Virtualmuseum Nextgeneration Studypaper VM TNG en

Virtual Museum (of Canada):
The Next Generation

by Steve Dietz, Howard Besser, Ann Borda, and Kati Geber with Pierre Lvy
Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN)
This Study Paper was produced in the context of the redevelopment of the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC). The VMC has been a great success since its launch in March 2001. Since then, it has evolved in response to information technologies and the needs of the Networks members. In order to help us make choices and prepare the ground for further innovation, a group of internal and external experts was mandated to produce a study paper that would stimulate exchanges and debates within the museum and heritage community. We hope that reading this document will encourage dialogue among colleagues, professionals, and members of the Network, on the future of digital heritage. The texts in this document stem directly from the experience and environment of the VMC. We believe that the concepts it puts forward can also be applied to other areas such as museum Web sites, online exhibits, etc. The Network aims at building its members capacity to make judicious use of information technologies. These technologies force us to make choices, to redirect certain of our actions and reinvent business models. We invite you to read the document, while taking into account the attached list of questions.
Virtual Museum (of Canada): The Next Generation

Steve Dietz, Howard Besser, Ann Borda, and Kati Geber with Pierre Lvy
The Idea of the Next Generation.................................................................................................................................... 4 Scope ...........................................................................................................................................................4 Executive Summary........................................................................................................................................................ 6 Audience.......................................................................................................................................................7 Interface .......................................................................................................................................................7 Content .........................................................................................................................................................8 Infrastructure .................................................................................................................................................8 Sustainability .................................................................................................................................................9 Context........................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Museums ....................................................................................................................................................10 Networks.....................................................................................................................................................11 Learning .....................................................................................................................................................12 Formal Learning......................................................................................................................................12 Lifelong Learning ....................................................................................................................................13 Emerging Technologies + Trends ..................................................................................................................13 Broadband .............................................................................................................................................13 Rich Media .............................................................................................................................................14 Computational Environments....................................................................................................................15 Intelligent Systems ..................................................................................................................................16 Experience Design .......................................................................................................................................17 Authenticity ............................................................................................................................................17 Sociability ...............................................................................................................................................18 Gaming ..................................................................................................................................................19 Globalization...........................................................................................................................................20 Definitions...................................................................................................................................................................... 21 The Museum-Library-Archive ........................................................................................................................21 The Virtual and the Real ...............................................................................................................................22 Born Digital.............................................................................................................................................22 Virtual Museum ...........................................................................................................................................23 Virtual Exhibit ..............................................................................................................................................25 Audience........................................................................................................................................................................ 27 Background .................................................................................................................................................27 Mass Audience vs. Personal Medium.............................................................................................................28 Audience Profiling ........................................................................................................................................29 User Profiling...............................................................................................................................................30 Interpersonal Communication........................................................................................................................31
Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Cybrid Audiences.........................................................................................................................................33 Interface ......................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Pattern and Randomness .............................................................................................................................35 Browsing .....................................................................................................................................................35 Recommendation Systems ......................................................................................................................36 Featuring................................................................................................................................................37 Personalization ............................................................................................................................................38 Database Narratives: From Tables to Stories ..................................................................................................40 Content........................................................................................................................................................................... 42 Rich Content ...............................................................................................................................................42 Rich Context ...............................................................................................................................................42 Richly Open ................................................................................................................................................43 Poor Quality? ..............................................................................................................................................43 Born Digital Content .....................................................................................................................................44 Infrastructure and Architectures ................................................................................................................................. 45 Modularity ...................................................................................................................................................46 Pointing vs. Copying ................................................................................................................................47 Addressing Stability .................................................................................................................................47 Interoperability + Standards ..........................................................................................................................48 Sustainability................................................................................................................................................................. 50 Integration ...................................................................................................................................................50 Capacity Building .........................................................................................................................................51 Partnerships ...........................................................................................................................................51 The Public Sphere and Economic Sustainability ..............................................................................................52 Business Models .....................................................................................................................................53 Brand.....................................................................................................................................................53 Intellectual Property .....................................................................................................................................54 Appendix 1: Building a Universal Digital Memory ..................................................................................................... 55 Appendix 1: Building a Universal Digital Memory ..................................................................................................... 55 Foreword ....................................................................................................................................................55 The Culture of Tomorrow ..............................................................................................................................55 The Responsibilities of Memory Institutions ....................................................................................................56 Rethinking Archives .....................................................................................................................................56 A New Perspective.......................................................................................................................................58 The Language of Ideas.................................................................................................................................59 Digitong .................................................................................................................................................59 Ideas .....................................................................................................................................................60 Memes ...................................................................................................................................................60 Syntax and Semantics .............................................................................................................................60

Ideograms ..............................................................................................................................................60 Algorithmics............................................................................................................................................61 Analog Semantic Calculation ....................................................................................................................61 Moments, Arks........................................................................................................................................62 Semes ...................................................................................................................................................62 Information .............................................................................................................................................62 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................64 Biology, theory of evolution ......................................................................................................................64 Cognitive sciences .................................................................................................................................64 Collective intelligence in cyberculture ......................................................................................................65 Culture ...................................................................................................................................................65 Digital Arts..............................................................................................................................................66 Epistemology ..........................................................................................................................................66 Human development ...............................................................................................................................67 Knowledge economy ...............................................................................................................................67 Knowledge management .........................................................................................................................67 Medias ...................................................................................................................................................68 Networked society and social capital .........................................................................................................68 Pioneers of cybernetics and cyberculture...................................................................................................69 Semantic Web ........................................................................................................................................70 Sign and Language .................................................................................................................................70 Visualization & mapping ..........................................................................................................................70 Appendix 2: Selected Bibliography............................................................................................................................. 72 Appendix 3: CHIN Research on VMC .......................................................................................................................... 78 Appendix 4: CHIN Virtual Exhibition History.............................................................................................................. 80 VMC Report Card ........................................................................................................................................82 Methodology ...........................................................................................................................................83 VMC Assessment Criteria ........................................................................................................................83 VMC Assessment Against Original Criteria ................................................................................................83 VMC Statistics ........................................................................................................................................86 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................88 Appendix 5: Glossary ................................................................................................................................................... 89 Appendix 6: Contributors and Bios............................................................................................................................. 91 Howard Besser ............................................................................................................................................91 Ann Borda ...................................................................................................................................................91 Steve Dietz .................................................................................................................................................91 Kati Geber...................................................................................................................................................92 Pierre Lvy..................................................................................................................................................93 The Virtual Museum of Canada Rethinking Group ...........................................................................................94
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 postdigital 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 re-design 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 overlyemphasize 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 Launcheror space shuttle. It wanted to create a vehicle that would improve on the current technology by an order of magnitude in key areas.2 NASAs goals proved wildly unachievable, in part because there were too many variables that required breakthrough inventions. Both Lynchs exhortations and NASAs 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.
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
1
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. 3 See an annotated bibliography in Appendix 3
Canadian Heritage Information Network

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.
Executive Summary
The future of the virtual museum is increasingly that of a platformfor 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 othersboth individuals and institutionsto 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 such approaches and to determine whether or not and how to make them serve their needs. In the Appendices, Pierre Lvy 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 audiencecentered, 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 opportunitiesincluding customized interfacesto 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 museums subject matter expertise. If the audience is truly placed at the center of the VMCs 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 someones off-the-shelf computer. Browsing is a significant way to access virtual museums, especially for their nontextual 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 7

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 museumlike the virtual museumneeds 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 museums 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. 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.
Virtual Museum: The Next Generation 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. 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.
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 is 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).
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.
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 Pantalonys 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 its Perceived, in Katherine Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 153-169.
4
10

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 museums 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 telecommunicationswhich we will term telematicsopens radically new horizons.7
Arguably, for the past 35 years, society has been testingand tested bythese 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 e-commerce 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 8
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.
11
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 linkedand hence traffickedwhile most are comparatively link poor. The reason this matters for the museum community is 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, link-poor 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. 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
9
Diagram and caption from Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002, p. 71.
12

providing technological expertise to small museums, to educators creating learning modules for self-paced 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 pre-schoolers, 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 functionalityfor the classroom and lifelong learnersis 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
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
10 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. 13 See http://www.internet2.edu/. Accessed 1.19.04.
13

technologies that provide consumers integrated access to voice, high-speed data, video-ondemand, 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 Raines 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 dial-up 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:
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 museums 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.
14 15
FCC Strategic Goals: Broadband. http://www.fcc.gov/broadband/. Accessed December 4, 2003. John B. Horrigan and Lee Rainie, The Broadband Difference: How online Americans behavior changes with high-
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. 18 Spinazze, op cit.
16
speed Internet connections at home. Pew Internet & American Life Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=63. Accessed February 17, 2004.
14

Computational Environments The potential for ubiquitous networkingaccess to a network anytime, anywhere, from any deviceis 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 buyers market.19 We suggest that if audience is placed at the center of VMCs evaluation process, the trajectory will be toward ubiquity. Users will have expectations and options, and what they want to know doesnt 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 doesnt matter. This is the potential advantage of a VMC based on a modular 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 locationaware devices, it is clear that one of the dominant arenas for future experiencesto use the broadest possible terminvolves 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 HPs Cooltownthe intersection of nomadicity, appliances, networking, and the web21to 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 an extension of ubiquitous access to networked content via specialized physical interfaces, which are also able to take advantage of location-aware functionalities such as global positioning satellites (GPS).
19 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. 20 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.
15

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 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 projectsvirtual 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
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
23
16

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
Authenticity
Figure 4: Fort Kearny Regional Historic Park, Nebraska (left); The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument spanning Interstate 80 (right).
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 blacksmiths 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 couldnt 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, location-triggered 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. Its 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 seekor 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.
26 27
See http://www.locative.net/. Accessed December 15, 2003. http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000015 28 See http://www.esu3.org/nebraska/ftkearny/ftkear.html. Accessed December 4, 2003. 29 See http://www.archway.org/index.htm. Accessed December 24, 2003.
17

