIN’s mandate to build capacity within the museum community, but with a
new emphasis on developing productions for a specified target audience, as
evidence by the Program criteria.122
As well, with the Program came the acknowledgement that not all online
productions were virtual exhibition. To assist museums in the identification of
120
Not surprisingly, this was particularly true from October through to December of each year.
Success and failure in this context relates purely to site visitation and perceived engagement of visitors
(based on quantitative and qualitative information). All statistics provided are for the same twelve month
period.
122 These include identifying the target audience, indicating measures to conduct audience evaluations
during development and exploiting the medium towards the stated communications objectives.
121
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their production type, a typology for online content was developed. It is as
follows:
Collections Management Interface - A production that provides a window on the
collections management system of the institution.
Game – An Interactive activity, or a grouping of activities, that requires users to use skills
and/or knowledge to proceed through to the conclusion.
Resource – A production that contains informative and/or educational content that is not
organized into a narrative, but rather provides content on various aspects of a topic.
Virtual Exhibition – An online production that enables the display and interpretation of
content. Various media are generally used towards the communication objectives of the
virtual exhibition.
Virtual Museum – A production that will include several stand-along virtual exhibitions.
Virtual Tour – A production that provides a tour of a physical space/site, such as an
historical site or a physical exhibition.
Exchange – A production wherein the main focus is facilitating the exchange of
information, and sharing of stories by and among users.
An additional program was created by CHIN more recently in an effort, again, to
encourage the development of skills related to digital content, but also to assist
community museums to connect with their audiences, namely their local communities.
This Program, Community Memories, was designed with small (two FTE or fewer)
museums in mind.
These two programs clearly illustrates CHIN’s move towards, and understanding of, the
needs of the end-user in the development of online content. Interestingly enough, the
CHIN online productions, while incorporating audience evaluations and usability testing
more thoroughly in their development, are now more clearly focused on researching and
testing various technologies and theories, with the objective of providing results that the
museum community can exploit in the development of their own online content.
CHIN has come full circle with virtual exhibitions, and now embraces its role, with
respect to interpreted content, as that of facilitator. By way of the various VMC
programs or as a result of the research that stems from CHIN collaborative
productions, assistance is provided to the museum community to enable them to
reach and to connect with the public.
The virtual exhibitions are an important component of the VMC, representing
approximately 75% of visits to the site, and being the source for the generation of
the bulk of the feedback messages received. Clearly users have a need for and
an interest in this type of online content, and together with the museum
community, CHIN, via the VMC, will be able to provide better access to an
increasingly diverse collection of interpreted heritage content.
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Pure CHIN VE History/Facts
The seed of the first CHIN produced, collaborative virtual exhibition was the
result of a partnership between CHIN and the regional office of the Department of
Canadian Heritage in Montréal. The resources and contacts of the two were
pooled together, funding through the Canada-France Accord was targeted, and
museums in Canada and in France were invited to participate in this new
initiative.
While the government representatives were necessary to pull together the
resources, it was due to the close collaboration among museum representatives
that this well researched online exhibition, which put aspects of the Christmas
traditions of two countries into context. CHIN, of course, did not have the
expertise for the creation of interpretive content, but, through its experience
building a network, had acted as a facilitator for the museum community with
respect to making their collections records widely accessible. For this reason,
CHIN was able to facilitate the online distribution of the stories the museums
wanted to tell.
Despite the many challenges of this first collaborative project, the summative
evaluation revealed that it yielded many benefits. Among these, from the
Canadian perspective, were the forming of bonds between participating
museums and the development of technology skills for those involved.
Christmas Traditions in France and in Canada was followed by In the Countries
of the Francophonie123, another international collaboration that CHIN produced
with funding from another source, the Agence de la Francophonie. It was during
the development of this second virtual exhibition that talk of a “virtual museum”
(though a “virtual museum of the Francophonie”) began in earnest.
