The virtual museum
During the last decade extensive literature has been written about the subject of virtual museums. For example, "The Museum and the Web" is one of the most important international organizations that deal with issues pertaining to virtual museums. Roy McKeown has written of the theoretical and practical problems involved in establishing a virtual museum. He notes that museums are known as collections of items, pigeonholed and scantily adorned with explanations, but this is not the whole truth. Museums also serve as a tool for proving theses or bolstering ideas, and exhibits are but one option among many for making sense of the findings. Nor does an exhibit necessarily have to provide an answer; it can also ask a question: What is this? What is it for? Is it important? Is this a unique item or one of many similar exemplars?
The Item in the physical Museum
An individual item in a physical museum can be described in terms of its size, color and form, but presenting the deeper significance and meanings of an item or exhibit is often more difficult. In essence, the museum has much broader knowledge about the item, including documents, descriptions, maps and pictures that can endow the museum item, exhibit or collection with a much deeper and broader significance.
Furthermore, the virtual museum offers the option of creating links to a variety of institutions of knowledge, such as libraries, research institutes, and of course other museums on similar subjects. Nor are visitors limited only to the information and documents on display in the museum they entered online; they can be linked to any place in the world offering material that suits their interests.
The virtual museum site makes it possible to "open" the museum to the worldwide community. By means of a digital infrastructure of mutual links with visitors, a virtual museum can generate an endless source of additional information; it can assemble tangible items and pieces of information that the museum curators have difficulty obtaining on their own. In essence, the museum both exports knowledge and collects information from the public at large. A good example of this type of utilization of the digital museum is the River and Rowing Museum of London. This museum set up a digital site even before the physical museum plant was constructed. Through the site it created ties with many people who were interested in the museum under construction. They provided extensive information to the museum curators, indicating important items that the physical museum should have and their location, and provided extensive information about the history of rowing and movement upon the river. The virtual museum also allows visitors to enter the museum's information centers without having the bother of traveling there or being physically present. The computer and the internet serve as one's entrance ticket to the virtual museum - thus organizing the collection and the sources of information that can appear as virtual sources.
[
ד"ר עפרה קינן, מפתחת המיזם e-mymuseum.com להקמת מוזיאונים וירטואליים. פיתוח המיזם נולד על רקע עבודתה האקדמית כמרצה בתחומי הגיאוגרפיה התרבותית, שימור מורשת ומוזיאולוגיה, תוך דגש על מוזיאונים וירטואליים. בעבר ניהלה והייתה אוצרת ראשית של מוזיאון ומכון "בית חיים שטורמן".