Whether it is the Archway Monument, EuroDisney or the Millennium Dome, numerous commercial enterprises all around the world are consciously packaging culturenot 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:
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.
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 dont 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 encourageand take advantage ofsociability. 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
See http://www.urlwire.com/news/072402.html and http://go-newyorkcity.com/manhattan/0025index.html Pantalony, op cit. 32 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.
31 30
18

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 someones off-the-shelf computer, as the Dialog Table attempts. Gaming
We learned to crawl alongside the PC. We came of age with the Internet. Early-adopting, 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 tomorrows 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
Todays 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 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 wasnt 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.
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. 37 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
34
19

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, VMCs 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 VMCs 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 Canadas role in the world.
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 Centers 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.
38
20
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 institutions 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 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.
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.
21

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 VMCwsLAFthe 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 Lvy43 Nevertheless, there has been a very real, or at least performatively productiveas Lyotard might put it, shift in the foundations of knowledgeand 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 is information processing. The majority of a museums 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; its 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 not only often outnumber onsite 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
43 44
Pierre Lvy. Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age. Plenum Trade: New York and London, 1998,16. Benjamin Woolley. Virtual Worlds. London: Penguin, 1993, 235. 45 http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/intro/definitions.html
22

understand born digital objects as originals not surrogates or metadata about originals, which is an important distinction for the museum field. The museumand libraries and other cultural memory institutionshave a significantly different relationship to originals than to surrogates or metadata. All are important, but preservation/conservation of originals in an institutions collection is a mission function. While there are significant programs, primarily in the library and archives communities, for the preservation of born-digital information objectsdatabase records, email, PowerPoint presentations, web pages, etcarguably, 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 borndigital 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 hybridthe network is integral but not exclusive to the work or they are conceptually digital but have specific physical requirementsand as born digital objects become reusable in a modular, object-oriented 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:
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 ICOMs expanded definition of museum may attest to this:
46 47
Variable Media Initiative. See http://www.guggenheim.com/variablemedia/. Accessed March 17, 2004. Amy Friedlander. Background Summary of Results from Interviews and Essays. http:// www.digitalpreservation.gov/repor/ interviews_summary.pdf. Accessed December 17, 2003.
23

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. Schweibenzs 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 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 Batesons 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.
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 49 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
24
Virtual Museum: The Next Generation 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 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, CHINs understanding of issues surrounding collection description and access has been expanded due to constant experimentation with virtual exhibitions
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 (February 7, 2004). 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/
50
25

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. CHINs 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:
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
See Appendix 3, History of Virtual Exhibits at CHIN. 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 57 Jean-Marc Blais, To be published at http://icom.museum/ 58 For a more in depth explanation and theoretical background see Einstein Meets Magritte http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Conf/EinmagAn.html
55
54
26
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 VMCs 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 age-dependent (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 functionare you doing research or browsingbasing 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 opportunitiesincluding customized interfacesto 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. 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
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 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
60 59
27

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 states that only a very few sites will ever even have mass audiences, but more importantly, the 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 levelthe individual usernot just at the collection levela 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.
Kevin Sumption, Meta-centers: do they work and what might the future hold 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
63
28
Virtual Museum: The Next Generation Audience Profiling
Figure 7: Cultural Content Forum Evaluation of digital cultural content: Analysis of Evaluation material65
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),
65
http://www.culturalcontentforum.org/Publications/Audience/Audience_Analysis.pdf; http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Digital_Content/Understanding_Audiences/index.html
29

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 finergrain 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, theyre 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 self-described teacher is just interested in browsing? 67 For instance, a recent survey question on the reasons for visiting the VMC demonstrated a discrepancy between the user profilesinitially defined as children, parents, and teachersand 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
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.
67 66
30

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 audiences 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.
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 place-independent 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,
68
Lyn Elliott Sherwood, See Appendix 3: The Engagement Factor.
31

"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, hencecommunicating.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 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 memories71 a newly emerging need for ubiquity and communication characterized by change, fluidity and transitivity and focused on events and conversations.
We argue, with Rgis 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 caf, 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 clubwomen 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
69 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 71 72
http://www.collectiveintelligence.info/documents/; http://137.122.100.152 Rgis Debray: Communiquer moins, transmettre plus.
32

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.
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 online 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:
73
Online discussions
Ben Schneiderman, Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies, MIT Press, 2002
74 75
Spinazze op cit. (Trials end 2004). See: http://www.cimi.org/whitesite/ 76 See http://www.exploratorium.edu/guidebook/
33

Online seminars Forums Surveys Webcasts of net events Message boards Training
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).
34
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 16th 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 interfacethe right approach to a new interfacecan literally map and help us understand new social spaces such as that of the very large scale conversationbut 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 (randomunpredictable 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 museums cyberspace can be seen as a complex dance (Hayles) between pattern and randomness or predictability and unpredictability. The design of the virtual museumviewed as content, structure, functionality, interaction and visual designaims 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% 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
Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. See Spinazze, op cit. 80 "The Virtual Museum of Canada" Usability Evaluation (March 25, 2002); Recherche et analyse statistique du comportement de visite sur le site portail du Muse virtuel du Canada, Orange Kiwi (Muse Mdia), Katy Tari, musologue, Andre Blais, musoloque, Benoit Dubuc, analyste, Patrick Turmel, dveloppeur Web, Dominique Arpin, dveloppeur Web, 28 Mars 2003; VMC Monthly Statistics
79 78
35

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 skillsthe user has to describe what he or she wishes to retrieve. Browsing depends more on recognition skillslooking 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. 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.
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
36

There are also so-called recommendation systems that are essentially rule-based 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 Bostonwhich 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 users. 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 museums 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 recommendationfeaturing. Featuring is a 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
83 84
See for example, http://collections.walkerart.org. Barbara Lang Rottenberg, Virtual Museum of Canada Features Analysis, December 2003.
37

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. 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. 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 community-based metadata descriptions.87
85
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. Clifford, Lynch, Reflections Towards the Development of a Post-DL Research Agenda. Borgman op cit.
86 87
38

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
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.
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). 89 Design concept created by ematerial studios, under the coordination of Luigi Ferrara, based on research conducted by CHIN on personal museums.
88
39

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 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 museumlike the virtual museumneeds 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 forbut 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 narrativesbut they are also interested in authoritative experiences. Virtual exhibitions authoritatively contextualize the individual objectbut 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 storiesto provide authoritative context about specific objects that the visitor has selected. Database tablesWilliam Gibsons data matrixand 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 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
Borgman op cit. Manovich, op cit. 92 Katherine Hayles, Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers, http://englishwww.humnet.ucla.edu/faculty/hayles/Flick.html
91 90
40

invoked memory object, accessed through the library is contextualized, when retrieved. It always appears within the context of its exhibit and its stories.
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 users 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 94
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.
41
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, dont 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 museums function is to identify more important and/or representative objects, it is a Sisyphean task.
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.
42

There is often the perception that linking beyond ones 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
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
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.
96
95
43

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 editreducing those costsit 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 Slashdots 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 wouldnt 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.
44
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 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).
99
100
Spinazzi, op cit. http://www.openarchives.org/. Accessed March 17, 2004.
45
Virtual Museum: The Next Generation 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 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 VMCs 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.
In Spinazze, op cit. Besser, Howard (1997). The Transformation of the Museum and the way its Perceived, in Katherine Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 153-169.
102
101
46

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 todays 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 also increase the involvement of teachers, professors, and guest curators, who could share his or her 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 usedhow 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.
47
Virtual Museum: The Next Generation 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 VMCs 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 & 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: OCLCs Persistent URLs
103 104
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.
48

(PURLs), the National Corporation for Research Initiatives Handle system, and the Internet Engineering Task Forces 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. 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.
49
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 part 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 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
106 107
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.
50

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 otheror 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
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 nations cultural resources; and/or offering an authoritative selection of joinedup services to collective audiences and users. Some notable examples include:
109
See Appendix 3: VMC Rethinking Brainstorming Session with the Investment Program Editorial Board, November 24, 2003.
51

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 lose 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 museums 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 museums 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 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
110 111
http://www.port.nmm.ac.uk/ htpp://www.scran.ac.uk 112 http://www.chin.gc.ca 113 Rina Pantalony, op cit. 114 Recently British Library instituted secure electronic delivery to users desktops. See http://www.iwr.co.uk/iwreview/1150996. Accessed December 4, 2003.
52

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-at-large and a critical area for leadership by cultural heritage institutions. Business Models There is no clearor at least easyway 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 cross-media 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 issue 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
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
53

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 creators expense. 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.
54
Appendix 1: Building a Universal Digital Memory

REPORT PREPARED FOR THE VIRTUAL MUSEUM OF CANADA
By Pierre Lvy, Canada Research Chair on Collective Intelligence, University of Ottawa
Foreword
The primary purpose of this report is to describe the preliminary stages in developing a language that can semantically structure the digital memory created by the online convergence of museums and libraries. The language, called Digitong, uses an information architecture based on ideograms. The use of graphics is essential in developing an architecture of this kind. That is why the main portion of this paper, which gives an overview of the language, contains graphics. In this brief introduction to the main body of the paper, I describe the reasons that led me to devise Digitong, and will here simply highlight some of its main features.
The Culture of Tomorrow