Unfortunately, funding for online Francophonie projects seemed to dry-up, and
for this reason only one other virtual exhibition with Francophonie-based
museums has been created since that time.124
Despite the fact that the first collaborative virtual exhibition was followed by a
second, it was not until 1997 that the production of collaborative virtual
exhibitions became a CHIN program. The catalyst for this was internship funding
obtained from Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) as a result of a
123
In the Countries of the Francophonie (1997) included the participation of museums in Senegal, the Ivory
Coast, Benin, Vietnam and Canada (Québec and British Columbia) and was the first to involve a school in
the creation of content for the site.
124 Staying in Tune (1999) involving museums and schools in Benin, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Canada,
Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Romania and Tunisia.
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partnership with CHIN’s colleagues in the Department working on Young Canada
Works.125
While this made the projects more difficult, it also guaranteed that those involved
were committed to seeing it through to fruition. While few were paid, generally
all benefited from their involvement. At minimum, the benefit was providing
unlimited access to objects from their collections in both languages.126 However,
most had the added benefit of acquiring new skills and knowledge about the
creation of online content, of developing new contacts within the museum
community (within Canada and sometimes abroad) and working with one or more
youth, through the internships, which many felt brought new life into their
institution, along with new ways of doing things.
Several projects had the advantage, and challenge, of receiving supplementary
funding from other sources. This additional funding also meant additional
requirements, such as those developed for the world expos127 and for
governmental relations.128
Together, CHIN and the participating museums, found ways to address these
new challenges, but it was not until the creation of the Virtual Museum of Canada
(VMC), that the resources to easily and efficiently achieve these goals became
available.
125
For more information about this youth employment program, please visit: http://www.pch.gc.ca/ycwjct/english/overview.htm.
126 All virtual exhibition produced by CHIN are available in at least English and French, while several are
available in additional languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German.
127 Haida Spirits of the Sea, Our World – Our Way of Life and Germany-Canada Migration were developed
for Expos held in Lisbon and Hannover.
128 Panoramas: The North American Landscape in Art was a trilateral government project.
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Appendix 5: Glossary
artificial intelligence (AI): A common name for the set of different techniques that aim
at teaching computers how to think. Here ‘thinking’ refers to the human way of thinking.
aware: refers to the fact that the interaction between the human and the system is
informed by context. The extent to which the awareness is “inferred” is a matter of some
significant research and can be as simple as inferring the nature of the task the user is
engaged in and taking action based on that.
born-digital adjective. Of or relating to a document that was created and exists only in a
digital format. http://www.wordspy.com/words/born-digital.asp
cyberinfrastructure: Man contemporary projects require effective federation of both
distributed resources (data and facilities) and distributed, multidisciplinary expertise, and
that cyberinfrastructure is a key to making this possible. There is no standard term for
such environments enabled by cyberinfrastructure; some of the names in use are
collaboratory, co-laboratory, grid community/network, virtual science community, and escience community.
cybernetics: Norbert Wiener, a mathematician and social philosopher, coined the word
cybernetics from the Greek word meaning steersman. He defined it as the science of
control and communication in the animal and the machine. Cybernetics does not treat
objects per se but ways of behaving.
cyberspace: A term used by author William Gibson to describe a networked virtual
reality.
digital library:
distributed: refers to the interaction that takes place between components to carry out
some task. Thus, while ubiquity refers to the availability of access, distribution refers to
the internal processing. A distributed system carries out the functions needed by the
users without regard to whose the actual resources or processes take place. One might
suggest that distribution is the internal view and ubiquity is the external view.
embedded: refers to the movement of computational elements into everyday
appliances. Like Anti-lock Braking Systems, the future will see “smart” doors,
thermostats, refrigerators, etc. Like ABS, many of these systems will be important single
function systems. Others will share information with other subsystems. At what point we
can take user aware displays and input devices and conclude that the aggregate of
devices at a location provides for a “smart room” is not clear. This suggests that there is
a close relationship between being aware and being embedded. At the same time, we
see that each brings a separate research focus.
hypertext; hypermedia: Hypertext is the antecedent of hypermedia, but both terms
refer to the non-sequential associative linking of text, information, media elements, and
spatial and temporal boundaries.
immersion - An immersive experience which involves entering a multi-sensory
representation of a three-dimensional space. Also an exploration of the evolution of
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virtual reality and 3D virtual space, .i.e. multimedia as an immersive experience that
engages all the senses.
interaction – 1. communication between or joint activity involving two or more people 2.
the combined action of two or more entities that affect one another and work together.
