Initial Thoughts for Setting up a Virtual Exhibition
Cèsar Carreras , Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
http://www.uoc.es

Short Paper: Short Paper 4: Building a New Culture

In the last two years, the research group "liba has been collaborating with different Museums and institutions in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (Spain) in order to introduce new technologies in Cultural Heritage Management. Some examples can be access through the following URLs:

"ALWAYS IBIZA AND FORMENTERA" – http://www.uoc.es/humfil/eivifor (Caixa Sa Nostra)

"AUREUM OPUS: FIVE CENTURIES OF ILLUSTRATED BOOKS" – http://www.uoc.es/humfil/aureum (Frederic Marès Museum, Barcelona)

"WILL YOU WRITE ME A LETTER?" – http://www.uoc.es/humfil/carta (Girona Art Museum, Girona)

"TREASURES OF THE NATURE" – http://www.uoc.es/humfil/natura (Science Museums, Barcelona)

Our first goal was to evaluate how virtual exhibitions may improve the diffusion of real exhibitions as well as their potential museography. This simple aim not only required a change of custom for the public, but also teaching Museum’s staff the advantages of this new media and working together with them.

The experience of this two years has been rewarding since we have detected some pitfalls in the way Museum’s staff approach to new technologies. In general, they believed Internet was only an alternative of paper publication, so they understood virtual exhibition as either Museum brochures or digital catalogues. Personally, we think a virtual exhibition may be an ideal complement to a "real exhibition".

How this ideal can be achieved? Well, we should foresee from the beginning that an exhibition must have to complementary parts: a real and a virtual. None of them should be the same as the other, but they may contain common sections that will give a feeling of continuum between the two parts. Besides, the virtual exhibition should be addressing a wider variety of people than the real as well as an initial step before going to the Museum.

The real exhibition ought to be design for the local people, who will visit it, and it will be central part of the whole exhibition. Once, people have visited the display they may come back to the virtual part in order to complement their information and experience.

The present paper attempts to discuss all the problems we faced in the design of our last four virtual exhibitions and how our experience may help others not to make the same mistakes again.

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