We are building a new civilization, a global society of networked knowledge. The development of communications, transportation and international trade has put us irreversibly on the road to global integration. Humanity, which up until relatively recently was largely rural, now lives within the meshes of a network of megalopolises. The rapid development of telecommunications and the spread of the universal digital network have forced us to radically rethink cultural data and to live in society in a way that is essentially different from the way our ancestors lived. The inroads being made by cyberspace are accelerating: the slow development of telephone networks, the birth of electronics, the invention of the computer, followed by the personal computer, the interconnection of computers, the widespread digitization of communications, along with the development of wireless networks... The Web did not even exist in 1992. Ten years on, hundreds of millions of people are browsing the Internet. The future will inevitably bring an increase in network capacity, not only in terms of data storage, but also processing power and bandwidth. There will be a proliferation of ways to access cyberspace, and they will become less an less expensive, with wireless access points everywhere. The more people interconnect, particularly in highly populated countries with a rich cultural heritage, like India, China, Brazil or Mexico, as well as in many Moslem cultures, whose heritage is ancient and refined. Cultures will encounter one another in the digital network. The birth of cyberspace as a borderless interactive communications tool is opening a new form of public space on a new scale. Our messages converge and interact with one another on the undulating fabric of expanding hypertext. A meta city can be seen on the horizon of planetary culture. The economy is becoming increasingly dependent on the development of knowledge. The management challenge we face is becoming increasingly complex in terms of the digital dataflows that supply and express our intermingled communities. An extension of existing trends would appear to point to the apparition of new forms of politics, economics and culture for the generations that will follow us. In the midst of uncertainty, a number of broad principles appear to be taking
55

shape, for example one that argues that ideas, knowledge and cultural heritage are what constitute the wealth of nations from now on. The phenomenon of massive interconnection casts doubt, sometimes violently, on old ways of transmitting culture. The current wave, which is transforming symbolic life, is giving rise to fears, which are very understandable, of dissolution or loss of identity. At the same time, a multitude of personal and collective subjectivities can be found to an ever-expanding degree and in an increasingly professional manner on the Internet, while a growing number of "virtual communities" are exploring new ways of being together, through digitized speech, images and music.
The Responsibilities of Memory Institutions

People involved in culture, especially those whose mission is to transmit memory, have a great responsibility. The transmission of a meaningful heritage cannot be considered a deposit of dead things, with a simple instruction sheet or dogmas to be recited. In the everyday practice of receiving and transmitting culture, conservation, appreciation and development require personal research, and a headlong plunge, with all its attendant risks, into the depths of the heritage in question. Because the chains of transmission are alive, there is an obligation upon us to ask new questions in order to enlarge and develop, the world of meanings transmitted to us. The crucial problems addressed by traditional cultures must be rethought by each generation, whose responsibility it is to creatively regenerate the symbolic world that it will be passing on to future generations. More specifically, a generation finds itself confronted with one essential question, which is really a meta question, namely: "What is the essential problem facing us?" In other words, at what point must we rethink our traditions in as innovative and radical a manner as possible? Or to put it another way: What are we most responsible for? Today, symbolic ecosystems of different cultures are being carried along in a movement towards growing convergence and interdependence. The new medium of interactive global communications is challenging the old rules of symbolic life. The trend towards globalization and computerization demands, nolens volens, that we find meaning in a future cultural unity for humanity. It is asking us to become a global interconnected society. Let us look at things as they are: the future of symbolic life must pass through a phase of universal memory that becomes our common cultural resource. I am not speaking here of cyberspace as simply an instrument for transmitting our traditions as they stand. I am speaking of a global unified sphere of human culture that arises as a problem. Will we be able to find a way to establish some form of dynamic balance at a higher level of complexity, as our predecessors were able to do when major cultural mutations occurred? Will we have the courage to strive to make the most of our common heritage? Can we aim at a form of universal digital memory worthy of the great pluralist civilization, brought together as a result of a memory whose creation we can all contribute towards?
Rethinking Archives
In order to meet this challenge, memory institutions need to take appropriate steps to deal with the new opportunities open to them. What we need in order to get people to stop thinking in earlier ways that involved very ancient technical limitations, a completely new way of thinking about
56

archives is needed. Once information has been digitized and indexed, it becomes possible to copy it and distribute it indefinitely at very low cost for every part of the network. As soon as the nature of digital information is understood, it becomes clear that no single location and no fixed visual form is involved. It can be everywhere and be used interactively in an infinite number of ways. It is virtually free from any limitations of physical space. This means that it is now possible to make coherently available in cyberspace virtually all of the digital data stored and exhibited by all the nodes of the world network of museums and libraries. But this initial opportunity is only the physical and institutional portion of the redundancy possible in cyberspace. Semantic redundancy is more radical than that. Indeed, at the same time as technical constraints are removed, the loosening of inflexible symbolic codes and the introduction of an anthropological approach that has learned much about cultural diversity have blurred the distinctions that formerly applied in archival structures. There is no longer an absolute distinction between the "ordinary" and "that is which is worthy of keeping", between the artist and the public, between visitors and those who mount exhibitions, between the critic and the public. As soon as a virtual community adopts a topic, an idea, or some form of heritage packets of information automatically make it worth keeping. All human chronicles are interconnected by means of a proliferating worldwide conversation. Documents are linked by a dynamic and enormous hypertext that reflects movements in our writing, our links and the way we navigate. Let us summarize a few of the more radical ways in which the traditional archive has been challenged in the 20th century. First: all human activity can be an object of history and archaeology Second: a cultural form of expression is legitimate as soon as it finds a community to preserve it Third: the new place for the artist to display his works is the museum.
The universal digital memory of the future will have no trouble in incorporating these challenges. As reproduction costs virtually nothing, we can allow ourselves a proliferation of digital data in every form and use it and have access to it accordingly. It is henceforth possible to have as many point of views of universal memory as there are human communities. That is why I suggest conceiving the architectural future of information on the basis of a new "semantic perspective". It is called a perspective because the digital memory in question creates in cyberspace a semantic mirror, a virtual world that can be explored and whose function will be to reflect back to visitors the infinitely reproduced vision of their collective creation. Museums and libraries can use available techniques to build an information architecture that is worthy of universal digital memory. We must therefore aim at an architecture of animated images that are flexible, transparent, distributed and open to collaborative efforts. In this program of work, the exhibition space for universal digital memory must organize a way of creating a threedimensional animated image of the (human) memorable in which all virtual communities of visitors, authors and users can find one another and work together. For this, we can use the new opportunities made available through the automatic projection of sharable three-dimensional virtual worlds made possible by bandwidth and image synthesis software. These technical opportunities
57

are already being used by people in the scientific community and by online games played by numerous participants in virtual worlds.
A New Perspective
This mutation of our understanding of meaning can, I believe, benefit from a comparison with the mutation of our understanding of the physical as it occurred in Europe around the 16th century. The semantic perspective invented during the Renaissance was a revolution in the way people perceived. The perspective can be defined as the cultural construct through which space consists of different but symmetrical points of view. According to this structural definition, perspective was not something invented only for painting. It developed in relationships of equality among citizens, in the abstract shapes of geometry, and in physical relationships between the particles described by modern science. The challenging of our ethnocentricities by anthropology and the humanities have led us to such a perspective in the humanistic disciplines. But what is lacking in studies of humanity is a visualization of the objects under consideration in infinite three-dimensional space, something that would give it a complete perspective. That is why I suggest a potentially infinite virtual threedimensional space in which each subject-object acts as a point of view that affects the very structure of exhibition space as a way of structuring universal digital memory. This would make it possible to have the point of view of each community united around a documentary heritage within the self-organized multitude of possible points of view. By making semantic space a form of perspective space, the memory institutions will create for each visitor a virtual representation of the point of view of others, which cannot be dissociated from the discovery of its own point of view. Before implementing the program, a review of current semantic Web development would be useful. From a strictly technical standpoint, we know that the semantic Web being worked on today will make digital information more useful by providing flags or tags for the software agents that will search the network, making it possible to factor in the meaning of the documents and transactions in completing their tasks. Thanks to the semantic Web, it will be possible for universal digital memory data to be addressed and self-organized in terms of meaning and practical uses (if these two concepts mean different things, which pace Peirce and Wittgenstein I doubt). The semantic Web, as it stands today, is organized by a multitude of ontologies. This is only to be expected, because there must be many different ways of interpreting the world if a rich and productive collective intelligence is to thrive. And yet, if we want universal digital memory to adopt a meaningbased addressing system, we will have to be able to translate these many ontologies into a semantic architecture of memory that is coherent. The adoption of a common language that can signal all possible perspectives of meaning is a precondition to the establishment of a universal digital memory. It is only if such a condition is met that a common digital memory will be able to coordinate and make intelligible the relationships between semantic zones that are structured by distinct local ontologies. The information architecture language that I am putting forward here meets this constraint in terms of a strategy for relationships because, as we shall see, its structure reflects a system of symmetrical relationships between different ontological points of view. Because it was developed in response to the geometric principles of reciprocal points of view, this language of ideas can meet the anthropological symmetry conditions required by a universal digital memory. But let us begin by asking what an idea is?
58
Virtual Museum: The Next Generation The Language of Ideas

The human species has opened up a new space, an abstract space, which reflects the evolution of the living. Articulated language made it possible for humanity to ask questions, tell stories and dialogue with one another. It made it possible for entities unknown to animal societies to develop: numbers, gods, laws, works of art, calendars, the adventure of technical developments and the whole world of culture. I use the term ideas to designate these complex forms that appear, reproduce or evolve only in the world of culture, in the meaningful space made possible by language. The sudden appearance of semantic space, in which ideas live, enabled human communities to move to the level of collective intelligence beyond hives, flocks, herds and packs because it created stronger, more flexible and more developmental competitive yet cooperative links than those that binds insects to ant colonies or monkeys to herds of baboons. What sets humanity apart is ideas. It is true that we are societies of animal organisms who came about as a result of biological evolution. But humanity is also the only environment in which symbolic life exists. Language is the threshold from which this second level of nature, made up of ecosystems of ideas forms of spiritual hypertexts lives in symbiosis with our communities of speaking primates. These ecosystems of ideas become more complex, wither, become more diverse and intermingle, giving rise to the societies that support them on the partly indeterminate road towards cultural evolution. Teilhard de Chardin used the word "Noosphere" to describe the world ecosystem of all the ideas that globalization and the development of forms of communication, culminating in cyberspace, are beginning to make a reality. I suggested above that we could now consider the technical possibility of visualizing ecosystems of ideas in a semantic mirror: an animated three-dimensional simulation complex, to be sure, but organized and coherent. Universal digital memory, which would result from the convergence of online museums and libraries, could help cultural expression proliferate for all publics in every direction of meaningful space by putting on display the world of ideas in a filmic and interactive manner. What kind of ideas would we find in the virtual world that includes the interlaced multiplicity of memories? These would not exactly be platonic ideas. The founder of western philosophy described ideas as fixed, eternal and invisible to the senses. The ideas of our digital memory, on the other hand, are three-dimensional virtual subjects-objects that can be explored by means of vision, touch and hearing, and that are developing within an ecosystem in which they live interdependently. Digitong Before launching into an exploration of this virtual world, a few words are in order about our choice of a name for our cinematographic information system. Digitong refers to a digital language, a visual language that semantically indexes information that cannot be "spoken" except through the computer network. The technical mediation of networked computers enables interlaced communities that "speak Digitong" to project a virtual three-dimensional world that reflects their meaningful relationships.
59