[Atkins]
network: In its non-technical sense, networks are comprised of how people relate within
and across groups and communities. The strength of the notion of virtual networks is
that it provides a simple way of moving beyond a focus on individuals and individual
encounters, towards one which shows how common goals /partnerships/ideas can link
people and services or resources by a streamlined and accessible means. In the
museum community, networks function for users and organizations in diverse ways and
through diverse activities: for example, information seeking for audiences, and in
providing professional support for museum practitioners.
semantic web: The Web was designed as an information space, with the goal that it
should be useful not only for human-human communication, but also that machines
would be able to participate and help. One of the major obstacles to this has been the
fact that most information on the Web is designed for human consumption, and even if it
was derived from a database with well defined meanings (in at least some terms) for its
columns, that the structure of the data is not evident to a robot browsing the web.
Leaving aside the artificial intelligence problem of training machines to behave like
people, the Semantic Web approach instead develops languages for expressing
information in a machine processable form. [Berners-Lee]
transparency: consistency in an interface (physical or virtual) that hides the
complexities and implementation specific details of a system or space.
ubiquitous: refers to the accessibility of the computing resources. They follow the user
from place to place and thus the location of the user is not a constraint.
user profile: A user profile is a means of categorizing and defining a user (or potential
user) of a digital resource, using one or more different attributes to do so. The term “user
profile” is frequently used to describe the process by which individuals’ access and use
of specific applications is configured, managed and monitored, particularly in technical
terms. [Grant]
virtual reality (VR): an artificial environment that is created by the means of 3-D
computer graphics, spatial audio and visual applications. Often termed 'worlds', VR
represents real-world or conceptual environments that can be navigated through,
interacted with and updated in real-time, often with the use of peripheral and/or sensory
devices.
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Appendix 6: Contributors and Bios
Howard Besser
Howard Besser is a Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University, where
he is Director of a new Masters Degree program in Moving Image Archiving and
Preservation. Previously he was a Professor of Education & Information Studies
at UCLA, where he taught and did research on multimedia, image databases,
digital libraries, metadata standards, digital longevity, web design, information
literacy, distance learning, intellectual property, and the social and cultural impact
of new information technologies. He has also been in charge of information
technology for both the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Berkeley
Art Museum.
Since 1985 Dr. Besser has been involved in numerous groundbreaking projects
involving digitization of cultural heritage materials. He developed the first
networked-based digital image distribution project (1985), and spearheaded and
analyzed the first multi-institution project to test aggregation, metadata,
distribution, and interface of a large set of digital images of art objects (1994-98).
He is the author of several dozen articles and book chapters, and has served on
2 joint EU/US committees on metadata for digited cultural heritage collections.
He consults widely with libraries, museums, and archives over a wide range of
issues.
Ann Borda
Ann Borda works in informatics and new media strategy, particularly specializing
in facilitating digital content delivery and e-learning solutions. Currently she is
based in London, England, where she holds the position of Head of Multimedia
Collections at the Science Museum.
Among the projects in which Ann has been involved are a combined 2 million
dollar web infrastructure to bring cultural collections on line across several
national heritage organizations in the UK and Fathom.com, an e-learning
collaboration led by Columbia University. She is a frequent conference speaker
for digital media topics, presenting papers at ICHIM and
Open Archives Forum. Educated at the University of British Columbia, London
Business School and University of London (PhD), Ann has published in the areas
of media and collaboration technologies, metadata applications and content
delivery. She also sits as the Chair of the CIDOC Multimedia Group; is a Board
Member of the Electronic Specialist Publishing Group (British
Computer Society) and is assistant editor of the journal MultiMedia and
Information Technology.
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Her current endeavours are focused on intelligent retrieval & usability, e-learning models
and content syndication in areas ranging from next-generation immersion to new media
convergence.
