Global Digital Museum: multimedia information access and creation on the Internet

Abstract

Multimedia information access on the Internet creates a new paradigm for museum information and education service that complements conventional school programs. We designed and developed the Global Digital Museum to permit easy access to the cultural heritage stored in museums around the world. The system provides a single virtual museum, enabling global search and edit of museum contents on the Internet. We applied the Global Digital Museum model to K-12 museum education by using real museum multimedia data. Technical issues addressed include: 1) unified and global access to heterogeneous and distributed multimedia contents of museums; and 2) interactive editing of the contents on the World-Wide Web. We describe the concept of Global Digital Museum, the system and network architecture, the data model for museum information, and implementation of a prototype system on the Internet.