Ideas Digitong computes the movement of ideas in three dimensions in an infinite and coherent virtual space in which spatial proximities reflect semantic proximities. The idea is here defined officially as the inseparable union of three interdependent dimensions of the same subject-object: a virtual community (the idea's intelligence), digital data processing (the idea's cognitive process) a constellation of symbolic images in digital memory (consciousness or self-representation of the idea).
Memes Digitong can project a virtual world in which ideas absorb, transform and generate multimedia information capsules, which may be prepared by the online departments of museums and libraries. These packets of information are called "memes". The term was coined by Richard Dawkins, on the model of "gene", to designate the self-reproducing entity that circulates among human minds. I believe that Dawkins was on the right track in conceptualizing the cultural sphere as a form of ecology, and that is why I have adopted his term. But his meme only accounts for half of cognitive human ecology. To factor in the depth and complexity of the semantic nature of information, we cannot remain content with an equivalent to genes, as it is also necessary to have a (virtual) equivalent of organisms. In the universal digital memory structured by Digitong, ideas are precisely virtual organisms that absorb, process and disseminate memes. Ideas give symbolic consistency to human communities united by language, a consistency that memes alone could not account for.. Syntax and Semantics Digitong's syntax is basically a filmic or cinematographic function. It can use animated 3 D to represent a digital memory in which ideas exchange and transform memes. This syntax is intimately related to semantics, which provides a system of graphics coordinates that can project a potentially infinite virtual space but precisely one that is addressable in which ideas and memes interact. The geometric distances in the space engendered by this language represent semantic distances. The correspondence between semantic and geometric spaces is based on the two pillars of Digitong's information architecture: ideograms and an algorithm. Ideograms The role of Digitong ideograms is not to accurately translate the content of documents and digital transactions, but strictly to index or address them in semantic space. They can be thought of as a form of "postal codes" for universal memory. Digitong ideograms are independent of language. They are constructed in accordance with a method that symmetrically divides the types of actions that structure human semantic space. These ideograms were inspired by anthropological symmetry, which makes it a satisfactory device for structuring universal memory. I call this symmetry virtual perspective because it deals accurately and symmetrically with the directions involved in meaning. Digitong ideograms do not represent rigid concepts that behave like "categories" or sets that are hierarchically nested, and that separate the "inside" from the "outside". The range of ideograms
60

provides a palette of the qualities of actions that are in a state of reciprocal and fractal wraping in the ideas. Each ideogram is indexed by a number indicating the "semantic volume" assigned to the quality of the the semantic action that it represents. As ideograms signal what might be called semantic colours or frequencies, the proportion and combination thereof can be continued indefinitely. All memes that reside in memory, and that have been transformed and exchanged by ideas, are labelled by semantic codes. These codes invariably consist of an ordered sequence of volumes assigned to ideograms. Ideas can identify and process the memes through the use of codes that describe their semantic content. Ideas, in turn, can be found through reference to the semantic codes that express their activity and memory. Ideograms represent active operators in the virtual world of memory: senders that allow the memes to identify themselves to the ideas they are heading to; antennas that enable ideas to receive and send memes; semantic switches that transform the information received by ideas into information that is transmitted; instruments that can help visitors navigate in semantic space.
Algorithmics Because ideas are living things, their positions change as they go through their semantic navigations, and these changes restructure the space around them. The three-dimensional virtual space that expresses semantic distances is periodically recalculated on the basis of the codes assigned to ideas. Digitong algorithms construct universal space memory in accordance with an ongoing collective negotiation between ideas concerning their respective distances. The relatively straightforward principle upon which these algorithms are based is explained in the main document. In addition to calculating a universal position for all ideas, Digitong algorithms project the relative space of each idea, along with its "field of vision" or its own universe. This is the ecological environment made up of complementary ideas, and with which the reference idea exchanges memes. Furthermore, these algorithms spatially organise memes (depending on their semantic content) within ideas. Analog Semantic Calculation The ideas projected in 3-D by Digitong behave like analog processors of information contained within memes. As we mentioned, they have semantic switches that perform the transformation of memes received into memes transmitted. The table of switches for these semantic volumes at any given point in time provides a snapshot of an idea's position in the space consisting of all possible semantic switching. As it is impossible to represent such space, because its dimensions are infinite, the usefulness of Digitong algorithms rests on the ability to provide a three-dimensional navigable projection.
61

Moments, Arks Digitong's cinematographic perspective breaks down the movement of ideas into "fixed images" called moments. A moment in analog semantic processing by ideas can be analyzed into: (1) receiving information, (2) transformation of the information received and (3) transmitting the information. Each moment projects a distinct image in three-dimensional space. Memes are stored in two information arks contained by the ideas at each moment along their path. One ark exhibits the memes that have been received and another the memes that have been transmitted. An archival architecture including arks seems appropriate at a time when there might be an informational deluge or flood. Semes The semantic transformation that is performed by an idea's moment is called a seme. The seme represents a moment's action in the form of the analog "program" followed by the idea when it transforms received memes into transmitted memes. At each moment, the seme indicates the specific refraction of an information flow effected by an idea. The seme itself is nothing more than the instantaneous trace of a semiotic act: the semantic navigation of an idea in an ecosystem of ideas. Moment after moment, the string of its meaningful actions helps to direct the semantic navigation of an idea. Digitong matches up the meaning and the action. It is a language that processes meaning as a perspective of navigation in an infinite semantic space where no direction is privilegied. Clearheaded thinkers from many traditions have noted the differential and relative nature of meaning, upon which it is much more difficult to reach agreement than for observables or logicalmathematical calculations. In keeping with this differential line of thought, Digitong identifies the semiotic act with a momentary difference between the faces of two ideogram configurations. Information The succession of an idea's moments projects the navigation of a community in semantic space. Digitong cinematographic approach makes it possible to visit the semantic paths of ideas that produce, exchange and use information. It also makes it possible to identify the information itself and place it in context. Indeed, memes, those multimedia capsules, are distributed redundantly within the information arks carried along by ideas and the memes are organized within the arks in a contextual manner, as a function of their semantic links. Information represents everything that can have meaning or value for human beings: physical and technical resources, social roles, institutions, ideas, modes of organization, skills, knowledge, messages, images, music and symbols of all kinds. Virtual communities exchange and transform information within the universal digital memory network. The movement of information binds and separates: its fluctuating distribution structures semantic space. Together, ideas present a multitude of singular and interdependent moments of intelligence, with as many faces as the mirror of collective intelligence fractally reflects all aspects of meaning. ***************
62

In the main document which this text introduces, I consider the logical possibility, the informatic calculability, technical feasibility and anthropological relevance of a universal digital memory structured by Digitong. Part one covers the principles of virtual perspective and the nine initial ideograms, which define the cardinal points in semantic space. Part two discusses the cinematography of ideas, their decomposition into moments, the decomposition of these moments into arks containing memes, etc. This part also discusses the principle of algorithms, which makes it possible to periodically recalculate semantic space on the basis of the reciprocal evolution and positions of ideas. Part three explains the foundations of the navigation of ideas and visitors to semantic space. The next six sections give a systematic exposition of ideography. It will describe how the symmetrical structure and mainly combinatory method of constructing Digitong's 549 ideograms represent the core of its expressive power. The publishing of the Digitong document was made possible through the valuable assistance of Darcia Labrosse, who was the graphics editor, as well as the English proofreader and literary consultant. The following bibliography is not intended to survey all of the philosophical and cultural traditions that played a role in the development of Digitong. It simply points to those areas of research that are relevant, in addition to a number of the most important contemporary sources of inspiration.
63
Bibliography
Biology, theory of evolution Ameisen, J. C., La Sculpture du vivant, Seuil, Paris, 1999 Atlan, H., Les Etincelles de hasard, T. 1 : Connaissance spermatique, Seuil, 1999 Atlan, H., Les Etincelles de hasard, T. 2 : Atheisme de lcriture, Seuil, 2003 Atlan, H., Entre le cristal et la fume, Seuil, Paris, 1979 Atlan, H., LOrganisation biologique et la thorie de linformation, Hermann, Paris, 1972 Dawkins, R., The Blind Watchmaker, Norton, NY, 1986 Dawkins, R., The Selfish Gene, Oxford UP, NY, 1976 Devillers, C., Tintant, H., Questions sur la thorie de lvolution, PUF, Paris, 1996. Kupiec, J. & Sonigo, P., Ni Dieu ni Gne, Seuil, Paris, 2000 Langton, C. G., (ed.) Artificial Life, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity Procedings, vol. 6, Addison Wesley, Redwood, Calif., 1989 Langton, Christopher G. (Ed.) Artificial life: An overview Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1995 Lovelock, J., The Ages of Gaa, Norton, NY, 1988. Sonigo, P., Stengers, I., LEvolution, EDP Sciences, Les Ulis (Fr.), 2003 Teilhard de Chardin, P. Le Phnomne humain, Seuil, Paris, 1955 Wilson, E. O., Sociobiology, the New Synthesis, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass. 1975 Cognitive sciences Brooks, R.A. & Steels, L. (eds.), The Artificial Life Route to Artificial Intelligence: Building Embodied Situated Agents, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Hillsdale, NJ, 1995 Changeux, Jean-Pierre, Lhomme de vrit, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2002 Edelman, G., Neural Darwinism, Basic Books, New York,1987 Jackendoff, R., Languages of the Mind, MIT Press, 1992 Johnson-Laird, P. N., Mental Models, Harvard University Press, England, 1983 Maturana, H.R., Varela, F.J., The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, New Science Library, Boston, 1988 McLelland, J. L., Rumelhart, D. E. and the PDP Research Group, Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Micro-Structure of Cognition, 2 vol. MIT Press, 1986 Minsky, M., The Society of Mind, Simon and Schuster, NY, 1997 Sowa, John F., Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine, AddisonWesley, Reading, MA., 1984 Sowa, John F., Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations, Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, 2000 Varela, F. Autonomie et connaissance, Seuil, Paris, 1989 Varela, F., Thompson, E., Rosh, E., The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1991 Hutchins, E., Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.,1995 Salomon, G. (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
64