Steve Dietz
Dietz is a freelance curator. He is Curatorial Fellow in Residence at the Banff
Center for the Arts and will direct the International ISEA Symposium and Festival
of Electronic Arts in San Jose in 2006. He is teaching at the University of
Minnesota and the Minneapolis College of Art + Design. He is the former Curator
of New Media at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, where
he founded the New Media Initiatives department in 1996, the online art Gallery 9
and digital art study collection. He also co-founded, with the Minneapolis Institute
of Arts the award-winning educational site ArtsConnectEd, and the artist
community site mnartists.org with the McKnight Foundation.
Dietz has organized and curated new media exhibitions, including Beyond
Interface: net art and Art on the Net (1998); Shock of the View: Artists,
Audiences, and Museums in the Digital Age (1999); Digital Documentary: The
Need to Know and the Urge to Show (1999); Cybermuseology for the Museo de
Monterrey (1999); Art Entertainment Network (2000); Outsourcing Control? The
Audience As Artist for the Open Source Lounge" at Medi@terra (2000);
Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace (2001-02); a nationally traveling
exhibition; Open_Source_Art_Hack (2002), with Jenny Marketou, at the New
Museum, New York City; Translocations (2003), part of "How Latitudes Become
Forms" at the Walker Art Center; State of the Art: Maps, Games, Stories, and
Algorithms from Minnesota at the Carleton Art Gallery (2003); and Database
Imaginary (2004), with Anthony Kiendl and Sarah Cook, Walter Philips Gallery,
Banff Center for the Arts.
He speaks and writes extensively about new media, and his interviews and
writings have appeared in Parkett, Artforum, Flash Art, Design Quarterly,
Spectra, Salmagundi, Afterimage, Art in America, Museum News, BlackFlash,
Public Art Review, Else/Where and Intelligent Agent; in exhibition catalogs for
Walker Art Center, Centro Parago, Site Santa Fe, San Francisco Art Institute,
and aceart; and in publications from MIT Press, University of California Press,
and Princeton University Press (forthcoming).
Prior to the Walker Art Center, Dietz was founding Chief of Publications and
New Media Initiatives at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and editor of the
scholarly journal, American Art.
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Kati Geber
As manager of Web Applications Interface Design at the Canadian Heritage
Information Network (CHIN), Geber led the design of the award-winning Virtual
Museum of Canada129 as well as other acclaimed sites130. She specializes in
information architecture, access, usability and evaluation.
In addition to presenting at conferences and writing131 about Web Applications
Design, Kati conducts research on the ways on-line cultural and heritage
information spaces shape and affect learning, communication, participation and
engagement of audiences in a multilingual, distributed information environment.
She explores interoperability, integration and aggregation of content in cultural
sectors.
Kati has worked in almost every aspects of informatics: from systems analysis,
design and programming, to content management and high-level strategy; from
project management to collaborative international initiatives, in both educational
and cultural domains.
The focus of her work has been creativity and culture, imagination and
understanding, of crucial importance in a communication-based world, adapting
to change.
Recent projects:
Managing interface and applications design and user-centered activities at the
Canadian Heritage Information Network; design of Community Memories online
and offline applications; “My Personal Museum” evaluation and concept
redesign; coordination of the broadband project The Virtual Museum of Canada
in the Virtual classroom.
129
www.virtualmuseum.ca; http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/English/About/awards_and_distinctions.html
www.chin.gc.ca; http://daryl.chin.gc.ca/Artefacts/e_MasterLayout.cgi, etc.
131 Selections: Enabling Access to a Collective Knowledge Environment, September 1998, MCN, Santa
Monica; Artefacts Canada - Documenting and Communicating Cultural and Natural Diversity, CIDOC Annual
Meeting, 1998, Melbourne, Australia; Documenting and Communicating Cultural and Natural Diversity,
ICOM News, Special Issue, 1998; The Challenges of Building a Gateway, ICHIM, November, Washington,
1999; Self-describing Resources, MCN, Las Vegas, September 2000; A Methodology for Collaborative
Applications Design and Evaluation or Designing Virtual Organizations, MCN, Cincinnati, October 2001; The
CHIN Experience: Interoperability, The New review of Information Networking, Vol. 7, 2001, 77-92. Spaces,
Distances and Closeness on the Web, University of York, Toronto, (Jan. 2003); Design, Intention and
Engagement, Computer Human Interaction Chapter, Ottawa, Feb. 2003, with Corey Timpson;
Understanding our Audiences, Digital Cultural Content Forum Meeting Pistoia, Italy, Mar. 2003, with JeanMarc Blais; The Virtual Museum of Canada: Architecture and Design, American Society of Information
Science and Technology (Mar. 2003); Community Memories - a design for diversity and connectivity, CHINIMLS meeting, Washington, July. 2003; Virtual Museum versus Digital Library – Joint WMA and BCMA,
Reno, Oct. 2003; Audiences and Engagement, Museum Computer Network, Las Vegas, Nov. 2003.
130
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Research and road mapping for the Virtual Museum of Canada; research papers
on “Feedback Analysis“ The Engagement Factor” and “Quality of Online
Products” and “Personalization”; coordination of a collaborative international
research project on “Virtual Museums: The Next Generation”.
Event Organizing: “Beyond Productivity: Culture and Heritage Resources in the
Digital Age,” Calgary Feb. 2004132; Cultural Content Forum in Banff, Feb. 2004133.
Pierre Levy
Pierre Lévy is a philosopher who devoted his professional life to the
understanding of the cultural and cognitive impacts of the digital technologies, to
promote their best social uses and to understand the phenomenon of human
collective intelligence. He has written a dozen of
books on this subject that have been translated in more than 12 languages
and are studied in many universities all over the world. He currently holds
a Canada Research Chair in Collective Intelligence at the University of
Ottawa (Canada).

132
133
Born in 1956, in Tunisia
 Master degree in history of science (Paris, France, Sorbonne, 1980).
 PhD in sociology (Paris, EHESS, 1983).
 Researcher at the CREA (École polytechnique, Paris, France) about
history of cybernetics, artificial intelligence and artificial life, 1983-1986.
 Visiting professor at the University of Quebec in Montréal (Canada),
communication department, 1987-1989. Teaching the use of
computers in communication.
 Professor in educational sciences at the University of Paris-Nanterre
(France), 1990-1992. Teaching educational technologies.
 PhD in information and communication sciences (Grenoble, France,
1991).
 Co-founder and researcher at the Neurope Lab (Geneva, Switzerland).
 Researches on the economy and technology of the «knowledge age»,
1991-1995.
 Member of a think-tank for a special project concerning open and
distance learning commanded by the french prime minister Edith
Cresson (1992-1994).
 Co-inventor of the «knowledge tree», a software system for the
mapping, assessement and exchange of knowledge in communities.
 Full Professor at the «hypermedia» department of the University of
Paris-St Denis (France) from 1993 to 1998.
 Member of the editorial board of the «revue virtuelle» of the Pompidou
 Center (Paris, France) from 1995 to 1997.
http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Conferences_Training/Dccf_Workshop/index.html
http://www.culturalcontentforum.org/
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




Author of a report on cyberculture for the Council of Europe (1996)
Author of a report on cyberdemocracy and european governance for
the European Commission (2000)
"Cyberculture and social communication" Professor at the University of
Quebec, Canada (Dept of social communication, UQTR), from 1998 to
2001
Canada Research Chair in Collective Intelligence and professor at the
University of Ottawa since 2001
Associate professor at the International School of New Media,
Germany, since 2003
The Virtual Museum of Canada Rethinking Group
The Virtual Museum of Canada Rethinking Group was formed to elicit ideas for
the next generation of the VMC. Members of this multi-disciplinary group
organized and facilitated a series of brainstorming sessions with the
VMC editorial board and CHIN staff on a series of key topics. The results of the
brainstorming sessions were included in this research paper.
The Rethinking Group was lead by Jean-Marc Blais, Acting Director General of
CHIN. The project leader for the group was Marie Hélène Myre. Other members
of the rethinking group were Kim Gauvin, Kati Geber, Jason Kiss and
Suhas Deshpande.
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