Collective intelligence in cyberculture Authier, M., Lvy, P. (prface de Michel Serres), Les Arbres de connaissances, La Dcouverte, Paris, 1992 Bell, D. & Kennedy, B. M., (Eds.), The Cybercultures Reader, Routledge, London & NY, 2000 Bloom, H., Global Brain, the Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st century. Wiley & sons, NY, 2000 Heylighen, F. & alii, Principia Cybernetica Web (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html) Himanen, P. The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. Random House, NY, 2001 Johnson, Steven, Emergence, The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and software, Scribner, NY, 2001. Kerckhove (de), D., Connected Intelligence, Somerville House, Toronto, 1997 (french translation: Kerckhove (de), D., LIntelligence des rseaux, Odile Jacob, 2000) Lvy, P. LIntelligence collective. Pour une anthropologie du cyberespace La Dcouverte, Paris, 1994. English translation : Lvy, P. Collective Intelligence: Mankinds Emerging World in Cyberspace, Perseus Books, Cambridge, Mass. 1997 Lvy, P., Cyberculture, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1997. English translation : Lvy, P. Cyberculture, University of Minneapolis Press, 2001 Lvy, P., Cyberdmocratie: Essai de philosophie politique, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2002 Lvy, P., De la programmation considre comme un des beaux-arts, La Dcouverte, Paris, 1992 Lvy, P., La Machine Univers. Cration, cognition et culture informatique, La Dcouverte, Paris, 1987 Lvy, P., Les Technologies de l'intelligence. L'avenir de la pense l're informatique, La Dcouverte, Paris, 1990 Lvy, P., Quest-ce que le virtuel? La Dcouverte, Paris, 1995. English translation : Lvy, P. Becoming Virtual. Reality in the Digital Age, Plenum Trade, New York, 1998 Lvy, P., World Philosophie: le march, le cyberespace, la conscience, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2000 Mayer-Kress, G., Barczys, C., The Global Brain as an Emergent Structure from the Worldwide Computing Network, and its Implications for Modeling,The Information Society, vol. 11, n#1 (JanMar 1995), p. 1-27 Mitchell, William J., E-topia, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA., 1999 Oram, A., Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies , O'Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA, 2001 Raymond, E.R., The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, O'Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA, 1999 Rheingold, H., Virtual Community, new edition, MIT Press, 2000 Rheingold, Howard, Smart Mobs, The next social Revolution, Perseus Books, Cambridge Mass., 2002 Rosnay (de), J., Lhomme symbiotique, Seuil, Paris, 1995 Russell, P., The Global Brain Awakens: Our Next Evolutionary Leap, 1996 Weinberger, David, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, a Unified Theory of the Web. Perseus Books, Cambridge Mass., 2002 Culture Anger R. (Ed.), foreword by D. Dennett, Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science, Oxford U. P. 2000
65

Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Oxford UP, 1992 Boyd R. & Richerson P.J., Culture and the Evolutionary Process, Chicago University Press,1985 Cassirer, E., Philosophie des formes symboliques, Minuit, Paris, 1972 Cheney, D. L., Seyfarth, R. M., How Monkeys See the World. Inside the Mind of Another Species, University of Chicago Press, 1990 Deacon, T. W., The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Langage and the Brain, Norton, NY, 1997 Dessales, J-L., Aux Origines du langage, une histoire naturelle de la parole, Herms Science, Paris, 2000 Durkheim, Les Formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, Leroi-Gourhan, A. Le Geste et la parole , Albin Michel, Paris, 1963 Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie Structurale, Plon, Paris 1958 Mauss, M., Sociologie et Anthropologie (avec une introduction de Claude Levi-Strauss), Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1950 Mithen, Steven, The Prehistory of the Mind. The cognitive Origins of Art and Science, , Thames & Hudson, London, 1996 Simondon, G. Du Mode dexistence des objets techniques, Aubier, Paris, 1958 Digital Arts Ascott, R. (Ed.) Reframing Consciousness, Intellect Books, Exeter, UK, 1999 Ascott, Roy, (Ed. Edward A Shanken), Telematic Embrace, University of California Press, 2003 Balpe, J. P., Contextes de lart numrique, Herms science, Paris, 2000 Packer, R., Jordan, K. (eds), Multimedia, from Wagner to Virtual Reality, Norton, NY, 2001 Wilson, Stephen, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology, MIT Press/ Leonardo Books, 2001 Epistemology Bateson, G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 2 vol., Chandler, NY, 1972 Douglas, M., How Institutions Think. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,1987 Foucault, M. LArchologie du savoir, Gallimard, Paris, 1969. Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. Mille Plateaux, Minuit, Paris, 1980. Derrida, J., De la Grammatologie, Minuit, Paris, 1967. Latour, B., Science in Action, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1987 Morin, Edgar, La Mthode 4 - Les Ides, leur habitat, leur vie, leur moeurs, leur organisation, Seuil, Paris, 1991 Popper, Karl, La Connaissance objective, traduction intgrale et prface de Jean-Jacques Rosat, Flammarion, collection Champs, Paris, 1998 Serres, M. Le Systme de Leibniz et ses modles mathmatiques, PUF, Paris, 1968 Simon, H., Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, 1969 Sperber, Dan, La Contagion des ides, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1996 Stengers, I. Linvention des sciences modernes, La Dcouverte, Paris, 1993 Stengers, I., Cosmopolitiques (7 vol.), La Dcouverte, Paris, 1997 Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality, Macmillan, NY, 1929
66

Human development Anderson, Mary B. (1999) Development and Social Diversity. Oxford: Oxfam UK. Crush, Jonathan, ed. (1995) Power of Development. London and New York: Routledge. Diehl, Paul F, (2001) The Politics of Global Governance: International Organizations in an Interdependent World. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. McMichael, Philip (2000) Development and Social Change: a Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press Sen, Amartya (1999) Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Books United Nations Development Report (2002) Human Development Report 2002. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Verhelst, Thierry G. (1987) No Life Without Roots: Culture and Development. London: Zed Books. Knowledge economy Axelrod R., The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, New York,1984 Castells, M., The Information Age, Economy, Society and Culture, (3 vol.) Blackwell, Oxford, 1998 Digital Opportunity Initiative (Final Report) Creating a Development Dynamic, United Nations, NY, 2001 Foray, D., Lconomie de la connaissance, La Dcouverte, Paris, 2000 Hayek, F. Economics and Knowledge, in Economica IV (new ser., 1937), 33-54. Hayek, F. Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3 vol, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1979 Hayek, F. The Use of Knowledge in Society, American Economic Review, XXXV, No. 4; September, 1945, 519-30 Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (Ed.) Choices, Values and Frames, Cambridge UP, 2002. Kelly, K., Out of Control,. The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World, Addison Wesley, NY, 1994 Lazzaretto, Maurizzio, Puissances de linvention, Les empcheurs de penser en rond-Seuil, Paris, 2002. Machlup, F., Knowledge, its Creation, Distribution and Economic Signifiance, 3 vol, Princeton UP, 1984 Moulin, H. Axioms of Cooperative Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, 1991 Porat, M. & Rubin, M. The Information Economy, Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1977 Rifkin, J., The Age of Access, G. P. Putnams son, NY, 2000 Simon, H., Models of Bounded Rationality: Behavioural Economics and Buisness Organisation, 2 vol. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982 Stewart,Thomas A. Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, Doubleday/Nicholas Brealy, NY, 1997 Knowledge management Centre pour la recherche et linnovation dans lenseignement, Knowledge Management in the Learning Society, OCDE, Paris, 1999 Fuller, S. Knowledge Management Foundations, Butterworth-Heinemann, Boston, 2002 Gates, W. H., Business at the Speed of Thought, Warner Books, NY, 1999 Gibbons, M. The New Production of Knowledge: the Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, Sage, London, 1994
67

Levine, R., Locke, C., Searls, D., Weinberger, D., The Cluetrain Manifesto, the End of Business as Usual, Perseus Books, Cambridge, Mass., 1999 Morey, D., Maybury, M. & Thuraisingham, B. (Ed.), Knowledge Management, Classic and Contemporary Works, MIT Press. Cambridge Mass., 2000 Senge, P., The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation, Random House, 1990 Svenonius, E., The intellectual Foundation of Information Organization, MIT Press, 2000. Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 Medias Andr-Leiknam, B. & Ziegler, C. (dir.) Naissance de lcriture, cuniformes et hiroglyphes, ditions de la runion des Muses Nationaux, Paris, 1982 Auroux, S. La Rvolution technologique de la grammatisation, Mardaga, Lige, 1994 Bottero, J., LEcriture la raison et les Dieux, Gallimard, Paris, 1987 Caruthers, Mary, Machina Memorialis, le mtier penser, Gallimard, Bibliothque des histoires, Paris, 2002 Debray, R., Cours de mdiologie gnrale, Paris, Gallimard, 1991. Deibert, R. J. Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation, New York, Columbia University Press, 1997. Eisenstein, E., The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1983 Goody, J., The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1987 Goody, J., The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Cambridge University Press, 1987 Hauser, M. D., The Evolution of Communication, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1996 Havelock, E. A., The Muse Learns to Write, Reflections on Orality and Litteracy from Antiquity to the Present, Yale UP, 1988 Innis, H., Empire and Communication, University of Toronto Press, 1950 Jaynes, J. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976 Lvy, P., L'invention de l'ordinateur, in lments d'histoire des sciences (dir. Michel Serres) Bordas, Paris, 1989, p. 515 535. Lvy, P., La Place de la mdiologie dans le Trivium in Les Cahiers de mdiologie, n6, deuxime semestre, Gallimard, Paris, 1998, p.43 58 Luhmann, N., Ecological Communication, University of Chicago Press, 1989. Luhmann, N., Reality of the Mass Media, Stanford University Press, 2000 McLuhan, M., Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New American Library, NY, 1964. Ong, W. Orality and Literacy, The technologizing of the Word, Methuen, London & NY, 1982 Networked society and social capital Barabasi, Albert Laszlo, Linked, the New Science of Networks, Perseus publishing, Cambridge, Mass, 2002 Buchanan, Mark Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, Norton and Cie, 2002. Degenne, Alain, Fors, Michel, Les rseaux sociaux, Armand Colin, Paris, 1994.
68

Fukuyama, F., Social Capital and Civil Society, Communication at the Conference on Second Generation Reform, IMF, Washington DC, 1999 (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/fukuyama.htm#III) Fukuyama, F., Trust, the Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Hamish Hamilton, Londres, 1995 Gross Stein, J., Stren, R., Fitzgibbon, J., Maclean, M., Networks of Knowledge. Collaborative Innovation in International Learning, University of Toronto Press, 2001. Hampton, Keith and Barry Wellman. 2000. "Examining Community in the Digital Neighborhood: Early Results from Canada's Wired Suburb." Pp. 475-492 in Digital Cities: Technologies Experiences, and Future Perspectives, edited by Toru Ishida and Katherine Isbister. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Hampton, Keith and Wellman Barry. "Long Distance Community in the Network Society: Contact and Support Beyond Netville." American Behavioral Scientist 45 (3): 476-495, 2001. Lin, Nan, Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Luhmann, N. Social Systems, Stanford UP, CA, 1995. Scott, John, Social Network Analysis, sec. edition, SAGE Publications, London, 2000 Putnam, R.D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000. Wasserman Stanley & Faust Katherine, Social Network Analysis, Cambridge University Press, 1994 Watts, Duncan J., Six degrees, the science of a connected Age, Norton, NY, 2002 Wellman, B. Little Boxes, Glocalization, and Networked Individualism. In M. Tanabe & Peter van den Besselaar & T. Ishida (Eds.), Digital Cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches (pp. 10-25). Berlin: Springer. (2002). Wellman, B. and Berkowitz, S.D. (Eds.), Social Structures: A Network Approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988 Wellman, Barry (Ed.) Networks in the Global Village, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1999. Pioneers of cybernetics and cyberculture Ashby, R., Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen, London, 1956 Bardini, T., Bootstrapping. Douglas Engelbart, Coevolutioon and the Origins of Personnal Computing, Stanford UP, 2000. Bush, Vannevar, As We May Think; in The Atlantic Monthly; July, 1945; Vol. 176, No. 1; p. 101-108 (reproduced in Packer and Jordan, 2001) Engelbart, Douglas, Augmenting Human Intellect, Technical Report, Stanford Research Institute, 1962 Foerster (von), H., Observing Systems, Intersystems, Seaside CA, 1981 Lvy, P., Analyse de contenu des travaux du Biologcal Computer Laboratory (BCL), in Cahiers du CREA, 8, Paris, 1986, p. 155 191 Lvy, P., L'Oeuvre de Warren McCulloch, in Cahiers du CREA, 7, Paris, 1986, p. 211 255. Lvy, P., Wittgenstein et la Cyberntique, in Cahiers du CREA, 7, Paris, 1986, p. 257 285. Licklidder, Joseph, C R, & Robert Taylor The Computer as a Communication Device Science and Technology, April 1968 Licklidder, Joseph, C R, Man-computer Symbiosis, IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 411, March 1960 Canadian Heritage Information Network 69

McCulloch, W., Embodiments of Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge,1965 Nelson, Theodor Holm, Literary Machines, Mindful Press,1982 Shannon, CE, and Weaver, W., Mathematical Theory of Communication, U. of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1964 Tofts, D., Jonson, A., Cavallaro, A., (Eds), Prefiguring Cyberculture, an Intellectual History, MIT Press, 2003. Wiener, N., The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Doubleday, NY, 1950 Semantic Web Berners Lee, T. Hendler, J. and Lassila, O. The Semantic Web. A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities, Scientific American, Mai 2001 Berners Lee, T. Semantic Web Road map, 1988, http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html Berners Lee, Tim, Weaving the Web, Harper, San Fransisco, 1999 Fensel D., Hendler J. A., Lieberman H. and Wahlster W. (Eds.), Spinning the Semantic Web, Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential, MIT Press, 2003 Geroimenko, Vladimir & Chen, Chaomei (Eds) Visualizing the Semantic Web, XML based Internet and Information visualisation, Springer, London, 2003. El Saddik, Abdulmotaleb, Interactive Multimedia Learning, Springer-Verlag, 2001
www.semanticweb.org www.W3.org
Sign and Language Aristote, De lInterprtation, (en particulier le dbut du Chapitre 1), in Organon II, trad. Tricot, Vrin, Paris, 1977 Austin, J. L., How to Do Things With Words, Oxford U. P. 1962 Bickerton, D., Language and Human Behavior, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1995 De Libera, A. La Querelle des universaux, De Platon la fin du Moyen-Age, Seuil, Paris, 1996 Eco, U., Segno, ISEDI, Milan, 1973 Langacker, R. W. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol 1, Stanford University Press, 1987 Pannaccio, C. Les Mots, les concepts et les choses, la smantique de Guillaume dOccam et le nominalisme daujourdhui, Bellarmin-Vrin, Paris-St Laurent (Qc), 1992 Peirce, C. S., Ecrits sur le signe (rassembls par G. Deledalle), Le Seuil, Paris, 1978 Rastier, F. La triade smiotique, le trivium et la smantique linguistique Nouveaux actes smiotiques, n# 9, 54 p., 1990. Vigotsky, L., Thought and Language, MIT Press, 1986 (1re dition russe : 1934) Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, Oxford, 1958 Visualization & mapping Arnheim, Rudolf. Visual Thinking. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1971. Bertin, Jacques. Semiology of Graphics. Translated by William J. Berg. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Card, Stuart K., Jock D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman, eds. Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. San Francisco, California: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1999.
70

Chen, Chaomei, and Katy Brner, eds. Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries. Springer-Verlag, 2002. Chen, Chaomei, Information Visualisation and Virtual Environments. London, UK: Springer Verlag, 1999. Denis, M. Image et cognition, PUF, Paris, 1989 Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin, Mapping Cyberspace. London: Routledge, 2001. Kitchin, Rob, and Scott Freundschuh, eds. Cognitive Mapping: Past, Present and Future, Routledge, NY, 2000. Lvy, P., L'idographie dynamique. Vers une imagination artificielle? La Dcouverte, Paris, 1991 Steve Mann, Intelligent Image Processing, John Wiley and Sons, 2001 Shneiderman, Ben, and Benjamin B. Bederson, eds. The Craft of Information Visualization. San Francisco, California: Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 2003. Spence, Robert. Information Visualization. Essex, England: ACM Press, 2001. Tufte, Edward R. Envisioning Information. Chesire, Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1990. Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Chesire, Connecticut, USA: Graphics Press, 1983. Tufte, Edward R. Visual Explanations. Chesire, Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1997. Ware, Colin. Information Visualization: Perception for Design. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2000.
71
Appendix 2: Selected Bibliography

Ascott, Roy (2003). Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness. Edward A. Shanken, ed. University of California Press. Atkins, D. E. et. al. (2003). Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure: Report of the National Science Foundation Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. January. http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/. Accessed February 17, 2004. Alsford, Stephen (1991). Museums as Hypermedia: Interactivity on a museum-wide scale. In Hypermedia & interactivity in museums: proceedings of an international conference. (pp. 7-16 ) Ed. David Bearman. Pittsburgh, PA: Archives and Museums Informatics. Anderson, Maxwell L. (1997). Introduction. In The Wired Museum- Emerging Technology and Changing Paradigms. (pp. 11-34 ). Ed. Katherine Jones-Garmil. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums. Arms, William Y. (2000) Digital Libraries. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Berners-Lee, Tim.(1998) Semantic Web Road map : A road map for the future, an architectural plan untested by anything except thought experiments. Date: September 1998. Last modified: Date: 1998/10/14 20:17:13 Besser, Howard (1987). The Changing Museum. Information: The Transformation of Society. ASIS87 Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science, Boston, MA, October 4-8, 1987. Ed. Chen, Ching-chih. Vol. 24. 1987 (pp. 14-19). Medford, NJ: Learned Information. 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. Bowen, Jonathan. (1995) The Virtual Library of Museums. Ed. Giskin Day: Museum Collections and the Information Highway. Proceedings of a Conference on Museums and the Internet 10 May 1995. London: Science Museum, 37-39. Bush, Vannevar. (1945) As we may think. Atlantic Monthly 176 (1945): 101-108. http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/vannevar.bush.html. Accessed February 17, 2004. Cliffolilli, Andrea. (2003) 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 February 17, 2003. Committee on Networked Systems of Embedded Computers, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board , National Research Council. Embedded, Everywhere: A Research
72

Agenda for Networked Systems of Embedded Computers. http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/embedded_everywhere/ Accessed February 17, 2004. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 2002. Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/broadband/ Accessed February 17, 2004. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 1997. More Than Screen Deep: Toward Every-Citizen Interfaces to the Nations Information Infrastructure. National Acadey Press, Washington, DC. http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/screen/ Accessed February 17, 2004. Davis, Marc. (1997) Garage Cinema and the Future of Media Technology. Communications of the ACM. 40, 2 (pp. 42-48). The Digital Library Toolkit. (2000) Sun Microsystems. Second Edition. March 2000. http://www.sun.com/edu. Accessed February 17, 2004. Drabenstott, Karen M. (1994). Analytical review of the library of the future. Washington, DC: Council Library Resources. Engelbart, Douglas C. (1963). A conceptual framework for the augmentation of man's intellect. In P. D. Howerton and D. C. Weeks, eds. Vistas in Information Handling, Volume 1, pages 1--29. Washington, D.C.: Spartan Books. Fisher, Scott. (1989). "The AMES Virtual Environment Workstation (VIEW)", SIGGRAPH'89 Course 29 Notes, pages 10-27, ACM, August. Gasperini, J.(1999) Structural Ambiguity: An Emerging Interactive Aesthetic. In Robert Jacobson, ed. (pp. 301-316) Information Design. Cambridge: MIT Press. . Gelernter, D.(1998). Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology, Perseus Books. 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. Gemmell, J., Bell, G., Lueder, R., Drucker, S. and Wong, C. MyLifeBits: Fulfilling the Memex Vision. http://research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx. Accessed February 17, 2003. Grau, Oliver (2003). Virtual Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
73

Harter, Stephen P. (1007) Scholarly communication and the digital library: Problems and issues. Journal of Digital information, volume 1 issue 1. http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v01/i01/Harter/ . Accessed February 17, 2004. Heilig, Morton (1955). The Cinema of the Future. In: Presence, v. 1, n. 3, 1992. 279-294. Hoptman, Glen H. (1992). The Virtual Museum and Related Epistemological Concerns. IN Edward Barrett (ed.) Sociomedia. Multimedia, Hypermedia and the Social Construction of Knowledge. (pp. 141-159) Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Horrigan, John B. and Rainie, Lee. The Broadband Difference: How online Americans behavior changes with high-speed Internet connections at home. Pew Internet & American Life Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=63. Accessed February 17, 2004. Jackson, Roland et al.(1998) Using the Web to Change the Relation Between a Museum and its Users. In David Bearman and Jennifer Trant (eds.) Museums and the Web 1998: Selected Papers published on CD-ROM. Proceedings of the Second International Conference Toronto, Canada, April 22-25, 1998. Pittsburgh, PA: Archives & Museum Informatics. Jordan, K., Hauser, J., and Foster, S. (2003). The Augmented Social Network: Building Identity and Trust into the Next-Generation Internet. May 15, 2003. http://asn.planetwork.net/whitepaper.html. Accessed February 17, 2004. Kay, A., and Goldberg, A. (1977). Personal Dynamic Media. IEEE Computer, 10 (3), 31-41. Klavans, Judith L. (2003) Creating More Natural Access to Information: New Ways to Interact with Knowledge. In Wave of the Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 15-17, 2003. http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_klavans.html. Accessed February 17, 2004. Lagoze, Carl. (2003). 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 February 17, 2004. Lancaster, F. Wilfrid.(1978). Toward paperless information systems. New York: Academic Press. Laurel, B. K. (1986) Interface as mimesis. In User Centered System Design. (eds.) D. A. Norman and S. D. Draper. (pp 67-85) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale. NJ. Lee, Felicia R. (2003). The Academic Industrial Complex. New York Times. Sept. 6, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/arts/06UNIV.html Lesk, Michael .(2003). The Future of Digital Libraries. Wave of the Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 15-17, 2003. http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_lesk.html. Accessed February 17, 2004. Lesk, Michael. (1997) Practical Digital Libraries. Morgan Kauffman.
74

Lvy, Pierre (1994). L'intelligence collective - pour une anthropologie du cyberspace. Paris: La Dcouverte. Levy, Pierre. (2003). The Collective Intelligence Game. Switch. March 26, 2003. http://switch.sjsu.edu/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php?artc=280. Accessed February 17, 2004. ---. Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age. Plenum Trade: New York and London, 1998. Lewis, Geoffrey. (1996) The Response of Museums to the Web. Archives of MUSEUML@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM Museum discussion list. http://home.dc.lsoft.com/archives/museum-l.html. Posted: 10/17/1996. Licklider, J. C. R. (1965). Libraries of the Future. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. Lynch, Clifford (2003). Reflections Towards the Development of a Post-DL Research Agenda. Wave of the Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 15-17. http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_lynch.html. Accessed February 17, 2004. MacDonald, Georg, Alsford, Stephen. (1997). Conclusion: Toward the Meta-Museum. In (ed). Katherine Jones-Garmil. The Wired Museum - Emerging Technology and Changing Paradigms. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums. Marchionini, Gary (2003). Managing Transitions in Information Spaces: Roles for Cyberinfrastrucuture. In Wave of the Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 1517. http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_marchionini.html. Accessed February 17, 2004 Miksa, Francis. (1996). The Cultural Legacy of the "Modern Library" for the Future. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 37:100-119. Modjeska D. and Marsh, A. (1997). Structure and Memorability of Web Sites. Working Paper in the Department of Industrial Engineering. Toronto: University of Toronto. Nelson, T. H. (1974). Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Mindful Press. Nielsen, J. (2000). Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. New Riders. Passini, R. (1984) Wayfinding in Architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Rajashekar, T. B. Topic 1: Digital libraries - Definition, evolution, benefits and limitations. http://144.16.72.189/is214/214-2001-2002/topic-1.htm Accessed February 17, 2004 Richvalsky, James and Watkins, David. Design and Implementation of a Digital Library. (ACM). http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds5-2/diglib.html Accessed February 17, 2004
75

Rutkowski. C. (1982). An introduction to the Human Applications Standard Computer Interface, Part I: Theory and principles. Byte, 7, 10 (pp.291-310), October. Schuble, Peter and Smeaton, Alan F. (eds.) (1988). An International Research Agenda for Digital Libraries: Summary Report of the Series of Joint NSF-EU Working Groups on Future Directions for Digital Libraries Research. October 12. http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/NSF/Brussrep.htm. Accessed February 17, 2004. Schweibenz, W. (1998).The "Virtual Museum" : New Perspectives For Museums to Present Objects and Information Using the Internet as a Knowledge Base and Communication System (Version 11/05/1998) http://www.phil.uni-sb.de/fr/infowiss/projekte/virtualmuseum/virtual_museum_ISI98.htm Accessed February 17, 2004. Shneiderman, B. (1986). Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction. Boston, MA :Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co. Spence, R. (2001). Information Visualization. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley. Sweetman, Bill. (2003) Space Shuttle: The Next Generation. Popular Science. May. http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,12543,443762-1,00.html. Accessed February 17, 2004. Teather, Lynne. (1998) A Museum is a Museum is a Museum ... Or Is it?: Exploring Museology and the Web. Ed. David Bearman and Jennifer Trant: Museums and the Web 1998: Selected Papers published on CD-ROM. Proceedings of the Second International Conference Toronto, Canada, April 22-25 1998. Pittsburgh, PA: Archives & Museum Informatics, 1998. Treinen, Heiner. What Does The Visitor Want Form A Museum? Mass-media Aspects Of Museology. (pp. 86-93) In (eds) Bicknell, Sandra/Farmelo, Graham. Museum Visitor Studies in the 90s. London: Science Museum. Turkle, Sherry.(1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster. Vaidhyanathan, Siva. (2003). The new information ecosystem. Part 1: cultures of anarchy and closure http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=8&debateId=101&articleId=1319. Accessed February 17, 2004. 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. Waters, Donald J.(2003) Beyond Digital Libraries: The Organizational Design of a New Cyberinfrastructure. In Wave of the Future: NSF Post Digital Library Futures Workshop. June 1517. http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_waters.html. Accessed February 17, 2004.
76

Whiteside, J , Bennett, J. and Holtzblatt, K. Usability engineering: Our experience and evolution. To appear in Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, M. Helander, Ed., North-Holland. Wiener, Norbert (1954). Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics in Society. Reprinted: DeCapo Press (1988). Williams, Roger (2003) 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 February 17, 2004. Winograd, T. and Flores. F. (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. Ablex, Norwood, NJ. Woolley, Benjamin.(1993) Virtual Worlds. London: Penguin.
77
Appendix 3: CHIN Research on VMC

Martine Blanger, 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, Muse Maritime du Qubec 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 Mmoire numrique 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". 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.
78

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 24th, 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. 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.
79
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 CHINs 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 CHINs 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 networks products and services. From CHINs 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 Traditions 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 online 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 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. CHINs goals remained the same for subsequent exhibitions, which is not surprising, given that all
Christmas Tradition in France and in Canada (1995), accessible in English at http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Noel/angl/index.html, involved the participation of The Provincial Museum of Alberta (Edmonton), the Muse de la civilisation (Qubec), and the Muse 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 motivating factors 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.
117
80

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 Traditions production generated among visitors. However, this formula was not a guarantee for success. 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 Athenas 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 CHIN produced virtual exhibitions began to shift to 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 CHINs mandate to build capacity within the museum community 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 exhibitions. To assist museums in the identification of 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.
120 121
Not surprisingly, this was particularly true from October through to December of each year. Success 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.
81

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-alone 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 museums in mind.123 These two programs clearly illustrate CHINs move towards, and understanding of, the needs of the end-user in the development of online content. Interestingly enough, CHINs collaborative 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, and 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 Canadians and the world. Virtual exhibitions are an important component of the VMC, representing approximately 70% of visits, and generating 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.
VMC Report Card

The purpose of the Report Card is to provide an evaluative report on the VMC. The VMC has been in existence since March 22, 2001. Enough data has been collected over the past three years to allow for an analysis and evaluation on the state of the VMC.
123
The Community Memories Program is open to museums with no more than two full-time paid staff, including museums that are entirely volunteer-run. More information about this program can be found on the CHIN Web site at http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Members/VMC_Memories/index.html
82

Methodology This evaluation takes the form of a "report card": a number of criteria are identified, and the fulfillment of these criteria by the VMC is identified. This is an objective-based evaluation that draws upon both quantitative and qualitative data. VMC Assessment Criteria The mission of the VMC 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." At the time of it's a launch, a number of desired outcomes were identified by all-parties involved in the creation of the VMC: There will be more Canadian choices on the Internet in both French and English; Canadians and international audiences will have access to a rich on-line tapestry reflecting the diversity of Canadian heritage and experiences; On-line content developed by museums will be used in schools and other learning environments; Young Canadians will know more about Canada's heritage; More people will visit Canada's museums; Museums will develop new partnerships within their communities and with other communities of interest; Museums will develop new skills to participate in the knowledge society; Museums will increase their digital holdings; Museums will have increased opportunities to generate revenues; The Virtual Museum hub will be recognized as an effective and attractive portal to Canadian museums.
These concrete objectives are used to determine the state of the VMC. VMC Assessment Against Original Criteria This section assesses the achievement of original objectives by the VMC using a summary table. Objective Internet service freely available to the public in French and English Outcome All VMC content is freely available to the public, most of it is in both French and English (an exception is Artefacts Canada, which has some unilingual entries) As of November 2003, the following resources were available through the VMC: 171 exhibits 53 games 400,000 images
There will be more Canadian choices on the Internet in both French and English Canadians and international audiences will
83

have access to a rich on-line tapestry reflecting the diversity of Canadian heritage and experiences 525 educational resources 400,000 images in the Image Gallery 2690 museums 800 events and activities Over 1000 member institutions who can contribute content Feedback by educators indicates an awareness and use of the Teacher's Centre resource and other content on the VMC. The Teacher's Centre was recently redeveloped with many enhancements based upon requirements defined by Teachers. To promote online content, a brochure is sent out to Teacher's annually with information on resources available to them at the VMC.
On-line content developed by museums will be used in schools and other learning environments;
Young Canadians will know more about Canada's heritage
A March, 2003 survey conducted for CHIN by Decima research reported that the percentage of Canadians in the 15-24 age group that are aware of the VMC doubled from 3% to 6% between 2002 - 2003. Although the VMC is only one means of increasing knowledge about Canada's heritage, awareness of this resource is an indication that it is well positioned to reach this objective. Further studies on what is actually learned will have to be conducted to determine actual knowledge levels. The same Decima study reported that 14% of respondents are sometimes motivated to visit a museum because of what they see on a web site. The same survey found an 8% recognition rate of the VMC among the Canadian public -- a very high rate. This bodes well for reaching that percentage of the population who visit museums based upon what they see on the web. If this percentage increases, it also means that the VMC is well positioned to help museums in this regard.
More people will visit Canada's museums
84

Based upon feedback received from museums, they receive at least double the number of visits online that they do in person. The VMC is actively playing a role in driving traffic to museums, but online and in person. Museums will develop new partnerships within their communities and with other communities of interest; Museums will develop new skills to participate in the knowledge society; Museums will increase their digital holdings; The level and nature of participation in the VMC Investment Program suggests that these three criteria are being addressed: 313 applications for Investment Program participation from 202 different institutions; 79 proposals recommended for investment, representing 70 different institutions (not including partners); The Community Memories program has also contributed to the achievement of these three objectives. In the first four calls for applications to participate in this program, 290 institutions submitted proposals. Of these proposals, 202 were accepted. This overwhelming response is all the more impressive considering that it has been less than two years since proposals were first solicited. These efforts have resulted in new partnerships for museums both within their communities and with other communities of interest, the development of new skills, and finally, an increase in digital holdings for museums across Canada. Museums will have increased opportunities to generate revenues The Virtual Museum hub will be recognized as an effective and attractive portal to Canadian museums The @boutiques section of the VMC provides a gateway to online shopping boutiques at cultural institutions across the country. To date, the VMC has been recognized for excellence in various categories, all having to do with its effectiveness as a cultural portal to Canadian museums. The VMC has been recognized with the following awards: 2003 Golden MIM Award Winner 2002 MUSE Award Winner
85

Head of the Public Service Award Best Information Web Site - 2001 Digital Marketing Awards "Library & Catalog Management Solution Award" at Livelinkup 2001 Gold Medal for Unique Achievement Technology in Government Distinction Award Site of the Month - The Beaver Site du mois - Guide Internet Canadian History Best of the Net The Beaver Site du Jour - Sympatico.ca (twice) Yahoo! Pick of the Week
A key original objective of the VMC was to bring attention to the online resources of Canadian cultural institutions. There are a number of indications that this is being achieved. Membership at CHIN has increased from 500 members in March 2001 to over 1000 members in March 2003. Although this is not due entirely to the existence of the VMC, the presence of this cultural portal is certainly a factor. Furthermore, a number of statistics related to traffic suggest that the VMC is achieving its goal of bringing traffic to museums participating in the VMC: 76% (n=47million) of all VMC page views are for content developed by member institutions (60% for virtual exhibits and 16% for other content). Of these, 8% go to members' sites. 84% of visits (n=8 million) are to member museums' artistic, information and promotional content;
Finally, the VMC has initiated a dialogue with Canadians on Canada's cultural resources. Since it's launch in March, 2001, over four thousand unsolicited feedback messages have been received. Ninety-seven percent of these messages were signed, and in many cases individuals requested a response. The nature of the messages suggests that Canadians look to the institutional content available on the VMC as an authoritative resource. VMC Statistics As the VMC has matured, a number of additional means of assessment have been developed. A great deal of effort has gone into the collection and analysis of data from VMC server log files. Although a comprehensive analysis of these statistics is beyond the scope of this paper, four key statistical indicators and trends are summarized to further assess the current state of the VMC: overall traffic to the VMC, the overall traffic to all VEs, the trend in traffic to individual VEs, and finally, the trend in traffic to newly launched VEs. (i) Overall traffic to the VMC
86

There is a clear increase in traffic since the launch of the VMC, as demonstrated by the number of visits to the portal. A visit is defined as one user traversing a web site: A visit is defined as a sequence of requests to a Web server, all made from the same IP address, having the same agent string, and with no gap between requests of more than 15 consecutive minutes. So, if a user comes to your site and starts clicking through it, this is counted as a visit. The table below indicates that traffic to the VMC has been increasing since launch: Year 2001 (March-December) 2002 2003 (ii) Overall traffic to all VEs There is a definite positive trend in visits to VEs hosted on the VMC. It should be noted that the number of VEs hosted at the VMC has increased over the period reported in this table. Year 2001 (March-December) 2002 2003 (iii) Traffic to Individual VEs Although individual VEs have unique traffic patterns, an examination of data for one long existing VE demonstrates a positive trend: Year 2001 (March-December) 2002 2003 Visits to the VE Anno Domini 59,690 139,357 158,164 Visits to VE 1,306,745 2,072,159 3,303,810 VMC Visits 2,049,456 3,093,377 4,770,953
This pattern cannot be applied to all VEs -- a number of factors contribute to traffic, including marketing of the VE through featuring and other means. Nonetheless, it is an indication of the impact of the VMC on traffic to digital content developed by partner institutions. (iv) Traffic to newly launched VEs
87

The success of the VMC as a promoter of Canadian cultural content can be measured, in part, by the ability of the portal to deliver traffic to newly launched VEs. The data in the following table illustrates that the VMC is capable of delivering sustained, and in some cases, increasing levels of traffic in the first months of a VE. Three VEs were selected for this analysis -- one newly launched exhibit in each of the VMCs first three years of existence. The raw traffic, as well as percentage change for each month is indicated. Year / VE 2001 (March-December) / Explore Herschel Island! 2002 / Fort Selkirk Virtual Museum 2003 / Hands On! Month 1 922 1,359 117 Month 2 810 (-12%) 1,389 (+2%) 528 (+351%) Month 3 895 (+11%) 1,725 (+24%) 842 (+60%) Month 4 1,258 (+41%) 977 (-44%) 2,120 (+152%)
Conclusion The VMC has successfully achieved many of its original objectives, and continues to fulfill these core operating obligations. As the VMC has evolved, various metrics have been identified and used to measure its activities. The data contained in this report shows that the VMC goes beyond merely attracting visitors to digital holdings. Rather, the VMC directs traffic to content developed by member institutions. As such, the VMC is an excellent vehicle to raise awareness of new virtual exhibits, and an ideal repository of digital content. The VMC remains a vehicle whose main purpose is to promote the interests of member institutions. As new methods to achieve this objective are pursued at CHIN, corresponding metrics to measure the success or failure of these efforts must developed.
88
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 e-science 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 nonsequential 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 threedimensional space. Also an exploration of the evolution of 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
89

/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. [BernersLee] 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.
90
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. 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 Canadian Heritage Information Network 91

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.
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 Canada124 as well as other acclaimed sites125. She specializes in information architecture, access, usability and evaluation. In addition to presenting at conferences and writing126 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
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. 126 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.
125
124
92

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. 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. 2004127; Cultural Content Forum in Banff, Feb. 2004128.
Pierre Lvy
Pierre Lvy 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).
127 128
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 (cole polytechnique, Paris, France) about history of cybernetics, artificial intelligence and artificial life, 1983-1986. Visiting professor at the University of Quebec in Montral (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).
http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Conferences_Training/Dccf_Workshop/index.html http://www.culturalcontentforum.org/
93

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, assessment 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. 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 Hlne Myre. Other members of the rethinking group were Kim Gauvin, Kati Geber, Jason Kiss, Suhas Deshpande and Stphane Cherpit.
94

Virtualmuseum Nextgeneration Studypaper VM TNG en

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Virtualmuseum Nextgeneration Studypaper VM TNG en

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Virtual Museum (of Canada):

The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN)

Virtual Museum (of Canada): The Next Generation

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

The Idea of the Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation Sustainability

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Emerging Technologies + Trends

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

The Virtual and the Real

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation Virtual Exhibit

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation

Mass Audience vs. Personal Medium

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation Audience Profiling

Canadian Heritage Information Network

Virtual Museum: The Next Generation